Our executives

Jeff provides both a strategic and day-to-day focus over our operational functions.

Jeff provides both a strategic and day-to-day focus over our operational functions and the delivery of our strategic goals, purpose and vision. Jeff joined Goodstart in 2014 as the Chief Financial Officer bringing many years of experience in senior commercial finance roles across not-for-profit, private and public sectors. During his tenure at Goodstart, Jeff has secured our financial sustainability to help us achieve maximum social impact – with our social purpose investments increasing from $12.5M to more than $47.3M in 2022. Jeff has been instrumental in leading our centre growth strategy and executing sector-leading capital projects, to helping establish our charitable cause the Early Learning Fund with Uniting (NSW/ACT) and The Benevolent Society, and overseeing the strategy and implementation of our child safeguarding framework. 

Jeff became the Chief Operating Officer role in early 2019 and led the transformation of a new way of working at Goodstart, placing centres at the centre of everything we do.  In early 2023 Jeff was appointed Deputy CEO, a role to which he brings his strong leadership focus to create a thriving organisation where all children and Goodstarters feel a strong sense of belonging.

Myra oversees Goodstart's social impact strategy, policy, measurement, research and evaluation and social inclusion programs and initiatives such as EChO (Enhancing Children’s Outcomes) and Family Connections. Myra and her team amplify the delivery of Goodstart’s social purpose and impact across the country.

Myra brings significant experience to Goodstart, as a driving force of social policy and reform that has helped transform and improve the quality of life of Australians. She has been the senior social policy advisor to two Australian prime ministers and has worked across early childhood education and care, schools, community services and health policy at state and national levels. Myra’s career began as a teacher in the northern suburbs of Brisbane. She is deeply committed to supporting those Goodstarters working closest with children and is a passionate believer in the power of early learning to transform children’s lives. Myra co-wrote Preschool – Two Years are Better Than One with Dr Stacey Fox at the Mitchell Institute which aimed to help compel Australia to pursue a national commitment to ensuring all three-year-olds have access to high-quality early childhood education by offering a second year of preschool. Myra has also been a Goodstart mum, with her children attending Goodstart Kedron.

Ensuring safety is wrapped around everything we do at Goodstart is driven by Matthew – who harnesses his extensive safety expertise and behavioural psychology and change management to embed a behaviour-based safety culture alongside his team of safety, health and wellbeing professionals.

Matthew Little joins Goodstart with deep expertise in health and safety, having worked for global organisations in a range of sectors including power manufacturing, engineering, retail, construction and entertainment. By combining his commercial and strategic skills with a hands-on approach to leadership – Matthew takes pride in supporting organisations to enhance their safety performance through cultural safety and engagement. He believes that every leader has a responsibility to improve safety performance one conversation at a time, by being present and employing high quality engagement skills. At Goodstart, Matthew takes great pride in ensuring Goodstart’s safety commitment is lived and breathed across its centre network nationally. He maintains a strong and unwavering focus on our people and their wellbeing with this deep understanding of its critical nature and connection to health, safety and engagement outcomes for our people, children, families and communities.

Keeping pace with the digital age, organisational transformation and employee capability build, are all in a day’s work for Jason. Jason is about supporting the here and now and the future – ensuring workplace learning is woven across everything we do. By laying the foundations of how we learn, lead and work, Jason and his team are fostering a strong Goodstart culture - intrinsic to a thriving organisation.

Jason is a highly accomplished learning and development executive who joined Goodstart in 2020, bringing more than 20 years’ experience in transforming organisations’ leadership and learning approaches to be more strategic and agile to achieve high-impact outcomes. Jason has led major learning transformations for a number of large and complex organisations including Australian Unity, Australian School of Applied Management, the National Excellence in School Leadership Initiative and the University of Melbourne. He is recognised for creating and embedding best and next practice approaches to build strong learning cultures. His experience spans education, strategy, change management, leadership and culture development, partnerships and large-scale capability uplift initiatives.

Sue leads a range of work and initiatives to bring our ambition of becoming a world leader in early years pedagogy and practice to life. This sees Sue and her colleagues on any given day working closely with educators in our centres, the sector, academics and national and international thought leaders to translate and embed early learning evidence into practice.

Sue is an international thought leader in early childhood pedagogy and OBE (Order of the British Empire). Prior to joining Goodstart, Sue was the Head of Early Learning at Action for Children in the United Kingdom (UK). As a complement to her role at Action for Children, Sue provided specialist advisory services on early years and childcare policy and quality to the UK Government and relevant Ministers. In her early career, Sue spent 14 years as a teacher, including three years in the British School, Athens, and six years as Early Years and Infant Lead in the British School in Manila, Philippines. She has also been a school principal and held the regulatory role of lead inspector for the Early Years Foundation Stage (the UK version of Australia’s Early Years Learning Framework).

With a strong background in all areas of business operations – marketing, logistics to procurement and finance – Paul has a deep understanding of what is needed to support teams and centres to be their best to deliver great children’s outcomes. 

Paul is a highly accomplished executive with 40 years’ experience working for major national organisations as well as 20 years of board experience and strong operational and leadership expertise as the State Manager for Goodstart’s Victoria and Tasmania region – overseeing more than 170 Goodstart centres. Paul has a deep understanding of managing diverse organisational footprints and people and an unrelenting focus for Goodstart’s vision and purpose. He is highly passionate about people and making a difference in the communities we all live in – benefiting Goodstart communities and beyond as a volunteer and fundraiser for several charities across the nation.

As our Chief Orchestration Officer, Lynne is supporting the creation of an organisation where rapid and sustainable transformation is our new normal, enabling Goodstart’s short and longer-term ambitions.

Lynne has over 20 years of experience in operations and business transformation, working globally for Amex, Dell and IBM. Before joining Goodstart, Lynne was Vice President of Services and Infrastructure Transformation at American Express Global Business Travel. Lynne has a strong track record of leading complex change across workforces, requiring process redesign, implementation of new technologies, workforce capability rebuild, and new ways of team-based problem solving. At Goodstart, Lynne oversees organisational transformation, ensuring leadership and resources are optimised to realise Goodstart’s 2025 ambitions.