Headquarters:
Melbourne, Vic
Year founded:
2011
Number of employees:
3 FTE
Phone:
+61 414 642 063
Email:
avidaustralia@avidau.org
Website:
avidau.org
LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/company/avid-australia1
Claire Brown
Executive Director
Susan Walker
AVID Lead Coach
Steph McDonald
Principal-in-Residence
Leadership
Claire Brown is a third-generation teacher who has held teaching, initial teacher education, education research and education policy roles in schools, universities and education departments in WA and Victoria. She initially taught in metropolitan and regional secondary schools in WA and then English in Japan for three years. On returning to Australia, Brown started her university career. She was a researcher on the initial project that informed the establishment of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. She spent five years working on an early years’ literacy project.
Executive Director
Claire Brown
Susan Walker has held leadership roles in schools and education-related organisations. She was a founding AVID secondary teacher and became an AVID leading teacher and AVID staff developer in science. She was appointed as an AVID Australia coach, responsible for creating and delivering AVID professional learning in primary and secondary schools and universities with a focus on STEM initiatives. Walker was then invited to co-design the professional learning program for the inaugural Teaching Excellence Program at the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership. She returned to AVID Center Australia as the lead coach with responsibility for Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales.
AVID Lead Coach
Susan Walker
Steph McDonald’s early teaching career championed the capabilities of children with disabilities and learning difficulties in secondary schools. She was then foundation principal of Makybe Rise Primary School. She was appointed principal advisor at the WA Leadership Institute and became a collegiate principal. McDonald moved to service director, leadership and statewide services, leading systemic approaches to building leadership capabilities of all staff in schools and systems leadership. She is now AVID’s inaugural leadership and WA schools’ coach. She has received the Women of Achievement Award, Stella Giles Award for Excellence, National VET Network Association Award and state awards for equity and diversity.
Principal-in-Residence
Steph McDonald
Kate McKenzie
Customer Experience Manager
Simon Cowell is a 1995 The Knox School alumnus. He has completed a degree in community development at Deakin University, leading him to work in the international community development sector. He was a board member of an educational charity in Cambodia, and this position directed him to education.
Cowell completed a degree in both primary and secondary education. He has taught in various roles across both primary and secondary schools in the UK and Australia. Hehas a strong focus on the inquiry process through a concept-driven curriculum and the Design Thinking Model.
In his own time, he enjoys travelling, especially to Cambodia, where he still maintains strong connections to the educational community.
Customer Experience Manager
Kate McKenzie
Renee Smith
Accounts Payable/Receivable Manager
Tracey Costello is an accomplished strategic leader with a breadth and depth of finance, governance and strategic executive experience, including 10 years with a Big 4 accounting consultancy, working in Australia, USA and Canada, and 10 years as a senior executive in both government and commercial organisations.
Accounts Payable/Receivable Manager
Renee Smith
Isaac Rule
Head of Digital Strategy
Fiona Kapkidis
Head of People and Culture (Human Resources)
Margaret Leau-Sulusi
Business Development Manager
Pam Chhabra
Manager – Residential Strata
Isaac Rule is a digital strategy and operations leader with experience across New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Australia. With a background in primary education and a Master of Educational Leadership, he brings his experience in the classroom to system-level execution.
He leads digital projects to improve systems and is committed to building staff capability, strengthening digital literacy and aligning innovation with strategic priorities. His portfolio includes oversight of the school’s Learning Management System and stakeholder engagement.
Rule is passionate about supporting students to develop their critical thinking skills and independence. His work as timetabler supports delivery of the school’s academic program, aligning staffing, subject offerings and resource allocation to maximise the benefit to students.
Head of Digital Strategy
Isaac Rule
With more than 20 years in people and culture, Fiona Kapkidis combines her HR experience with a strong background in business and music education. A graduate of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne, she later completed postgraduate qualifications in business management at Monash University, shaping her holistic approach to people development. Her career includes over five years in Asia with a major communications company, where she led professional development, team engagement and training programs across culturally diverse organisational environments.
Prior to joining The Knox School, she worked in the property industry, leading people strategy, recruitment and stakeholder engagement. Passionate about creating positive workplaces and building authentic connections, Kapkidis believes that when people feel valued and supported, they bring their best to what they do. She remains deeply connected to the music community, teaching piano privately and having previously served as a board director for both the Victorian Music Teachers’ Association and Melbourne Youth Orchestras.
Head of People and Culture (Human Resources)
Fiona Kapkidis
Margaret Leau-Sulusi brings over 20 years of banking experience to her role as business development manager, having started with Westpac in 2005. Her background includes lending support, senior lending roles and branch management. Leau-Sulusi partners closely with mortgage advisers, providing product expertise and strategic guidance to drive strong client outcomes. Known for her collaborative style and responsiveness, she is passionate about building trusted relationships and delivering customer-focused results.
Business Development Manager
Margaret Leau-Sulusi
Stephen McMillan first entered the financial services Industry when he joined GE Capital as a finance analyst in 2008, from which he progressed through roles working both onshore and offshore. From there, he moved into Pacific Premium Funding as a financial planning and analysis leader in 2012 and was a key resource in the evolution of the business, first with the successful sale to Macquarie Pacific Funding and then the following progression into IQumulate Premium Funding, where he is now the commercial manager.
As commercial manager, McMillan leads a team that is responsible for commercial analysis and business support, identifying and reporting improvement initiatives, and the securitization and treasury functions of the business.
Commercial Manager
Stephen McMillan
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Award Winner
AVID Center Australia
SPECIAL REPORT
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Bio
Adam Basaldella
Manager – Claims
Stephen McMillan first entered the financial services Industry when he joined GE Capital as a finance analyst in 2008, from which he progressed through roles working both onshore and offshore. From there, he moved into Pacific Premium Funding as a financial planning and analysis leader in 2012 and was a key resource in the evolution of the business, first with the successful sale to Macquarie Pacific Funding and then the following progression into IQumulate Premium Funding, where he is now the commercial manager.
As commercial manager, McMillan leads a team that is responsible for commercial analysis and business support, identifying and reporting improvement initiatives, and the securitization and treasury functions of the business.
Product Manager
Claire Watson
Stephen McMillan first entered the financial services Industry when he joined GE Capital as a finance analyst in 2008, from which he progressed through roles working both onshore and offshore. From there, he moved into Pacific Premium Funding as a financial planning and analysis leader in 2012 and was a key resource in the evolution of the business, first with the successful sale to Macquarie Pacific Funding and then the following progression into IQumulate Premium Funding, where he is now the commercial manager.
As commercial manager, McMillan leads a team that is responsible for commercial analysis and business support, identifying and reporting improvement initiatives, and the securitization and treasury functions of the business.
Commercial Manager
Stephen McMillan
“No child should be limited by what they can achieve because of their postcode”
Claire Brown,
AVID Center Australia
“We believe in the life-changing impact of confident, capable and excellent educators who continue to hone their teaching craft over time with high-quality, targeted professional learning and coaching”
Claire Brown,
AVID Center AustraliA
AVID Center Australia’s proven teacher development
A two-year independent evaluation has given the Melbourne-based winner the hard evidence that its work lifts student results. Conducted by NAPLAN analyst Dr Pete Goss, it found that since 2014, schools using AVID Center Australia’s professional learning system with fidelity over time added nearly eight times more value in Year 9 learning growth and three additional months of learning in Year 5 compared with similar schools. For an organisation built on teacher and instructor development, the findings validated 16 years of work to close opportunity gaps regardless of postcode.
Evidence over anecdote
Commissioning the evaluation was, by AVID’s own account, the biggest risk it had taken, because the study could have found little impact. Instead, Goss concluded that AVID is helping schools deliver significant and sustained improvements in teaching practice and student outcomes across diverse contexts and multiple states.
Established AVID secondary schools proved more than twice as likely to outperform comparable schools across all three NAPLAN domains, one school closed three-quarters of its Year 9 writing gap against the national average, and several have sustained NAPLAN improvement for more than 10 years. The gains held across regional, metropolitan and disadvantaged schools, which matters for an organisation whose mission centres on equity and access to education.
Built for teachers by teachers
AVID positions itself as part of a school’s coaching team rather than a one-off program, drawing a deliberate contrast with the snapshot professional development that a 2019 Victorian Auditor-General report criticised as poor value. Its professional learning for teachers is co-designed with educators across three phases, from immersive institutes to onsite coaching to schools building their own internal capability.
The model runs across four reinforcing domains: instruction, culture, leadership and systems. Rather than chasing new slogans, AVID refines enduring, evidence-informed strategies such as scaffolding, questioning and gradual release instead of rebranding old ideas as new. This grounding in professional development and adult education draws on 46 years of research as the Australian subsidiary of US non-profit AVID Center, which spans more than 7,500 schools across the two countries.
The organisation is led by three former teachers with decades of combined experience. Executive director Dr Claire Brown wrote the 2011 grant that first brought AVID to Australia, lead coach Susan Walker began as a founding AVID teacher, and principal-in-residence Steph McDonald was the foundation principal at a primary school where she implemented AVID in partnership with a local secondary school.
A two-way global exchange
As AVID Center’s first international subsidiary, AVID Australia is now feeding its expertise back into the wider network. Its annual three-day Summer Institute in Melbourne lets Australian and US educators co-design and co-facilitate sessions side by side, and a group of Australian educators will soon work with schools in Florida and Texas to co-design global learning experiences, with student and teacher exchanges to follow.
AVID’s recognition in The Educator’s Service Provider Awards for 2026 reflects an organisation making the case that lasting school improvement takes time, evidence and stability rather than the next education fad.