Accountable leadership and governance: How university leaders can champion gender equality

Sally Calder (she/her) is the Co-Founder and CEO of RespectX, a contemporary, evidence-based, anonymous reporting and response platform that has been built specifically for Higher Education.

Prior to founding RespectX, Sally was the National Lead Partner of Culture, Diversity and Inclusion at KPMG. Her pre-KPMG career was spent leading service delivery organisations focused on crisis response and primary prevention. 

Mark Duckworth PSM FIPAA (Vic) (he/him) is the Co-Director of the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies (CRIS), Senior Research Fellow at the Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation and Senior Political Advisor to the Faculty of Health at Deakin University.

His current research focus is on building resilience to social harms, disaster resilience, co-design and strategies for trust building between government and communities. Before joining Deakin University in 2019 he had more than 30 years’ experience in the Victorian and New South Wales public sectors leading significant policy and legislative reform initiatives on community resilience, intergovernmental relations, multicultural affairs, public administration, plain legal language, veterans’ affairs, countering violent extremism, counter terrorism, and emergency management. 

Professor Adam Shoemaker (he/him) is Vice-Chancellor of Victoria University. A Commonwealth Scholar from Canada, Adam is one of Australia’s leading researchers in Indigenous literature and culture. He has held senior roles at several of Australia’s top universities.

His leadership spans academia, public engagement and governance roles, including with Brisbane Writers Festival and the European Commission. With extensive expertise in education policy and innovation, Adam currently serves on the Universities Australia board, shaping the future of higher education and TAFE nationally.