ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Camino sees education is a right not a privilege with the Advisory Committee ensuring we never lose track of that overarching theme.

To support the activities of the Board of Directors and the executive, a carefully chosen group of individuals has been invited to join the Advisory Board to ensure, essentially, that whether it is courses being delivered to students or services being delivered to educational institutions, Camino remain focussed on its core role of keeping students safe, free of harm and getting the best out of every educational opportunity presented to them.

Current members are listed below:

IAN KIMBER

BA Griffith University; Graduate Certificate UK Institute of Directors; Certificate iv Assessment and Workplace Training

Ian Kimber has more than 30 years’ experience in higher education encompassing working in universities, the Queensland state public service, and higher education regulatory and quality agencies in Australia and the UK, where he has achieved a wide range of significant strategic and operational outcomes.

Ian was Executive Director of the Office of Higher Education, then Assistant Director General for Tertiary and Non-State Education with the Queensland state government from 2006 to 2011. In these roles he was responsible for state policy on higher education, and quality assurance and regulation of tertiary education and non-state schooling. Ian’s responsibilities also included oversight of the state’s support for international higher education.

From 2011 – 2015 Ian was Special Advisor then Executive Director, Regulation and Review with the Tertiary Education Quality and Standard Agency (TEQSA). In these roles he designed and implemented TEQSA’s regulatory business processes, and established then led the agency’s Regulation and Review Group. Ian was variously responsible for TEQSA’s international engagement, and engagement with other regulatory bodies, including professional regulators, nationally.

Ian spent five years from 2015 - 2020 with the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), where he was firstly Director of Quality Development then Director of Universities, Quality Enhancement and Standards. Ian provided the intellectual and strategic leadership for QAA’s work in innovation, business development, research, quality enhancement, membership and services development, UK and international partnerships and Access to Higher Education. During this time, Ian was involved as the QAA’s representative in most of the significant tertiary education quality and regulatory policy developments in the UK.

PROFESSOR JOHN RICKARD

PhD, BSc (Honours First Class) Queen Elizabeth College, University of London; Chair Ozford Australia

Emeritus Professor John Rickard has held chief executive posts at several of Australia’s most prestigious universities.

UK-born Rickard was awarded his PhD in Geophysical Fluid Mechanics at University College London before migrating to Australia to take up a lectureship in the Mathematics Department at the University of Melbourne. During the 1970s his research interests shifted to economics and finance, and much of his work in the field focused on developing empirical models of consumer behaviour.

In 1984 he took up one of the Foundation Chairs at the newly established Graduate School of Management at the University of Melbourne and in 1992 he moved to head the Graduate School of Management at Deakin University.

Subsequent appointments included Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at Monash University; Vice-Chancellor and President at Southern Cross University; and Pro Vice-Chancellor and President at Central Queensland University.

John has held numerous visiting appointments, including Visiting Professor of Finance at the London Business School and Visiting Professor of Marketing at the Cranfield School of Management in Bedford, England.

As a consultant to public and private organisations, his areas of expertise include finance, taxation, executive remuneration and customer retention.

Rickard was awarded the Centenary Medal in 2001 for service to Australian society through business and university administration.

DR MARTHA GEIGER

PhD Engineering and Business University of Cambridge/University of California Berkeley, HaaS School of Business; M Eng University of Cambridge (Honours Distinction); BA (First Class) University of Cambridge

EdTech and Online Education specialist at IU the International University of Applied Sciences, Germany’s biggest university, innovative EdTech player and an Oakley Capital portfolio company. Among other things, she manages the development and alignment of the overall company strategy and unit-specific deep dives and international expansion, as well as overall company project management and prioritisation, including the development of new offerings, digital delivery innovations, internal systems landscape, and more.

Previously Martha was a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, working on a range of projects from different industries, including global automotive procurement strategy, orthopaedic implants market analysis and business development strategy, and financial and credit card regulatory topics.

She holds a PhD in Technology and Innovation Management from the University of Cambridge, with a term at UC Berkeley. Her research focussed on an analysis for helping companies tackle the challenges of knowledge transfer of digital innovations from their Silicon Valley based innovation offices back into their headquarters.

Martha’s background is in engineering, having completed bachelors and masters with distinction from the University of Cambridge. She conducted deep project work on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education, looking at an International School approach to STEM to help tackle the global shortage of engineers. This included a deep analysis of international school curricula and reasons why students do, or do not, decide to pursue a degree in a STEM field. Taking the pipeline of education further back, Martha conducted extensive outreach work, presenting what engineers do and why “Engineers are Amazing” at primary schools to help excite more children about engineering.

MARK SKINNER

B.Comm

Created and founded Campus Review Weekly (higher education newspaper). Since divested of this company with Campus Review now regarded as the premier higher education newspaper in Australia.

From 1993 – 2008 formed 50/50 JV (C Management Services) with Central Qld University in first public/private venture with a University in Australia. This joint venture established specialist campuses for international students in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Fiji, NZ educating 13,000 annually and graduating over 80,000 in its 15 years of operation. The public/private partnership won national export awards for international education.

Created Unilodge, the Australian and New Zealand branded student accommodation network which was the first private enterprise privately funded student accommodation company in Australia. It grew quickly and today the private enterprise student accommodation sector is a $20b specialist market segment in the Australian property industry. The creation of Unilodge changed the face of student accommodation, winning numerous awards. Today Unilodge provides accommodation for thousands of students at its 105 locations across Australia and New Zealand. Mark was its creator and founder and Chairman for four years.

Created and established Global Assessment Certificate (GAC) and software iTAP (International Targeted Academic Profiler) with oversight Board of Vice Chancellors from five countries. Today the GAC is taught in 11 countries around the world and used by 300 Universities worldwide to assess student selection and enrolment. It was subsequently acquired by ACT Inc (American College Test) of the US in and has been instrumental in helping thousands of students on an international education journey of their choice.

In more recent years Mark has a number of other involvements including the following

ISP EduWorld Co-founder and Chairman –the Global Freshman credential, a strategic education online tertiary access program.
Consulting Partner of Schoolhouse Solutions Pty Ltd for higher education strategic opportunities

Mark clearly adds expertise, experience, strategy and wisdom to the Advisory Committee

JOHN VICKERS

B Com; B Acc; CA (Aus)

John is a Chartered Accountant with more than 28 years' business experience, specialising in strategic planning, corporate finance, financial management and accounting. Prior to moving to Perth at the end of 2007, John worked with global companies such as KPMG and Alexander Forbes, serving as a director on numerous public company boards. His key roles during his 14 year career at Alexander Forbes included: Finance Director of listed subsidiary Investment Solutions Limited, South Africa’s leading multi-manager investment company; Africa Group Finance Director for Alexander Forbes; and Group Development Director of Alexander Forbes Limited, the ultimate listed holding company for the group at the time. John was responsible for Corporate Finance/M&A for the group and managed the $1.4bn buyout of the group by a consortium of private equity investors in 2007.

After moving to Perth in 2008 John joined the SEQTA Board as Chairman. From modest beginnings, today SEQTA provides IT solutions to over 500 schools, 30,000 teachers and 250,000 students across Australia and internationally.

John provided significant guidance and direction to SEQTA, including establishing appropriate processes and procedures regarding financial management and corporate governance. John also played a key role in investor relations and managed the sourcing of significant additional equity investment for SEQTA.

In 2016 John was instrumental in negotiating and executing on a merger of SEQTA with a similar size Melbourne-based Ed-Tech company, Synergetic Management Systems. This resulted in the establishment of a new public unlisted holding Company, Education Horizons Group Limited (EHG) which is now the largest wholly Australian owned K-12 Ed-Tech group. John became Executive Chairman of EHG, a role which he held until 2019 when he transitioned to his current role of non-executive director following the acquisition of a controlling stake in EHG by Sydney-based private equity group Potentia Capital.

RICK SHARP

B Comp Sci

Rick has been in leading technology roles focused on both education administration and teaching and learning innovation for more than 20 years. He has held global CIO and CTO roles giving him a broad range of skills across IT governance and compliance through product development and management.

In 2000 Rick joined the IT division of a privately owned international college, which later became Navitas, a leading global education provider. Rick held several roles in the 15 years he spent with that provider leading the establishment of IT systems and operations and the development of proprietary education software. Notable projects during this time were:

Curtin University Singapore Campus. Ricks team designed and implemented the IT systems, operations and computer learning facilities. This was a large and complex project requiring sophisticated integrations between the University’s Teaching and Learning systems and the provider’s education administration systems.
Establishment of 15 new colleges across Europe, Canada and USA. From 2003 Rick coordinated the extension of the provider’s IT Governance, systems and support services to 28 colleges in 9 countries, providing IT leadership and creating a global IT service and support function.
In 2010 the provider acquired a media technology training institute with 47 campuses located in 19 countries. Rick led the IT integration project that combined the provider’s and the training institute’s administration and teaching and learning systems.

In 2015 Rick took on the role as CIO of SEQTA Software, an Australian based education technology company delivering teaching and learning software to the K-12 Sector. As part of the SEQTA executive team, Rick played a key role in the merger with Synergetic Management systems to form Education Horizons Group (EHG). At EHG Rick took on the role of CTO and oversaw the technology modernisation program that re-imagined EHGs 5 education software products. Rick managed this significant cloud software build by implementing the Scaled Agile Framework to coordinate the activities of 14 development teams.

Rick has achieved a great deal of experience across the IT field and particularly across education technology. He has a proven record of delivering large projects with tight timelines and can build high performing, motivated IT teams. Working across multiple jurisdictions and at all levels has enabled Rick to build strong business acumen. Rick’s boardroom and compliance experience provides a safe set of hands to the Camino Advisory Committee.