Lecturer

University of Melbourne

Australia Hub 

Rachel is a Teaching Specialist and Education Innovation Fellow at the Centre for Wellbeing Science at the University of Melbourne. Her work is dedicated to enabling wellbeing through education, leading change through the nexus of practice and research. Rachel has worked in education for over 20 years in diverse roles that have led to a deep appreciation of the complexity and hope for change within our education systems. She has served as an educational psychologist, curriculum developer, board chair, wellbeing and learning innovation consultant, organisation development leader, and university lecturer. This experience infuses her current work in the design and delivery of transformative postgraduate and undergraduate programs for current educational leaders and practitioners, as well as initial teacher education. She is honoured to be a dual recipient of the Faculty of Education Teaching Excellence awards recognising this work.

Rachel’s research focuses on the intersection of wellbeing and systems science, with a particular focus on facilitating wellbeing through learning design and educational practices. Her PhD was participatory in nature, exploring young people’s perspectives of how we enable hope through a dynamic systems lens. It is this body of work that sparked her interest in the Compassionate Systems Framework. Rachel began her journey with CSF in 2019 when she completed the Introductory Workshop at MIT. The principles, practices and tools resonated profoundly, and she has been applying these in her own personal and professional practice in higher education with transformative benefits. Rachel is committed to a lifelong vision to be a positive change agent in transforming our education systems to foster flourishing individuals, communities, and planet. Participating in the Global and AsiaPac CSF Communities of Practice over the last 5 years has supported her mastery development in this area and she is now ready to build on this further in the Master Practitioner program.