SCOTT WILLIAMS, better known as ‘THE DOCTOR’ has been a part of the ‘Top Tier’ of Australian corporate performers for over twenty years. During that time Scott has presented his unique style of humour to hundreds of the world’s biggest companies, leaving thousands of people in fits of laughter.
 
Throughout his career, Scott has continued to develop new material, ensuring that his audiences are always treated to fresh, clean and very fully situational comedy.
 
Scott’s unique comedic talents led him into the Conference EMCEE arena – and now that very specialised area of facilitation makes up nearly one third of all Scott’s corporate appearances. So great has been the demand for Scott in this area, that on a number of occasions companies have actually changed the dates of their conferences just to work in with Scott’s demanding schedule.
 
Scott has EMCEED company events, awards evenings and in particular – multi day national and international conferences. Because of the unique bond Scott forms with a group, repeat business plays a big part in his career – with one of Australia’s ‘Top 20’ companies utilizing his services as EMCEE for eight years in a row!
  
NO MATTER WHAT YOU NEED, WHEN IT COMES TO AN EVENT – SCOTT IS JUST WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED!

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ANDY HARGREAVES is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. The mission of the Chair is to promote social justice and connect theory and practice in education. 

Before moving to Boston, he taught primary school and lectured in several English universities, including Oxford. Prior to coming to Boston College, he was co-founder and director of the International Centre for Educational Change at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto. He has been awarded visiting professorships in the US (Regents Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz), Canada (Noted Scholar, University of British Columbia), the UK (University of Nottingham, University of Manchester and the Institute of Education in London), Hong Kong (Onwell Fellow), Sweden, Japan (awarded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) and Singapore (Koh Professor at the National Institute of Education). 

Andy comes from a Northern mill town in England. When his primary school (Spring Hill, in Accrington) was rebuilt a few years ago, he was invited back to lay its inscribed foundation stone. He did this with his best teacher, Mary Hindle (almost in her 90s), as she was the one who first inspired him to become an educator.

For more information on Andy, please click here.

Lucinda Hartley, CEO CoDesign Studio.

Trained as a Landscape Architect, Lucinda Hartley spent two years working in slum communities in Vietnam and Cambodia before launching Community Oriented Design (CoDesign Studio). CoDesign works with disadvantaged communities to innovate for community projects - from schools to housing to masterplanning - using design-thinking as an engagement tool. Selected as a 2010 Youth Action Net Global Fellow, Lucinda has been focusing on how young people can be engaged and mobilized to improve cities and space through design. She also sits on the UN-Habitat Youth Advisory Board and is an associate Landscape Architect with Hansen Partnership. Lucinda’s commitment to sustainable urban development has been recognised widely including awards from the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA), Asialink, and the internationally competitive Endeavour Executive Award. She was profiled in FuturARC Magazine as one of the top 30 sustainability pioneers in Asia-Pacific.

Jacqui Cooper has represented Australia in the sport of aerial skiing for over 20 years. Recruited at the age of 16 to join the Techne Team, within three years Jacqui was representing her country at the World Championships in Lake Placid; by 1994 she was competing at the Lillehammer Winter Olympics. In 1999, she became a World Champion, and in the decade that followed, Jacqui Cooper dominated and revolutionised her sport.

In a long and decorated career, Jacqui has competed in 139 World Cup Events, nine World Championships and has been selected to five Winter Olympic teams, the first Australian Woman in history (Summer or Winter Games) to have enjoyed this honour. And with a record five world titles, 39 World Cup medals, 24 World Cup wins and three major World Championship medals, Jacqui Cooper is indisputably the greatest aerial skier of all time.

Jacqui's sport, however, is unforgiving; she has multiple reconstructions for her knee, elbow, shoulder and hip. In 2001 she broke her back in an attempt to win a record third World Title; she went on and won it. In 2002 at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics Jacqui shattered her knee and broke her leg just two days before scheduled to compete, destroying a dream years in the making.

In 2010, Jacqui competed in Vancouver after a year of intense hip and knee rehabilitation, shocking doctors and spectators with her brave attempt to be competitive, despite the odds. She spent most of the months leading into the competition in a wheelchair, learning to walk again, and gaining confidence in a sport that is often brutal and cruel. She stunned the world when she placed fifth, the best Olympic result of her career.

Jacqui continues to devote much of her time to various international sporting committees including the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) Board, the AOC Athlete's Commission, Ski and Snowboard Australia Board, the Australian Institute of Sport Athletes Commission, the International Ski Federation (FIS) Athletes Committee, the FIS Freestyle Athletes Committee, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Athlete's Committee and the WADA Education Committee.

In addition to sport, Jacqui's passion is the education of young people on the importance of a healthy lifestyle, nutrition, being role models, pursuing your dreams, being active, and goal setting. Jacqui speaks to all levels of students had has travelled to remote Aboriginal communities in a drug awareness campaign. In 2001 Jacqui's interest, knowledge and passion for clean sport saw her become a key presenter for the AOC in their national drug education program.

Jacqui was recently a recipient of  the Governor's Award, presented at the Vic Sports Awards in 2008 for being a role model, a champion, and a woman successful in sport and in life.

Jacqui's story is one of self belief, passion, triumph, tragedy and the ability to overcome adversity against the odds.

KISHORE MAHBUBANI, a student of philosophy and history, has had the good fortune of enjoying a career in government and, at the same time, in writing on public issues. With the Singapore Foreign Service from 1971 to 2004, he had postings in Cambodia (where he served during the war in 1973-74), Malaysia, Washington DC and New York, where he served two stints as Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN and as President of the UN Security Council in January 2001 and May 2002. He was Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Ministry from 1993 to 1998. Currently, he is the Dean and Professor in the Practice of Public Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) of the National University of Singapore. He is also a Faculty Associate for the LKYSPP’s Centre on Asia and Globalisation (CAG). Concurrently, Prof Mahbubani continues to serve in Boards and Councils of several institutions in Singapore, Europe and North America, including the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Council, the Asia Society's International Council, the Yale President's Council on International Activities (PCIA), and the Singapore-China Foundation - Scholarship Committee.  

In the world of ideas, Prof Mahbubani has spoken and published globally. His articles have appeared in a wide range of journals and newspapers, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Quarterly, Survival, American Interest, the National Interest, Time, Newsweek and New York Times. He has also been profiled in the Economist and in Time Magazine. He is the author of “Can Asians Think?” (published in Singapore, Canada, US, Mexico, India, China and Malaysia) and of “Beyond The Age Of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust between America and the World” (published in New York). His new book entitled “The New Asian Hemisphere: the irresistible shift of global power to the East” was published in New York in February 2008.

For more information on Kishore, please click here.

PASI SAHLBERG is Director General of CIMO (Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation)　in Helsinki, Finland. He has global expertise in educational reforms, training teachers, coaching schools and advising policy-makers. He has worked as teacher, teacher-educator, policy advisor and director in Finland and served the World Bank (Washington, DC) and the European Commission (Torino, Italy) as education expert. His fields of interest include educational change, school improvement, cooperative learning and international education policy. His forthcoming book is titled "Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn about educational change in Finland". He has PhD from the University of Jyväskylä and is Adjunct Professor at the Universities of Helsinki and Oulu.

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YONG ZHAO is currently Presidential Chair and Associate Dean for Global Education, College of Education at the University of Oregon, where he also serves as the director of the Centre for Advanced Technology in Education (CATE). He is a fellow of the International Academy for Education.
 
Until December, 2010, Yong Zhao was University Distinguished Professor at the College of Education, Michigan State University, where he also served as the founding director of the Centre for Teaching and Technology, executive director of the Confucius Institute, as well as the US-China Centre for Research on Educational Excellence.
 
His research interests include educational policy, computer gaming and education, diffusion of innovations, teacher adoption of technology, computer-assisted language learning, and globalization and education.
 
Zhao has extensive international experiences. He has consulted with government and educational agencies and spoken on educational issues in many countries on six continents. His current work focuses on designing 21st Century Schools in the context of globalization and the digital revolution.

For more information on Yong, please click here.