Our Steering Group consists of representatives from our founding partner organisations. It acts like an independent Board of Directors and oversees the work of the Evidence for Learning team, ensuring we meet our financial and legal obligations. The Steering Group meets four times per annum.
Steering Group Members
Rob Koczkar (Chair) - Chief Executive Officer, Social Ventures Australia
Rob Koczkar brings extensive experience in investing and management consulting to SVA, along with a deep understanding of the social purpose sector from serving on the boards of Social Ventures Australia, Goodstart Early Learning, and on Mission Australia’s Corporate Advisory Council.
Before joining SVA Rob was a Managing Director of Pacific Equity Partners from 2004-2014. Prior to that he was a Principal at Texas Pacific Group in Europe, and a strategic consultant with Bain & Company.
Anthony Mackay AM - Chief Executive Officer, Centre for Strategic Education
Anthony Mackay is CEO, Centre for Strategic Education (CSE) Melbourne, Inaugural Chair, Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), and Inaugural Deputy Chair, Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). Tony is Co-Chair of the Global Education Leaders Partnership (GELP) and Inaugural Chair of the Innovation Unit Ltd, England.
He is Consultant Advisor to OECD/CERI. Tony is an Honorary Fellow in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, a Board Director of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), the Asia Education Foundation, the Foundation for Young Australians, and Teach for Australia.
Kara Frederick - Founder & Managing Director, Tiger Financial Group
Kara has a decade of experience in financial services in New York, San Francisco and Australia. Kara founded Tiger Financial Group in 2011. Previously, she worked for Goldman, Sachs & Co as a Director on the buy-side. She was part of the investment team for Goldman Sachs Capital Partners' $20.0 billion fund based in New York and helped lead a $100 million (unlevered) multi-strategy fund.
Kylie Macfarlane - General Manager Corporate Responsibility, Corporate Affairs, Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Kylie Macfarlane is a financial services professional with over 20 years’ experience in the banking and wealth management industries. Kylie’s extensive experience has been accumulated through working for leading Australian financial services organisations, including the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, its subsidiary Colonial First State, AMP Limited and Bankers Trust.
As General Manager, Corporate Responsibility Kylie is responsible for leading the advice, governance and stakeholder engagement required to execute the Commonwealth Bank’s corporate responsibility and community affairs strategies.
Kylie is a Trustee Director of the Commonwealth Bank’s employer superannuation fund, Group Super, a member of its Investment and Nominations Committees, and Chair of the Bank’s Indigenous Advisory Council.
Susan Metcalf - Chief Operating Officer, Social Ventures Australia
Susan has deep experience in management and marketing with some of Australia’s biggest brands including The Smith Family and Scouts Australia NSW. She was responsible for the marketing launch of the Disney Channel, and went on to become Managing Director of Disney branded television in Australia/New Zealand.
Susan has been involved with public education in her community. Susan holds a Diploma Law (SAB) from Sydney University, and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Macquarie Graduate School of Management.
Suzie Riddell - Executive Director, Strategy and Business Development, Social Ventures Australia
Suzie Riddell is an Executive Director at SVA. She led SVA’s work in Education before taking on the Strategy and Business Development function. Suzie joined SVA in the Consulting team in 2011, and has supported non-profit, social enterprise and government clients in education, Indigenous affairs, health and employment. She has experience leading strategic planning projects, developing frameworks for measuring social impact and facilitating knowledge sharing.
Prior to joining SVA, Suzie was a consultant at Bain & Company, where she worked on strategy, private equity diligence and transformation programs.
Matthew Deeble – Director, Education – Social Ventures Australia
Matt has more than 20 years’ experience in building and running enterprises in education, health and clean technology. He was involved in provisioning the first Internet services in Australian schools and developing internet management software used by thousands of schools in Australia, NZ, UK and USA. More recently he has worked on data, identity and privacy projects for the National Schools Interoperability Program and on an online career profiling service in Higher and Vocational Education. He is also a non-executive director of a non-profit evidence efficiency platform; Covidence.
Steering Group Terms of Reference
Primary governance body modelling the duties of a standard ‘not-profit’ Corporate Board Meets four times per annum
Duties are:
- Review and approval of three year business and financial plan
- Review and approval of annual plan budget
- Appointment of key personnel (as SVA employees)
- Setting of spending authority limits (currently delegated to SVA Management)
- Review and approval of major decisions
- Review of regular performance reports
- Approval of Grants for Research Trials
- Development of grant making framework considering explicit balancing of strategic objectives
- Development of grant making evaluation criteria and process for recommendation to Advisory Board
- Review and consideration of grant proposals submitted by SVA’s Toolkit Initiative team