April 2025

Melinda Cilento as CEO of CEDA leads the national conversation for a shared plan towards Progress 2050. It has pillars of productivity and innovation and the knowledge and skills our future workforce need. In this fireside chat with Patrick Kidd CEO of the Future Skills Organisation she questions if higher education is changing fast enough and keeping up with the world around it. It provides a backdrop to a panel discussion involving Megan Lilly of Jobs and Skills Australia, Sally Curtain of Bendigo Kangan Institute, Yasminka Nemet of Microsoft and Colin Gneil of LinkedIn to explore how we can keep up with the speed of change in skills needs in an Age of AI and how a harmonised tertiary sector will help.

Theo Farrell as Vice-Chancellor of La Trobe University, with his VC Fellow Dr Susan Zhang, join as co-hosts and partners with HEDx in opening the latest HEDx conference at the State Library of Victoria. They outline the importance of collaboration and partnerships for conversations and diverse views to forge shared solutions to challenges and opportunities. And they do so on the biggest topic in the sector of how Higher Education will navigate the Age of AI. It forms an opening session at HEDx with Theo and Susan in a fireside chat with Paul LeBlanc who pioneers what AI means to the future of HE in a way that guides La Trobe being AI leaders in an Australian HE landscape.

John Dewar of KordaMentha leads a panel of public and private university leaders re-examining strategies in the light of opportunities with AI. Pascale Quester VC of Swinburne, Andrew Parfitt VC of UTS, Dan Cockerell CEO of Torrens and Jessica Vanderlelie DVC at Deakin reflect on how AI gives a chance to learn how to be a disruptor, and regain social licence before those seeking to disrupt us, take advantage first. They argue AI is a game changer strategic opportunity and experimentation in changing the way we do things is a chance not to be missed to avoid our Kodak moment.