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
Suzie Riddell (Chair) - Chief Executive Officer, Social Ventures Australia
Suzie Riddell is Chief Executive Officer of SVA. Prior to this Suzie was an Executive Director leading 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 not-for-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.
Rob Koczkar - Manging Director, Adamantem Capital
Rob Koczkar is Managing Director of Adamantem Capital. His experience spans private equity, public company directorships, strategy and social impact investing.
He was and Chief Executive Officer of Social Ventures Australia from 2014 to 2018, a Managing Director of Pacific Equity Partners from 2004 to 2014 and a Principal with Texas Pacific Group from 2002 to 2004. Rob also spent seven years with Bain & Company, advising clients on issues relating to strategy, mergers, and operating improvements in a wide range of industries.
Rob received a BEng (Hons.) in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering from the University of Melbourne. He currently serves on the boards of Goodstart Early Learning Limited, Hygain, Servian and Zentias.
Matthew Deeble – Director, Education – Social Ventures Australia
Matthew 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.
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.
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.
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
