Staff

  • Emily Donaldson
  • Tracey Jukes
  • Tracey Ezard
  • Tiziana Filippini
  • Dr Daniel Wilson
  • Dr Flossie Chua
  • Rick McLeod
  • David Simmelmann
  • Karen Friede
  • Daphne Gaddie
  • Amanda Castelan-Starr
  • Michaela Strang
  • Gary Velleman
  • Jeremy Stowe-Lindner

Jeremy Stowe-Lindner

Principal

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Jeremy leads the operational and strategic direction of the College, ensuring the Bialik students are high-achieving, nurtured, well-rounded and communally responsible.

Gary Velleman

Vice Principal, Head of Senior School

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Gary is responsible for the running of all aspects of the Senior School in addition to deputising for Principal, major project management and whole school logistical opportunities surrounding staffing and timetabling.

Michaela Strang

Assistant Principal & Director of Learning

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Michaela leads and manages the development, implementation and evaluation of the schools’ curriculum, its assessment and quality control and the professional development of staff, to enable its successful implementation. Michaela is in charge of the Cultures of Thinking pedagogy by making thinking visible and fostering a thinking disposition in our students.

Amanda Castelan-Starr

Assistant Principal & Director of Jewish Life

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Amanda oversees the Jewish and Zionist ethos of the College. The office of Jewish Life combines the Hebrew, Jewish Studies and Informal Jewish Education departments, ensuring a rich tapestry of Jewish life is afforded to all students.

Daphne Gaddie

Head of the Early Learning Centre (BCC & Kinder) & Junior Primary (Prep & Year 1)

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Daphne leads the Early Learning Centre, which includes the Bialik Children's Centre for our youngest learners aged 0-3 and the Kindergartens for 3 and 4-year-olds. She also oversees Junior Primary, including Prep and Year 1. Daphne is responsible for all aspects of the educational program, manages staff, supervises daily operations, and liaises with families.

Karen Friede

Head of Primary School

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Karen is Head of the Primary School (Years 2 - 5) and has a passion for nurturing curiosity and open-mindedness in all, while fostering intellectual rigour in an inclusive and flexible environment.

David Simmelmann

Director of Business

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David is responsible for providing strategic advice and management of the school’s finances, property, facilities and security as well as overseeing the school’s risk management.

Rick McLeod

Activities Manager

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Rick oversees the administration of non-academic operations across all schools. This includes the school’s calendar, excursions and incursions, camps, co-curricular programs, The Shuk and management of the Gringlas Sports Centre, to name a few.

Dr Flossie Chua

Principal Investigator at Project Zero

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Flossie Chua is a Principal Investigator at Project Zero, and her work focuses on understanding how people think about and experience complex ideas and challenges in different contexts, and how we can nurture good thinking and practices that develop not just better thinkers but also learners engaged by a range of topics, relating them to both individual and social needs and aspirations. Her latest projects explore ways that (1) strategic and sustained engagement with artistic practice can create supportive conditions for individuals and communities to find personal and broader purpose in times of unprecedented uncertainty and challenge; (2) good ideas might be brought into action in the contexts of school leadership and student learning by understanding how entrenched beliefs create cognitive distortions and what we might do to avoid or correct them; and (3) catalyzing young people’s creative and civic capacities might prompt shifts in the way they see themselves in relation to others and in the way they apply creative impulses to civic challenges.


Flossie has worked with Art21 Educators to support K-12 teachers to bring contemporary art, artists, and themes into classroom teaching and learning, and broaden their curricular focus to include inquiry into contemporary issues and questions that demand cross-curricular knowledge and ways of thinking through contemporary art. She is also currently working with BroadBand Collaborative and OAcademy to design reflective artistry practices that support and empower musicians to play leading roles as artists in orchestras and changemakers in communities. Flossie holds an Ed.D from Harvard University, and is also an Instructor in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Dr Daniel Wilson

Principal Investigator at Project Zero

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Daniel Wilson is a Principal Investigator at Project Zero and Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). His current teaching and research explore the dynamics of collaboration and group learning, designing physical places that support learning, and adult learning and leadership in the workplace. He is a former Director of Project Zero (2014-2023) and Faculty Chair of “Learning Environments for Tomorrow”, a joint institute between HGSE and Harvard Graduate School of Design. Since joining Project Zero as a researcher in 1993, Daniel has participated in dozens of research projects and collaborated with educators in a variety of countries and cultural contexts.

Tiziana Filippini

Psychologist and Pedagogista

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Renowned Reggio Emilia Pedagogista, Psychologist and International Speaker

Tiziana Filippini is a psychologist and long-time collaborator with Reggio Children , Italy and Harvard University. She has influenced global education practice through research, professional development, and exhibitions including The Hundred Languages of Children and Making Thinking Visible.

From 1978 to 2015 she was a pedagogista in the Pedagogical Co-ordinating Team of the Istituzione of Preschools and Infant-toddler Centres of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, and after 2000 was made Responsible for its Complex Organisation Unit, in which role she particularly followed the areas of research, professional learning and development, educational progettazione/design, and documentation.

For several years she was responsible for the Centre for Documentation and Educational Research, Istituzione of Preschools and Infant-toddler Centres of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia.

Tiziana has authored articles, curated exhibitions, and continues to support Reggio Children through publishing, consulting, and professional learning initiatives worldwide.

She has also collaborated with Reggio Emilia’s municipal “Officina Educativa“ cross-school educational service in the role of pedagogical supervisor.

Tracey Ezard

Speaker, Author, Educator

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Tracey is widely recognised for her ‘Ferocious Warmth’ leadership philosophy and her work in fostering professional collaborative cultures. Her framework, The Buzz, has been instrumental in creating environments of trust, learning, and innovation across educational and organisational settings in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. She is a conference speaker, as well as trusted advisor to senior teams and schools.

With her Buzz Diagnostic on collaborative cultures engaging over 550 schools and more than 15,000 participants, Tracey has spent the past 19 years delivering leadership programs for education and system leaders across all education sectors in Australia and New Zealand, as well as working with federations in the UK and Asia.

Tracey was awarded the ACELVic Hedley Beare Educator of the Year (2022) and is a National Fellow of the Australian Council of Education Leaders (FACEL). She was also named in The Educators’ 2024 Hot List and received the Professional Speakers Association Breakthrough Speaker of the Year Award (2023). With a background spanning teaching, educational leadership, business, and project management, she brings a dynamic and strategic lens to leadership and cultural transformation.

As an author, Tracey has penned three books:

- Ferocious Warmth – School Leaders Who Inspire and Transform
Glue – The Stuff that Binds Us Together to do Extraordinary Work, a guide for leaders across sectors aiming to elevate their teams beyond convention
The Buzz – Creating a Thriving and Collaborative Staff Learning Culture, supporting education leaders in driving transformation in schools

Beyond her work in leadership and culture, Tracey serves as Board Chair of The Corner Store Network, a social enterprise dedicated to eradicating food poverty in Timor-Leste and Australia. Running her own speaking and consulting practice for 19 years, she continues to inspire leaders and teams to create thriving, high-performing cultures. Tracey is an ex-recorder player, Harley Davidson rider who also co-owned a bar and restaurant on a small island in Indonesia for a while, which considering an earthquake and a pandemic followed soon after buying it, may not have been the best investment. When she’s not at work, you’ll find Tracey out exploring the world, often on the back of that Harley motorbike, and enjoying time with her partner, two adult children and her dog.