This week we say goodbye to Susan Anderson after five years leading Gowrie Victoria as our CEO. Susan will be taking up a new leadership role within the social impact sector.
Susan Joined during COVID lockdowns and became quickly clear her unique style of empathy and warmth really helped Gowrie navigate this complex and challenging period with our teams, children and families. Susan ensured we kept people engaged, kept staff paid, and we focused on people’s wellbeing.
Susan is known internally for her videos on Ngarn ga (our intranet) and for walking the floor talking to anyone and everyone. She’s the first to acknowledges others’ successes, she’s allowed teams to flourish by instilling trust in others to run their own show. No wonder there’s very high employee engagement with 75% saying that Gowrie is a truly great place to work.
Externally Susan has been the face of Gowrie to the sector, creating new partnerships and advocating for quality and for those things that lead to better outcomes for children. She’s advocated for our people including the recent multi-employer agreement means sustainable funded wages for educators and teachers and she has ensured that Gowrie teachers and educators will see their new wages in their bank accounts by Christmas.
Over the last five years Gowrie has grown with two new services and a 40% increase in turnover. Construction is also almost complete on four new rooms for early 2025 providing 110 more places at Carlton North and Broadmeadows. Our Adult Learning programs providing training, coaching and mentoring to the wider sector has more than doubled, supporting 377 services this last year.
Gowrie is better at measuring and reporting progress, from engagement surveys to observations to our pedagogy framework that enables us to better articulate and demonstrate outcomes. All Gowrie services are rated as Exceeding, almost across all seven areas.
Thank you to Susan for the positive impact you’ve made on Gowrie, for your care and compassion and as our advocate to the sector. Because of this Gowrie Victoria has continued to have a real positive impact on many more children, families and educators.
