Michelle has been associated with our approach to organisations since 2001. Michelle originally trained as a secondary English teacher in Western Australia in the early 1970s and later taught in a variety of government and non-government schools in Australia, the U.K., Turkey, Thailand and Papua New Guinea.
She has had wide experience in working with people from many nationalities and cultural backgrounds. In 1997, while teaching at Kormilda College in the Northern Territory of Australia, she participated in a ‘Working Together’ course and then led a team which used the Systems Leadership materials and models to create a challenging and ground-breaking student leadership program for both indigenous and non-indigenous students.
In 2001, Michelle stepped out of her teaching role to take up a position as the Director of the Visiting Schools program at the Prem Center for International Education, in Chiang Mai, Thailand. In her five years in this role, Michelle organized all aspects of educational trips to Thailand for thousands of students from around the world. Many of the schools requested that their students participate in Team Leadership/Team Membership courses as the core element of their northern Thai experience. Michelle presented these courses for students from all secondary grades from countries as diverse as Bangla Desh, Australia, Japan, China, Hong Kong, India, Singapore and Indonesia.
Her work has expanded to include Working Together courses for teachers. Michelle has found most teachers to be excellent at and rewarded by their vocation, but frequently stressed and distressed by the lack of clarity around authorities and accountabilities of roles in the school, the systems and structures in place and team and leadership processes. It is these areas in particular, as well as training for better social process skills, that interest Michelle.
In August 2006, Michelle became a full-time consultant, returning to the Prem Center in Thailand to run courses, as well as working with teachers and students in Bangkok, Hong Kong and other S.E Asian countries. Michelle has returned to Perth after an extended time of work in Asia and is actively using Systems Leadership across a range of clients.