Vivienne was arts advisor to former NSW Premiers Carr and Rees, and then speechwriter and senior adviser to Anthony Albanese during the Gillard and Rudd governments. She grew up in Cooma in the Snowy Mountains and began her career in Canberra as a television newsreader and broadcast journalist.  

 Vivienne has Masters degree in Urban Policy and Strategy from the University of New South Wales, and a Bachelor of Arts from the Australian National University. She is Principal of the urban strategy company Metropolis and a Professional Fellow at the School of Built Environment, University of Technology Sydney. 

 She has been a director of numerous companies including the Adelaide Film Festival, the South Australian Film Corporation, and the Centennial and Moore Park Trust. In addition to her role as Chair of WestWords, she is currently director of the Women’s Housing Company, the Australian Haydn Ensemble, and the King’s Foundation Australia.  

 Growing up in the bush, books were for Vivienne a lifeline into other worlds. She sees literacy as a great equaliser, creating opportunities and choices about the future. 

Libby is author of forty titles for children and young adults. Her work has won many national literary awards and is widely published internationally.

She is formerly Chair of the Australian Society of Authors, Chair of the Literature and History Committee of ArtsNSW, a Director of the Copyright Agency and recently stepped down as a Director of the Public Education Foundation.

Brett is a Senior Financial Executive with 40+ years’ experience in the banking and finance industry. His core capabilities are in the field of risk management and compliance.  He has led successful risk management teams across credit risk, operational risk, and regulatory compliance. Brett holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Deakin University).

Lucy Brotherton is a Community Capacity Building Officer – Social Investment at the City of Parramatta. In her role in Council, Lucy implements and facilitates a range of social investment activities to happen in the Parramatta Local Government Area. These activities use innovative approaches to create positive and sustainable social change in the community. Examples include supporting social enterprise, engaging the business and community sectors in developing shared value partnerships, encouraging the use of co-design approaches to complex problem solving and providing opportunities for social projects to pitch their ideas and raise funds through crowdfunding.

Lucy has extensive experience in State Government engaged in policy work on social issues such as alcohol-related violence and responsible gambling. She has worked within policy development, project management and strategic planning.

Lucy has also been active in local Parents and Citizens Associations (P&Cs), having been president of Northmead Public School P&C. She also independently founded the Parramatta P&C Executive Networking and Capacity Building program, bringing together the executives of local primary school P&Cs to talk about issues and make connections between these groups. Lucy and other volunteers with personal experience in P&Cs run and present at the program events.

Brian has worked in all facets of general publishing since 1969 from sales and marketing to editorial and distribution. He left the corporate world of publishing in 1996 and established The Manuscript Appraisal Agency which he operated for 17 years. 

His literary agency, The Authors’ Agent, has developed a strong list of clients writing and illustrating children’s books and has a very strong and diverse family of SCWBI members.

Jacqueline has 15 years of K-12 teaching experience in Australia, the United Kingdom, and India. She began her career as an elementary school teacher teaching a range of grades and specializing in ESL and literacy development. Jacqueline has written and edited literacy materials for inclusion in professional development packages and curriculum documents for Australian Public Schools in NSW.

Jacqueline has been a lecturer at the University of California, Irvine and at the University of California, Los Angeles and was involved in both, curriculum and staff development in the U.S., working on a variety of interdisciplinary language and literacy projects. Jacqueline was involved in training and scoring performance assessments for Californian Teachers and working on large-scale research projects such as Literacy in the History Classroom.

Jacqueline also had a continuing role as a literacy consultant for the New York City Public Schools. She is currently Senior Lecturer in English/Literacy/ESL Curriculum and Pedagogy, K-6. Primary Education in the School of Education at Western Sydney University.

Laura Harris was born and bred in Sydney. Her family on her father’s side  were very early Greek migrants to Sydney, arriving in the early 1900’s. Her father was born in Sydney and her mother migrated from Greece in 1960.  Laura studied English Literature and History at University, specialising in Archaeology and Primary Sources. She completed a bachelor’s in education and taught High School for approximately six months before landing an Editorial Traineeship at the prestigious NSW School Magazine.  

After five years there Laura moved to HarperCollins Publishers as a Senior Editor and in 1995 became Publisher, Adult and Children’s books. 

She joined Penguin Books Australia in 1999 as Publisher, Books for Children and Young Adults and became Publishing Director in 2003 and joined the Penguin Board that year as well.  In March 2016, she was appointed Publishing Director at Penguin Random House Australia where she worked until 2023. 

In 2000 she was appointed to the Board of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation where she served until January 2024. 

In 2023, Laura celebrated 35 years in the book publishing and was a recipient of the George Robertson Award for distinguished and long service to the Australian Publishing industry. She launched Laura Harris Publishing in 2024. 

Daniel Wakim is a criminal defence lawyer with heart, a strong believer in human rights and dignity for the individual and has been described by clients and colleagues alike as a fearsome advocate. 

Daniel was admitted in 2012 before the Supreme Court of New South Wales and the High Court of Australia and in 2018, admitted as a Barrister and Solicitor before the High Court of New Zealand. He has appeared in all jurisdictions across the Australian eastern seaboard including the High Court of Australia. His practice also extends internationally having appeared before the Supreme Court of New Zealand.