2019 HCV Non-Profit Fellowship recipients

The Harvard Club of Victoria is delighted to announce 2019 HCV Non-Profit Fellowship recipients:
 

Elizabeth Drozd, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Multicultural Community Services (AMCS)

For the last 27 years, Elizabeth has been working in the community services sector and local government in Victoria. Currently she is the Chief Executive Officer of Australian Multicultural Community Services (AMCS), Board Director of Care Connect, a Chairperson of the Rotary Club of Footscray foundation and a Committee Member of Working Heritage Victoria.  She was a Victorian Multicultural Commissioner from 2008-15. One of her recent achievements is the establishment of a Multicultural Leadership Course that is available to community leaders through AMCS.  

The Australian Multicultural Community Services has recently celebrated 35 years of service to culturally and linguistically diverse communities (CALD) in Victoria, Australia.  Current AMCS services include:

  • a range of practical support services to ethnic seniors who live in their own homes;
  • assisting migrants and refugees secure employment;
  • adult, community and further education classes;
  • various community engagement and capacity building projects and community research;
  • a mentoring service to small and emerging CALD organisations;
  • provision of physical activity courses to ethnic seniors through a Sports Australia grant,

Elizabeth looks forward to immersing herself in the highly stimulating and sharing SPNM environment.  She is keen to workshop with fellow CEOs on her strategic challenge:

“ How can we ensure meaningful ageing for ethnic seniors who live in mainstream Australia?” 
 
Elizabeth hopes to return with a range of different strategic perspectives including a draft plan to maximise and measure social impact and reduce ageism through her leadership role at AMCS, and her various community involvements.  The SPNM scholarship by the Harvard Club of Victoria will provide immediate and long-term benefits for AMCS including development of strategies to expand the organisation’s existing social entrepreneurship activities, increased innovation, sustainability and effectiveness.  

Melodie Potts Rosevear, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Teach for Australia

Melodie has a deep, personal commitment to helping break the cycle of disadvantage.

Born and raised in rural Appalachia, the first in family to attend university, Melodie worked across public and private sectors with the Boston Consulting Group in America, before immigrating to Australia in 2004 to work in communities across Cape York as a founding staff member of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership. Drawing on these experiences, she developed the vision and business plan for Teach For Australia while completing her Master of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. 

Teach For Australia recruits high achieving graduates and career changers into teaching, and inspires, connects and empowers them to take a lifetime of action towards educational equity. Now in its 10th year, TFA has over 1000 participants working in classrooms, schools, and the broader system, all dedicated to realising an Australia where all children, regardless of background, can attain an excellent education. 

Melodie was a Morehead Scholar and earned a Bachelor of Economics and Public Policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has a Master of Public Policy with highest distinction from Harvard. In 2012, she received the Emerging Global Leader award from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, recognising an alumnus under 40 leading change and generating answers to challenging public problems. In 2014, she was named by The Australian Financial Review as one of 100 Women of Influence, in recognition of her contribution to tackling educational inequity in Australia. She is a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and serves on numerous advisory boards of TFA Alumni-led initiatives in education. 

The Harvard Club of Victoria Scholarship will enable Melodie to reorient her leadership sights towards TFA’s next strategy horizon, considering ways to increase impact in and on the system beyond simply scaling up the organisation. She is particularly interested in the course’s insights into effective partnerships and change management. She also plans to utilise the study tour to explore system change models with a couple of leading think tanks and system change and collective leadership approaches within Teach For America, a sister program of Teach For Australia. Melodie also believes the course and study tour will help her in the medium term, as she prepares for succession at Teach For Australia. 


Edward Tudor, founding Executive Director, Melbourne Indigenous Transition School

Edward Tudor is the founding Executive Director of the Melbourne Indigenous Transition School (MITS).  He holds a combined Bachelor of Laws (Hons) and Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne and prior to MITS worked as a mergers and acquisitions lawyers with King & Wood Mallesons.
 
MITS is a residential transition school for Indigenous students from remote Top End and regional Victorian communities. Each year, 22 boys and girls at Year 7 come to MITS for one year.  It enables students who – without MITS – would not be able to make the challenging step directly from their remote or regional home into a Melbourne school. MITS’s classrooms are located inside the Richmond Football Club, and our boarding house is on Richmond Hill. 
 
After a year of accelerated academic learning, tailored wellbeing support, and orientation to life in Melbourne, MITS’s students move onto scholarships at some of Melbourne’s best Independent and Government schools, where they continue to be supported by MITS’s Pathways Program.
 
Edward said of the opportunity to attend SPNM, “I am thrilled to have received the Harvard Club of Victoria Non-profit Fellowship.  This opportunity comes at an ideal time for MITS as we prepare to scale our program for greater impact following two recent Commonwealth Government capital grants.  I am excited to apply the learnings from SPNM to benefit more MITS students, so that they can go on to lead lives full of choice.”