Our board

Our visionary founder and Chair of our Board, Stephanie Alexander OAM, is joined by a skilled group of professionals who determine the strategic direction of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation.

 

Stephanie Alexander OAM

Stephanie is the author of thirteen books, including the Australian kitchen bible The Cook's Companion, and is a renowned chef and restaurateur. In 2009 she published The Kitchen Garden Companion, an inspirational family guide to growing and using edible crops. Her 35-year career has spanned books, words, food and young people, and she is now preoccupied with giving back wisdom and experience in meaningful ways. In practical terms this has meant establishing the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation as a means by which to convince policy makers that learning about food, how it grows, and the pleasure it can bring are vital to a healthy, happy society.

Paul Bangay

Paul Bangay is arguably Australia's preeminent garden designer. For over 25 years he has designed gardens all over Australia and overseas, including locations in New York, St Tropez, Positano, Jamaica, New Zealand and The Cook Islands. After huge success with his early 'Botanica' exhibitions, Paul's publishing career commenced, with his first book The Defined Garden followed successively by The Boxed Garden, The Balanced Garden, The Enchanted Garden and the latest title Paul Bangay's Garden Design Handbook. More books are planned and under way.
In 2001, Paul was awarded the Centenary Medal, for outstanding achievement within the Australian community at the commencement of the new century.

Ange Barry

Ange came to the Kitchen Garden Foundation as the first CEO, with a directive to grow the reach of the Kitchen Garden Program beyond the initial three school communities. Combined with her qualifications in Business Management, Ange’s experience includes management of community organisations including media and children’s services, corporate roles in regional management in the financial sector and owner of her own small business during her family years.

Carolyn Creswell

Carolyn is the company founder and CEO of Carman’s Fine Foods, a leading Australian gourmet food company that supplies major supermarket chains in Australia and around the world. She brings to the Foundation 18 years of experience in the food industry and a passion for wholesome, real food. She is a popular public speaker and also a board member of the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, where she pursues her interest in equality and human rights. Being a mother to four young children, Carolyn is passionate about educating children on the joy of real food and the pleasures of preparing and sharing good food.

Kate Doyle

Kate has been involved in the Healthcare Industry for over 15 years, predominantly in the area of sales and marketing of information technology for the hospital sector. During that time she managed and directed large-scale sales campaigns across the Asia Pacific region. This involved interaction with corporations, health services and government health departments. Kate has been a director of several companies, including Healthnet and iSOFT Pty Ltd. Kate brings to the Foundation enormous expertise in the areas of sales and fundraising, marketing and event management, and corporate governance. She is also passionate about food, the enjoyment it contributes to life and the opportunity it gives us to share with our families, friends and community.

Prue Gill

Prue is a long-time classroom teacher, recently retired from the secondary classroom and now teaching education at Monash University. She has taught in a variety of settings: government and private secondary schools, TAFE and the tertiary sector; and in many different types of classroom: discipline-based, inter-disciplinary, vertical age groupings and in team teaching settings. Prue has been involved at both policy and planning level in the design and implementation of VCE English, and was for many years an assessor of VCE English and Literature. She is a past president of the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English and a former member of the (then titled) Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Board. Prue has recently been in Uganda helping the teachers of a district primary school for orphaned and vulnerable children to integrate their permaculture garden into the primary school curriculum.

Marie Kick

After teaching for 15 years, mainly in the bayside suburbs of Melbourne, Marie Kick became involved in professional development for colleagues. Marie trained as an early literacy tutor for the ELIC (Early Literacy In-service Course) and then as a continuing literacy tutor for the Canberra Literacy Program. Marie has worked as a tutor-trainer for the ELIC program and fostered the networking of teachers across her region. She also has a particular interest in educating for a sustainable environment and promoting an inquiry approach to learning through an integrated curriculum. Marie also has worked as a writer for the Australian Children's Television Foundation and developed the teacher guide for the Lift-Off series called Lift-Off to the Environment.
Marie is currently Principal of Southmoor Primary School, which has been a Kitchen Garden School since 2007. Over the last ten years the school has developed extensive outdoor ‘learnscapes' (landscapes designed for learning) with organic vegetable, fruit and herb gardens, water tanks, a windmill, solar power, hydroponics, yabbies and aquaculture farming, ensuring that learning at Southmoor PS extends well beyond the four classroom walls.

Helen Murray

Helen is a former teacher and school social worker who was employed by the Victorian Education Department before taking a position as a lecturer in the School of Social Work at the University of Melbourne. In 1997 she relocated to the USA with her husband, and for eight years lived in up-state New York where she was Director of the Syracuse University Internship Program. Her responsibilities included arranging internships for students across the USA, and consulting with the internship programs in the University’s centres in Europe and Hong Kong. She is currently employed as the Community Wellbeing Program Manager with the Ian Potter Foundation in Melbourne. She is a strong believer in the importance of intervening early in a child’s life to develop desirable attitudes and behaviours, and is very keen to see the Foundation’s educational program introduced into all Australian primary schools.

Natalie O'Brien

Natalie is the CEO of Melbourne Food & Wine. She spent seven years at Tourism Victoria working in marketing of hallmark events, including the Melbourne Festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. Prior to this she spent five years working with the Cultural Development Department of the City of Melbourne. Currently Natalie sits on the Victorian Winery Tourism Council.

Lance Stephenson

Lance is a fellowship member of CPA Australia (Management Accounting). His forty-year career has spanned almost two decades in senior financial roles for not-for-profit organisations, followed by two decades in managing sales and marketing activities within the corporate sector. Lance is very enthusiastic about the way in which young children have responded to the Kitchen Garden Program, particularly the way in which they have embraced the preparation of their own meals and the sharing of this food with friends. His involvement in the Foundation has been motivated by a desire to see it grow into a financially robust organisation, able to influence the social eating interests of a whole new generation of adults.