Podcast transcript: EY Change Happens Podcast – Linda Brown

Jenelle: Hi. I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Season 3 of the Change Happens podcast, conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons learned along the way. Today I’m joined by Linda Brown, the president and CEO of Torrens University. Now there’s a good chance you haven’t heard of Torrens University. In fact, a recent article in the Australian Financial Review said as much, saying “Torrens University is not a household name in Australia, but the American-owned institution has been quietly growing at a speed that rocket scientists might find difficult to explain”. Yep, this private for-profit university, is Australia’s fastest growing university. The story of Torrens is a fascinating one and it’s impossible to decouple the success of that from Linda Brown herself, who has that inimitable Scottish charm and charisma, coupled with fierce passion and boundless energy and a fearlessness in disrupting the status quo to drive amazing outcomes, not just of students but societies more broadly. She’s a true change maker of the very best kind. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Linda Brown. Hi Linda! Thank you for joining me today.

Linda: It’s a pleasure. Thank you.

Jenelle: Very excited for the conversation. Now, I want to start if I could just if you could help the audience understand a bit a bout you, your personal story. How would you describe your formative years?

Linda: Oh wow. So, people who are listening will have worked out – they would be trying to work out if I’m Irish or Scottish or sometimes even Canadian. So it’s a Scottish accent although now I’m a Scottish Aussie, which I’m really, really proud of.

Jenelle: The Scottish is coming loud and proud, I reckon. 

Linda: I grew in a tiny little village in Scotland in Perthshire where, when I was born, genuinely I was the only child in the village. So it had maybe at that time 300, 500 people in it. It’s now an enormous village. You know it’s maybe now got 5,000 people in it. So still a very small village. So I went to the little village school and in my class in Year 7 there was 8 of us, which was really small, personalised learning. Then I kind of went through traditional schooling and got to the point where I was first in family to go to university and picked the university based on what was the furthest away from home, not what I really wanted to do. I think I applied for everything from PE teaching to science and engineering to public policy and economics, which was where I ended up, at real redbrick, you know, not a sandstone university, called Paisley Tech. So I’m very – a good Scottish term is “jammy”, you know, I always land on my feet. It’s not – I wish I could tell you I had planned this whole thing out, but I haven’t in any shape or form. When I met who’s still my husband now 35 years later we were looking for a mortgage when I left uni, not knowing what I was going to do, and Abbey National, who we went for the mortgage with offered me a job as a graduate trainee. So I worked with them. So, financial services. Then they did some work with Fidelity so I did some future stock broking and then the education bug hit really. So that was the start of the journey and the early formative years in a small village in Scotland.

Jenelle: You mentioned the education bug was where you got the first education bug. Tell me about that. What piqued your interest?

Linda: That was really interesting. So the first – I’d done my undergrad degree and kind of cobbled through that. I was never an A grade student. I just did what I had to do while I was working on the side or running a busines or doing whatever. So I did that. But then when I went to do my Masters, at that time it was my MBA, I went to Strathclyde Uni and I wanted to learn in the evening because I was working. And at that time I was working for Fidelity and I probably was running nearly a billion pounds portfolio of futures, you know, as part of my Fidelity portfolio. But interestingly the person who was teaching me economics or finance in that MBA had never worked. So here they were not contextualising it to the business world. They were talking about dry economics and Keynesian theory and all this and to be honest at that time, Jenelle, I thought I can actually do this a little bit better. And I was pregnant with Cameron, my first child, and I took myself off to do a Post Graduate Certificate of Education to become a teacher, because that was the first “Aha” moment for me about contextualising learning, you know? And the fact that it’s easier -and we find this throughout my career - it’s easier to teach a professional or somebody who’s amazing at their craft to teach than it is to teach a professional teacher about what’s going on in industry. So that’s kind of always stuck with me all the way through. And we have, you know, 70% of the academics who work for me now are “pracademics”. They work as well as teach and that’s been a really important tenet to what I believe in education.

Jenelle: I have never heard that term, “pracademics” but I’ll be using that. I really like that. Now, you’ve done a lot of things in your career. You’ve made a range of important choices about who you’re going to work with. Is there an overarching purpose or mission that has drive you or at least informed those choices that you’ve made?

Linda: I think there’s two things. I think the first blessing, and I say this all the time and I’m, you know, I’m a feminist. I’m really into female diversity. But I have to say thank you to my family and my husband because Robert worked in mining and he was – he calls himself an “industrial prostitute” so, you know, he was part of the Compaq sale to Hewlett Packard, ICL to Fujitsu, you know, Nortel. And he would go in and sort companies out and then move on. And for me never having the responsibility of having to pub bread on the table has been a considerable blessing because it meant that I had choice. And that’s all I want everybody to have. But it also meant that I could be incredibly brave. And there’s this amazing research that’s been done. It came out originally out of Exeter University and everybody talks about women and the glass ceiling but there’s this research that shows women are also involved in a glass cliff. And if you think about most of the jobs where women get promoted to, you know, significant CEO roles it’s usually where there’s masses of risk and it’s an either win or lose situation. And I’ve always been involved in those kind of situations because I was courageous and I was given the opportunity to be courageous. So for me, I could really pick and chose where I wanted to work and I think from that point of view I’m blessed.

Jenelle: I know you came from a public education background. Tell me, how did you find yourself then connected with Torrens?

Linda: Oh, for me it was one of the hardest decisions I had to make in my life. If you look through my career it’s always been about changing or disrupting educational systems or going in and fixing them once they’ve been disrupted but the ecosystem hadn’t been put in to make the change. So for me when I came to Australia I was brought into Australia by the Public Service. I was brought in by Queensland Government to make TAFE, which is technical and further education, “sexy”, because it’s not incredibly sexy in Australia and it’s very much seen as the kind of little brother to universities. If you can’t go to university you go to TAFE and for me that’s just not acceptable. They’re two different things and they’re equal, they’re just different. So I was brought in to do that. I stayed with them for five years, it was amazing. And then after that went to Swinburne because, again, there was a bit of disruption going on in the market. There was a thing called the Bradley Review which just was common sense to me where they were looking at schools, colleges and universities and trying to get better connection between the three so that people didn’t feel that 29% at that time were going back to TAFE from universities to get skills to get a job. Isn’t that crazy? They were having to do a Diploma after a degree to get a job. It was just crazy to me. So I went to Swinburne and worked with an amazing guy down there, Ian Young, who ended up being the Vice Chancellor at ANU, and we did a lot of work around maximising that duel sector advantage. And at that time that team created a thing called Swinburne Online which was a partnership with Seek with Andrew Bassat where they were actually looking at a more commercial way to put out education to people who were working that was much more at a better price point and people could travel through their education journey at their own pace. So we were involved in that and then at that time -universities are interesting things. Universities are, in Australia, are run by Vice Chancellors, a phenomenal group of people, but usually academics. And there’s this great kind of expectation that when a Vice Chancellor changes the strategy changes. So you can have a university that is maybe a working man’s university, so it’s quite practical, or you can have a university that’s a research-intensive university, and then when the new Vice Chancellor comes in they kind of pull a new strategy out of the drawer and try to change the whole purpose of the university. So for me we had a new Vice Chancellor and at that time I thought no, this isn’t now what I wanted to be involved in so I was going to leave. And at that time Seek came to me and asked me if I would run a group of colleges called “Think Education” and sell them to a company called Laureate, which was the biggest higher education provider in the world. So I did that but you don’t put somebody like me into run $80 million dollars’ worth of colleges. So when I went in I said I’m happy to do it but I knew that they were trying to get a licence to create a brand new university, the first privately funded one ever in Australia, and I said I’ll come and do it as long as I get to build a brand new university from scratch. So I really struggled with that because, for me, I believe education is a human right. I believe everybody should - like bread, water, air – education should be available for everybody. And for me I struggled with the private nature of that but my son and my daughter sat me down and they said, mum – and it was really interesting because at that time I’d applied for the Director General job in Queensland to go back into the top job in Queensland where I believed I could change the whole structure from within the public sector, you know, a bit naively. You can usually do that until you get the front of the newspaper and then they pull you in. So my daughter and my son and my now Chancellor, Jim Varghese, counselled me and said if you can do this and build a brand new university, you’re going to create the leaders of the future that will then go on and be the change makers to really drive significant change. You’ve tried to do it from within, and I always try to do it from within, even now I’m trying to agitate within the system. But from my point of view we have driven more change as being as showing people how to do it rather than talking about it or fighting against the system that already exists.

Jenelle: It’s really interesting listening to that because if I think back to the earlier question I asked about whether or not there’s been a common thread that’s driven your choices, to me listening to that it feels like you’re purpose is really figuring out where you can effect the greatest amount of change as your overarching kind of beacon for informing your choices. Does that sort of resonate for you?

Linda: I think 100% and it’s not – it’s changed for a particular impact. So for me it’s not the smart kids in and smarts kids out change. That change can happen some place else and other people are really, really good at that. For me it’s about affordability, return on investment, how does somebody who is aspiring to be educated to be honest really involved in the process that they understand that they are going to get what they want. Which might not equate on a league table for our university status but it really is, I suppose, their reward is in the induvial in the employability, in what industry gets. So, productivity and social change through economic mobility is a thing that really drives me but not for a few. It really is – I want open – I want everybody to have the opportunity at the lowest possible price and that, I suppose, is a crazy thing to say as a CEO, but I believe if we do that we open up the system and competition’s great, you know?

Jenelle: Love that! You’ve been the CEO of Torrens for – since it’s inception here. It’s become the fastest growing university in Australia. Congratulations by the way!

Linda: Thank you.

Jenelle: In your mind what’s been the reason for that success? Or reasons?

Linda: I mean for me it’s always about people, you know? So it’s always about the team and making sure that we have a team that are focussed on the outcome and really get the purpose, do you know? We’re a B-Corp. That brings with it it’s own responsibilities of balancing what we call the beautiful and the business and making sure that we create a sustainable business. I think the other thing is I think we were very clever at looking for a gap in the market. We don’t compete with the other 42 universities that are in Australia. We looked for a very distinct part of the market that we’re maybe a little bit more transactional in education. They wanted to come in, they wanted to pick the subjects they wanted to do, not the subjects that they were given. They wanted to do it 24-7, if they wanted to be creative at 2 o’clock in the morning we make that happen. So for me we were very student-centric and for us it was about employability, employability, employability. And that was really before employability became sexy in universities because that was seen as a secondary thing. Universities were there about knowledge, about wisdom, about research, they weren’t necessarily aligned to employability. So we filled that gap and I think people were crying out for that and we just – we hit it at the right time I think.

Jenelle: It’s an interesting point around become student-centric and taking that focus and power away in some ways from the teaching, the teachers or the providers. I mean that can be a very confronting thing in a landscape where that’s kind of been the model for a very, very long time. Where have you felt the rub of that? Maybe outside of your own university other players that you’re talking to, do you feel that resistance to shifting that focus to the students - giving the power, the voice, the platform to the student rather than holding that where it’s traditionally been held?

Linda: Yeah, a lot. And I think the biggest place to look at that is around content. You know, universities previously – and I have loved public universities. So, you know, this isn’t a bag public universities and I’m a private – we’re just different. We do things differently. So for me in universities you still have the academic who owns the IP for the content. When they basically do that lecture or they go into that situation, you know, it’s a very personal situation. You know, you know, you would think back to your university days and you had lecturers who were amazing and you’ll remember them forever, you had some who weren’t too hot and there seemed to be no equity in that or no check in that. We don’t do that. The content is all developed centrally so that if you’re studying in Brisbane or Adelaide or Sri Lanka or Colombia with us you’re getting the same content. Now, that doesn’t take away the power from the academic. A good academic will then contextualise that, tell stories, bring flavour and colour to that. But what that allows us to ensure is that everybody gets the same quality and they get the same information and the same assessment. So for me that’s critical if you’re trying to scale up and have a really big impact and try to keep the costs down. So that was really interesting because when we started to recruit – it was fun, I tell you! So when we started to recruit for the new university there was an incredible amount of courageousness in there and trust in there for the people who jumped on board with us at the start. You know what universities are like – you’ve got tenure, you’ve got protection, you’re unionised.

Jenelle: Oh, God yeah!

Linda: You know, it’s a very, very structured employment environment. You know how many – how big an office you get depending on what your title is. You know, it’s very, very staid in the way that - 

Jenelle: That’s right. It’s disrupted everything that people hold dear!

Linda: Yeah, absolutely. So but interestingly we got incredible amount of Emeritus Professors. So that’s the highest kind of level that you can get to in your academic career. It’s watch my career all the way through, disrupting and building and disrupting and building. But they wanted to come and play. They wanted – they were frustrated with the current system and they were at a point in their career almost like what I’m saying with Robert, do you know what I mean? That I could go in and do something disruptive? They were at that point in their career where they could have fun and go and do things that they always wanted or talked about happening. So we got an incredible amount of high-end Emeritus Professors joining us as the start of this journey. We got an incredible amount of young, edgy pracademics who were in industry, they weren’t getting the talent they wanted so they wanted to do something to change that. What we didn’t get was the kind of middle. We didn’t get the career academics because for them we don’t give everybody two days for research or we don’t – you know what I mean? We look at industry connection, research and teaching and if you’re excellent at any one of these you can become a professor in our organisation. It’s not just all about research. So some people couldn’t fit into that thought process where it’s about your own accountability, not about tenure. So it was really interesting at the start attracting talent because we got all the disruptors. So can you imagine - you’re trying to create a brand new university that the regulators are happy with, that you look like every other university because there’s this real chip on your shoulder about they could come in and hurt the system, and here we are with a basket full of crazy disruptors that were amazing teachers and researchers and industry connectors? So we had to kind of balance that out and we did that through the help of our board.

Jenelle: You know, I love listening to that because it’s almost like I’ve got this visual of the fringe-dwellers, the disruptors on the edge, the, you know, the pracademics on the side, the people who are frustrated, missed the amorphous middle bit and then using words like they wanted to come play it sort of – there’s something very liberating about that and unruly and chaotic but awesome about what you’re then playing with and within the bounds, still working within the boundaries so, you know, for a period of time and then gently nudging and pushing on those. So, it’s a great visual. Actually, there’s one quote that I loved I read from a Deputy Vice Chancellor from the University of Canterbury and the question that we asked around the future of universities, the future of teaching and he said the future for universities is to both stream like Spotify and offer experiential learning like a Crowded House concert.

Linda: I love that!

Jenelle: Which sort of had quite the visual thing for me. I wondered what your take on that vision is and how do you see the future of education?

Linda: I think for me it’s about the head, the hand and the heart, you know? And it’s like the head is the knowledge and the wisdom and that’s a really important part of it and the accreditation, the proof that you’ve got that I think is still important. But for me the hand, being able to apply that. You know, our job now is not to teach content – I still want people to teach content if it’s doctors or lawyers or whatever but genuinely most people don’t look at what type of degree somebody has got now. It’s really about teaching people how to learn and how to take the information that they can access and actually take that information and apply it in a way that has purpose and impact. And some people still look at education as a time-based thing. You know, you’ve got to do so many hours to become good at X. Well that’s just rubbish, you know what I mean? So if you’re really going to be student-centric it’s really damn hard. You’ve got to be so flexible so that people can pick and chose and move up and move down and the thing I love about the Spotify idea, there’s still a position that’s required – we call them success coaches – to help people curate, do you know what I mean? Because you could choose your own journey -

Jenelle: Yes, I do. It’s overwhelming otherwise.

Linda: Yeah, you choose your own journey and you could end up with nothing that cohesively goes together to get you to your purpose. So for us we use Gallup StrengthFinders so that people could talk about their strengths and have that language that industry uses and we have a success coach for each student who doesn’t teach, they literally curate. They look at what the student wants at the end and helps them get there, you know what I mean? So we don’t say to them if you’re dreaming of being a film producer, put that dream away, do this course in film animation and then at the end of your course we will pull your dream back out of the cupboard and then we’ll help you get a job. We don’t do that. In parallel with the student all the way through we’re making sure they can earn while they learn in a film lot and get paid for it rather than doing free internships. We look at the programme and curate the programme for the so they could do psychology with a business qualification with some design qualifications so it really is personalised learning but not chaotic personalised learning that you don’t end up with something that the market values, yeah? If that makes sense?

Jenelle: It does. And actually there’s just a beautiful circling of the story there, you know, you were in a classroom of eight people growing up and you’ve had the most personalised experience and then you’ve gone to this massive world with unlimited content and you’re still working to create that kind of very intimate, personalised learning experience. I think just listening to your story I can see those people sitting tougher. It’s – I live it and I do think the idea of a success coach who curates that for each student is fantastic because it is absolutely overwhelming. I find myself just getting buried down paths of content or whatever, social media content, like it’s great stuff but you can spend hours going and, you know, navigating that and not knowing really where you’re going to end up. So I think it’s a really important role. 

Linda: Yeah, it’s good. It’s working well.

Jenelle: I bet it is. I’ll bet it is. I want to turn to on a leadership front, Linda, you know when I think about, and we’re obviously still coming through COVID, what was it like for you to be leading the university during COVID given how deeply and broadly higher education was disrupted by the pandemic? Do you remember those early days of that time and the kinds of decisions that you had to make? 

Linda: Yeah. And I mean to be honest it still is. I mean, technical terms it was kind of scary as hell because you knew as a new university even more, these people trusted us. They brought their career to us, which was a courageous decision, you know, to move away from traditional universities, come and work for us, brand new, no reputation, proprietary owned through at that time Laureate. You know, I understood how important a decision that was for people. So I felt a great sense of responsibility to the 2,000 staff we had. And then to the 20,000 students. You know, we had half of them were international, half of them were domestic although I believe every student is an international student so don’t come to our university if you don’t want to be in a class with 10 different nationalities, go somewhere else, you know, because we’re a global university and that’s what we believe in, is global citizenship. So for me the responsibility of that was enormous and right from the start I mean, you know, I made the decision that we would keep people working and we would keep students learning. And that was the captains call, you know? And for me that was critical because we said we will do everything we possibly can to keep you working and keep you safe. Yeah, so immediately we moved off campuses and we will keep the students learning even if they can’t get out of their own country or they can’t afford it. And then the decisions came from that. So for me it was that call that then shaped the phenomenal growth and care and wellness that was created by the community and the collaboration. The other thing that we agreed at that time was this isn’t a time just to look after ourselves. We will open everything up. We will, you know, give everybody in Australia our short courses for free. I think 120,000 people engaged with us during that time because we knew mental health was important. We worked with Beyond Blue to put a massive open online course out which was free explaining what to look for in mental health. So we did some really amazing community collaborative projects that I think really cemented our be-good ethos and really showed that we were walking the talk. But it all came down to that captain’s call which was we will protect you, we’ll keep you working and we will keep students learning and that was without a dollar from the Government. We didn’t take any of the Government money. So I’m super proud. Super proud of my team.

Jenelle: As you should be because you didn’t – obviously you didn’t just survive you thrived.

Linda: Yeah. And if you think about the environment we were in 25,000 people got paid off in higher education during that period sadly. For us we thrived because – and I’ll give you a prime example of that. You know, we were – we’d just been bought. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But I mean we were bought during COVID for just short of a billion dollars. I mean, who buys a university during COVID at the other side of the world when you can’t get there? We had 40 people bidding for us. It was phenomenal, right? And we sold it during COVID and SEI had the trust in us and our team to buy it during COVID. So for me to have a new owner and say actually we’re not going to pay people off. We’re going to protect everybody and we’re going to protect our students, they had an incredible amount of trust in us. And for me I’ll give you an example. So we also take a responsibility seriously so we had a number that we had to hit, significant number, of a contribution that we had to hit in the first year around the sale – which we exceeded by the way – and that had a 28% growth in it. We didn’t know COVID was going to happen and we were short. You know, we were getting to August and we were short. It didn’t look like we were going to hit our contribution number or EBITDA number. And remember we’re non-unionised. So we, as only non-unionised university in Australia, so we went out to staff and said look guys, there’s three or four ways we can do this. I’ve made a promise that I want to keep but you need to help me. So what was happening during COVID and I’m sure you saw it, Jenelle, in other businesses was people were saving their holidays because they didn’t want to take a holiday at home. I mean, who would want to do that? So our holiday liability was up by 40% and we thought we need to get this down because we had it accrual and it was on our balance sheet. So we went out to 2,000 staff and said we can’t force your but we’re asking you, can you take 8 days of your leave between now and the end of the year because that will help me fulfill the promise and we will protect all of our staff. Ninety-four percent of the staff did it voluntarily. That for me was like a warm and fuzzy moment, we’re doing something right.

Jenelle: You know, as I listen to you, Linda, I hear these incredible moments where people have taken a bit of a leap of faith in you and the vision. You know, whether it’s to leave the traditional universities to join and come play or whether it’s to acquire a business in a time that perhaps on paper makes absolutely no sense, or whether it’s to take leave into a different room in their house, you know, that period – you seem to be able to instil this unbelievable level of trust. Or people have this level of trust and faith in you. What can you tell me about how you’ve done that? How have you managed to earn that or even, I guess, lure people to it before you’ve been able to earn it afterwards. I’m so interested in these moments that have happened.

Linda: I think there’s two things. The first thing is the best talent I’ve got is picking phenomenal people, right? So for me, if you look at the team, they are exceptional, right? Exceptional! They’ve got a – we’ve got a common purpose but there is a diversity. I’ve probably got the most diverse team in education and I know I have because Bill Clinton came to open the university for me in Adelaide and when he did it he said to me Linda, I have never seen such a diverse group in a university ever. So that was a beautiful Aha moment for me. But I think picking the team and also getting the hell out of the way so that they can block them and they’re responsible. And to be honest the other one is being really honest when you screw up. And I have screwed up so many times it’s unbelievable. But I think one of the things that I am is honest and, you know, one of the – I was a dreadful leader seven years ago. Dreadful, Jenelle. Honestly, I went through a horrible - 

Jenelle: You?

Linda: Yeah, I went through a horrible stage when I first became the CEO of the university that, you know, that wonderful female thing about they’re going to find out I’m not as smart as they think I am so therefore you think you’ve got to do everything yourself.

Jenelle: Oh, God yeah, that’s just ???

Linda: It’s awful, isn’t it? Like and I did that for like two years.

Jenelle: Yeah, Imposter syndrome.

Linda: It was horrible. And because I was so intent on what this university should look like I was down in the dirt and I was getting micromanaging and the worst mistake I ever made in my life was I sub-contracted out my people. I had this amazing HR person who came into the organisation and said I’ll deal with the people stuff, Linda, you don’t need to worry about that, you worry about the other stuff. My God it was horrendous. I think on that – what is that thing that’s on the – you can “glass door” – is it glass door it’s called where you – 

Jenelle: Yes, glass door, the rating as well.

Linda: I think I was about minus four – I wasn’t but it felt like I was about minus four.

Jenelle: I think you were two-star by the way but it was still, yeah, I understand.

Linda: It was bad. It was appalling. And then I had a kind of, you know, “come to Jesus” moment where I went I have to change. If I don’t change this organisation is not going to flourish and grow. I either need to change or get out of the way. And with a lot of help, a lot of support, a lot of coaching, my team being super courageous and saying this is what drives us crazy, this is where you’re good, get out of the road, I had an epiphany really about I could actually do more good being out of the business than I could being in the business. And since then I think, you know, it’s been amazing for me and I’m – I hope it’s been amazing for my team. But I think the great thing about that is people were always courageous with me. So they would always tell me if things were working and weren’t working. And I’m the first person to admit when we get it wrong. We screw up, we move again and move fast and no blame. There’s no blame in my world, do you know what I mean, because failure is just – if you’re not failing your not trying hard enough. So for me it was really a learning I think. And I think the people who’ve been with me for, you know, there’s been people who’ve been with me for 16 years in 3 different organisations in Australia have – I mean probably I’ve driven them crazy but my God we’ve had fun. We’ve changed the world. We’ve done amazing things. They think ah, I’m fed up working for her and then they come back again. So they’re – I tend to attract kind of adrenaline junkies or people who are totally focussed on purpose and want to make an impact.

Jenelle: Yeah, I love that. You know, that no blame culture that you embody and you lead is a really liberating thing for people to work in. If you genuinely can call out failure as an opportunity for learning, a learning moment, and move forward that must just open up so many more ideas, so many more suggestions, so much more risk-taking – safe risk taking.

Linda: Yeah. And I think, I’m not being Pollyanna-ish about it, you know, make a mistake once, yep, let’s learn. Make a mistake two, yeah, maybe. Don’t do it three times though, do you know what I mean? So it’s making sure that we actually close the circle and we learn from it and then we move on. And I remember the, you know, think education and the first two weeks of being in there somebody had done something that lost us like $3 million dollars and I think they came into the room shaking going my God, and I said well just thanks for your honesty. Let’s sort it now, do you know what I mean, because at the end of the day if you don’t know you can’t sort it. It’s just crazy. 

Jenelle: You know, despite your earlier comment when the new chancellor comes in and they pull out a different strategy I would say that the higher education sector isn’t one that is necessarily known for changing or changing at pace. It’s probably fair to say it’s remained largely unchanged for over a millennium. You’ve just talked then about, you know, balancing out the kind of people in your team with more traditional people on the board. So that’s probably one element of driving change. But I guess in the context of a sector that’s been quite hard to move and to shift with the times what have been the lessons that you’ve learned along the way around driving change in the sector?

Linda: I think for me the biggest thing is to really look at things from above the sector, do you know what I mean? Actually go back to the – I mean the only criticism I would have about universities is they’re very internal. You know, they measure themselves on how much research they do against each other. The measure themselves on how many students they have. You know, they’re all inputs, they’re not outputs. So for me to get above the system and actually get back to why are we here and what are we trying to create and how can we create systemic change and how can we protect the things that are important to formal education without throwing the baby out with the bath water but also in a non-threatening way? So I’ll give you an example of that. So, you know, you would have had to be sitting in the cupboard to not hear all of the press over the last five to six years of many companies now not even looking for degrees to get talent, saying that they’re – people aren’t employable when they come out of universities. The biggest threat was never other universities. The biggest threat was always enterprise training. You know, people who just decided we’ll do it ourselves, it’s much easier and we’ll invest the money once they come to company or Google or Apple. You know, these are the threats, not other universities. So for me it was getting above it and saying OK, I do believe accreditation is important because accreditation gives you a benchmark that helps people understand the potential of a person, not the end point of a person, just the potential of a person. Industry accreditation or practical application is as important. So we made our point a differentiation – you can have both. You can have a university degree that’s accredited but every single piece of curriculum that we put out now has an endorsement by a company that is the best company in that class. So, for example, Canva endorse all our design. Ovolo Hotels endorse all our hospitality programmes and customer service. IBM do, you know, cloud computing and analytics, you know? So we’re partnering all he way through with industry. We don’t write a piece of curriculum without 12 industry players sitting around the table with us. So therefore they own it and therefore it’s so super up-to-date. And if they’re willing to put their brand on it then students get both, don’t they? I call it “the edge”. They get an accredited degree but they also get endorsement from an employer and because all our students have to go to work, they don’t have a choice, so if you come and do a degree with me, even if you come and do another MBA with me, we will put you out to work, either if you’re working for EY we might put you out to charity or we might put you out to a not-for-profit. So you also get a reference from another sector or another employer. So you’re getting a bag of tricks that then makes you super employable. That’s why I have the second highest employability rate for graduate students after only 7 years in being a university. So for me that’s the difference. If you look at it, the biggest thing for me, my biggest strength, my Gallup StrengthFinder, is connections, yeah? Is how do we connect the ecosystem around education with communities, with employers, with industry, with Government, how do we create an ecosystem that one plus one plus makes 10 rather than silos. And I think that’s my biggest benefit or advantage because I see connections everywhere. Everywhere! It drives me crazy.

Jenelle: I’m absolutely a subscriber to the belief that the whole should be greater than the sum of the parts, you know, and that’s what you’re talking about there is connecting that ecosystem for it to create an amplified impact, which is a fantastic take away. I have heard you mention the Torrens “crazy gene” in the past. Tell me about the crazy gene. You say it with a bit of a cheeky glint in your eyes, tell me about that. Is it something that you recruit for? Is it something that you develop within the uni?

Linda: I think it’s both. I think you have to have it to even apply to work with us. You know, if you don’t like change do not come to us. You know, we are so agile and innovative and moving all the time. Somebody who wants to know they can rock up nine to five, do a job, go home, say they’ve done a good job probably would not survive in our culture because we’re always pushing, agitating, trying to move forward but not for agitations sake, do you know what I mean? It’s always got to be for a reason. But Hugo, head of HR, said, you know, a few years ago, we were kind of – and it was actually when we were in the sale process – what a time to let this one out! You know, we’re in the sale process, pitching away, you know, to all these amazing people who wanted to buy us – and, interesting, including some public universities wanted to buy us because that’s a different story.

Jenelle: Oh, is that right?

Linda: Oh, yeah! That’s a different story. We’re chatting away and there’s this culture, it’s a culture, it’s the team, and that’s what it is, you know. They didn’t buy content, they bought people. And people and culture is king. So for me, Hugo in the sales process said, you know, how would you describe this, you know, as a professional HR person. And he went “the crazy gene” – the only way I can describe it is the crazy gene. You know, you’ve got to have this kind of burning desire to really – high accountability in my structure. High – everybody is bonus. Everybody is bonus within the organisation. Everybody gets a share in success, yeah? So we brought that in to Torrens and everybody’s really clear what they’re accountable for. Everybody leads from their circle of influence. So, yeah, there is a crazy gene. And I’m just blessed because that crazy gene also brought about the courageous conversations that I personally needed to learn to get the hell out of the way and let them do their job really, really well and let the organisation thrive.

Jenelle: I want to just bounce back, if I could, to the conversation we had around change and where you – what your lessons were on change. One of the things that you talked about when you said, you know, you get above the system and you think about looking at it more broadly and you talked about systemic change. There are a range of structural impediments to change that exist in the system. So we can drive a mindset shift and some, you know, behavioural shifts for sure and you’re obviously doing that. But talk to me about some of the hard-coded, structural impediments to change that you’ve sort of been aware of or trying to do something about or intend to do something about because very often we can underestimate how deeply those blockages are, you know, embedded.

Linda: Yep. So I’ll give you an example of one we changed and one that we’re trying to change, yeah? So the one that we changed was really simple. There was this crazy tax for students that nobody knew about. So the student decided they wanted to go to a higher ed provider or a private university and they borrowed $40,000 – they get a government loan on that like any other public university. But they used to have to pay a 25% tax, which was called an admin tax. So if you don’t choose to go to a public - 

Jenelle: That’s a hefty admin tax!

Linda: I know! So if you don’t choose to go to a public university, you choose, at that time you chose to go to Bond, Notre Dame or ourselves, the student would by $50 grand, which is appalling. And it was like an invisible tax. So we really worked with Government to remove that tax. We agitated through the free trade agreement with America and said it was non-competitive and the Government changed the legislation. So that’s an example of changing something - not just for Torrens, we changed it for the system. And there’s 5 or 6 examples of that, especially around employability measures in universities. Usually we do it quietly. We do it – we don’t – and nobody speaks for us, but the experience that we’ve got globally is we can show Government, public policy makers trends that have happened somewhere else in the world and the unintended consequence of that and we can help then do the research to try to change the policy. So that’s that side. The one that we’re agitating a little bit for now is the crazy, crazy policies around international students. They’re just mental. So you get give an amount of students that you’re allowed to have as a university. So they will tell you in Adelaide I can have 2,000 international students, in Brisbane I can have 1,000, in Sydney I can have, you know, 10,000. And it’s all based on the square footage of campuses. How mental is that, right?

Jenelle: That is ridiculous. There’s no sense.

Linda: It’s must mental. And I must admit the regulator really came to the party with us during COVID, they waived that because it just didn’t make sense because people couldn’t go to campuses. What we’ve got to do now is make sure that some of the great things that changed in the system because the agility and the flexibility was necessary stays in place as we move forward. And that’s one of my biggest fears is that I don’t want education to go back. When we started this, you know, international students were only allowed to do a certain proportion online. Yep, they had to do the rest face-to-face. I mean what does that say? Online’s a lesser quality than face-to-face? It isn’t, we’ve proven that. Again, it’s about inputs not about outputs. So for me these are the debates that we are having now. And I think the second debate, which is critical for Australia, is around the links between migration and education. We have this crazy what I would call kind of grey conversation where people have to say that they’re coming to study, they’re not allowed to say they want to come and live and they’re not allowed to say they want to come and work because that’s how - 

Jenelle: Because pretend that’s not happening.

Linda: - it’s pretend. So we talk about that and that’s how they get a visa. Whereas wouldn’t it be much better if people were really transparent and said what they were trying to get and we look at an outcome and we maybe relate that to the skills that we want? So for me there’s these kind of crazy rules that were made 40 years ago that still exist – and we are seeing some flexibility in that because of COVID, so what I really want to make sure is that, moving forward, we don’t go back again to some of the crazy stuff that happened before.

Jenelle: It’s so refreshing to listen to you. You just seem to be completely unshackled from the status quo and just the ability to step back and go well that’s crazy, well that makes no sense, well we’re not doing that. So, it’s a – I can see how that is an incredible impetus for driving change. Now, it would be remiss of me, Linda, to not mention the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year award. Congratulations to you. It’s been a fantastic, fantastic achievement. You’re going to be heading off to Monaco for World EOY in June. What does that recognition mean to you?

Linda: Ah, it’s – I mean it was kind of an unintended consequence of the process because as you know you don’t nominate yourself or you don’t apply and you’re searched out and then, you know, asked to apply, which in itself was just an absolute pleasure. But for me the big – a university! You know, we won the FR which was the Financial Review award 2 years ago for in the top 10 for innovation, which was unbelievable for a university. But to actually wing Entrepreneur Of The Year as a CEO of a university for me just is a wonderful, wonderful reflection on where the sector is going. You know, because if we don’t have entrepreneurship in universities we’re in trouble. You know, what are we doing? So I really – I was – that’s why I was so proud about it. It was a reflection on the team. They trusted me, they’d come with me on the journey, you know, their crazy gene had paid off and it was just beautiful. To be honest, to be up there with the other nominees – and they were incredible – and I’m like this is just amazing to be here. But I think to be the first university, which is interesting, in Australia but then when I looked at the global and went back all the years there’s not been one.

Jenelle: Nothing. No, that’s right.

Linda: So we’re super proud of that. Really proud of that. And I think it just gives you an extra – an extra “oomph” to, you know, we starting on the next part of Torrens to get it up to 50,000 students and a billion dollars in 10 countries – we’re already in 3. So for me it’s just – it was just a nice spot as we sold the company, as we did what we did during COVID, we’ve just changed Chancellor from Michael Mann to Jim Varghese is an absolute stunning man, it’s just been a great kind of recognition of the journey to date. But there’s more to come!

Jenelle: Well, that’s a perfect segue to my last question for you, which is what’s next?

Linda: Oh, world domination! 

Jenelle: Muwahahaha!

Linda: No, I think, you know, we’re got this beautiful relationship now with our owners, SEI, who have Capella and Strayer. They have amazing smarts. They were so smart. You know, they have things called Workforce Edge where they have 500,000 employees on that doing employer training. They have Sofia, which doesn’t have academics in it but it’s like going to the gym, you pay $79 a month and you can do courses on line. They’ve just got amazing tech capacity for universities and I’m so looking forward to bringing that into AsiaPac. We’re looking forward to bring design because Billy Blue and MDS are global brands, we’re looking forward to bring that into America. And really just learning. You know, we’ve got – what have we got – 11,000 international students just now from 115 different countries, how do we amplify that? You know, we’ve just started our Africa strategy. We just started our South America strategy. So for me it’s how do we, you know, increase the impact that we’re having globally and really live, you know, our three pillars, which is industries, university, you know putting that student at the centre and education without borders. And we’re just starting to lean into that now.

Jenelle: Oh, my God, I – it’s such an exciting future, Linda. It’s hard not to get caught up in that listening to you. Fast three questions – I know this is going to take you I haven’t given you any kind of advanced notice on this one. But just top of your head, don’t overthink it. What are reading or watching or listening to right now?

Linda: I’m reading – and interestingly I’ve read – done some of your podcasts which were amazing. So I’m reading that The Resilience Project next book “Let’s Go” because I say him two weeks ago.

Jenelle: Hugh van Cuylenburg. 

Linda: Yeah, two weeks ago I went to see him, and he’s amazing. Hugh van – and I can’t say the last name, so I’ll leave that to you.

Jenelle: Cuylenburg.

Linda: Yeah. So it’s stunning. I was with a woman who runs Olympic Dam two weeks ago and she told me she used it with all her staff at Olympic Dam. So I’m right into that at the moment.

Jenelle: I’ve read it. It’s brilliant. And what is your superpower? And I want to say I can hear that it’s picking exceptional talent, but is there any other superpower that could be additive to the world, like everything you’ve talked about, or it could be a useless party trick.

Linda: Yeah, I mean, and this will surprise a lot of people, my superpower comes back to my strength which is connections, but it’s because I’m an introvert. There you go, Jenelle. I’m an introvert. 

Jenelle: OK, I would not have picked that.

Linda: Yeah, so I’m an introvert but I can take a deep breath, go into the loo, count to five, get out and get, you know, because I take – I get a lot of energy from other people and, you know, connecting things. So I think that’s probably my superpower is that I can turn it on when I need to even though it’s really difficult for me because I’m an introvert.

Jenelle: That’s really interesting. If you were going to put a quote up on a billboard what would it be?

Linda: Oh, my goodness. It’s “Talent is king”. Talent is everything, yeah? And I think it is that begin and end with people. So Talent is King. 

Jenelle: Oh, thank you much. And, Linda, thank you for the conversation today. I feel absolutely vibed and really excited about the future here. I know that you described yourself as, you know, “jammy” right up the front where you seemed to land on your feet. That is no accident, you’re not jammy, this is through hard work, through clear passion, relentless dedication to the purpose. I loved the early lesson and exposure you had to the power of contextualised learning and how you have fed that through in your organisation. The head, the hand, the heart – everything you’ve spoken to talks about the connection of that. You talked about, you know, you had the opportunity to potentially make TAFE sexy. Can I just tell you, you’ve made many a thing sexy in this conversation. You’ve made change sexy, you’ve made employability sexy, you’ve made B-Corp status sexy, you’ve made failure sexy. So I think that’s inherent to what you do. You’re ability to paint a vision that people would take a leap of faith for and leave what they know and what they value to join you is a real testament to the way that you can enthuse that purpose and passion through. I think, you know, your learnings around never underestimating the power of picking the right team and then, when needed, getting the hell out of their way is something that we should all learn from. You’re a – the crazy gene, how you channel that, how you use that to unshackle yourself from the status quo and allow others to do the same with no blame and your ability to look up and out of the system and understand how to forge connections to make the whole be greater than the sum of the parts is just some of the things I’ve taken away from our conversation today. I can’t thank you enough for your time.

Linda: Thank you. It’s been a privilege. Thank you. Cheers!

End tape recording