Connect. Learn. Grow.

Thank you to the WA Chapter Committee who organised multiple opportunities for WA Members to Connect, Learn and Grow this term!

Welcome Sundowner 

The educate+ WA Chapter Welcome Sundowner has firmly established itself as a key moment in our annual calendar. It is one of the few opportunities early in the year where our community can come together without an agenda, simply to reconnect, share, and set the tone for the year ahead. 

This year’s event, held on 18 February at The Station in South Perth, brought together a strong cross-section of our membership from long-standing practitioners to those new to educate+ and, in some cases, new to the advancement profession. That mix is part of what makes this event so valuable. It creates space for informal conversations that don’t often happen during the busyness of the year, and it provides an accessible entry point for new members to feel part of the network from the outset. 

 What continues to stand out is the generosity of our community. Conversations naturally moved between sharing challenges, offering advice, and making connections across schools, universities, residential colleges and our Chapter Partners and sponsors.  

 Thank you to everyone who joined us on the evening and contributed to the atmosphere that made it such a success. It was a positive and energising way to begin the year, and a reminder of the strength of the educate+ community here in Western Australia. 

 
WA Launches ed+connect 

The educate+ WA Chapter has officially launched ed+connect, a new initiative designed to bring members together in an informal setting to share insights, discuss current challenges, and build stronger professional connections. 

The inaugural ed+connect event took place on 26 March at Hylin Café in West Leederville, where seven members gathered over coffee before the start of the workday. The session provided a relaxed and collaborative environment, encouraging open conversation and the exchange of ideas across our industry. 

Ed+connect aims to create monthly opportunities for members within the educate+ community to engage meaningfully with peers, fostering both support and collaboration within the sector.  

Following the success of the first event, we look forward to building on this and seeing more familiar faces at the next ed+connect event on Thursday, 30 April at the Hylin Cafe in West Leederville. 

Marketing Leadership Panel

The room was focused. The kind of focused that happens when people recognise what they are hearing matters to them. 

Our Marketing Leadership in Education panel on 31 March was facilitated by Margo Bastow, Director of Community Relations at Santa Maria College. Our panellists were: 

• Tess Palmyre, Founder of Brandable 
• Ben Fitzpatrick, Director of Marketing and Community Relations at All Saints’ College 
  
• Rachel Dalton, Director of Advancement at St Catherine’s College 

The conversation moved across seven themes — the reality of leading a marketing function week to week, AI, resource constraints, representation, and the courage it takes to back your own judgement. The depth was consistent, and what made it work was how openly each panellist shared their own experience, and how readily they supported what the others were saying. 

One theme kept surfacing, and that was trust. Not trust as a marketing concept, but as the foundation underneath everything else. The panel were clear that authentic marketing, the kind that actually builds relationships, requires us to be honest about who we are and what we stand for, not simply polished in how we present ourselves. 

The harder conversation was about capacity. There was agreement across the panel that marketing departments in education are under-resourced, and that finding time for strategic thinking is genuinely difficult when the day-to-day demands of leading a diverse team rarely let up. AI came into that conversation not as a trend but as a practical response. When used well, it can create some of the thinking space that the role demands but the diary rarely allows. 

Ben introduced a term I had not heard before. Flearning. Failure with learning built in. He used it first in the context of AI, and then it stretched naturally into anything new worth trying. It landed because everyone in the room knew exactly what he meant. 

Afterwards, I asked one participant what they had taken away from the session. The answer was immediate. It was good to know other Directors were having the same issues. That they were not alone. 

That is what these mornings are for.