2018

Martin Hill
Graduate Diploma in Urban Estate Management, 1988; Master of Project Development, 2006

In 1999 property economist Martin Hill launched EstateMaster, software that would change the way development opportunities are analysed in 46 countries around the world. Despite initial reservations, the program is now the industry standard used by developers, appraisers and investors to calculate land value, taxes, interest and return on equity.

Hill was in the first cohort of the Graduate Diploma in Land Economics at the newly minted University of Technology Sydney in 1988. The diploma was Australia's first postgraduate property course, drawing professionals from diverse fields including architects, surveyors and planners.

"The course gave us exposure to different disciplines, which was extremely important," says Hill. "In today's world you don't just go into one profession. You go through a change of professions and I think that's the modern economy."

He went on to establish his own firm, HillPDA, a consultancy that incorporated his software business. "It was hard back then," Hill admits. "I was young and just married. I'd be working there during the day and at night I'd supplement my family's income by lecturing at universities."

Almost 30 years later, Hill still guest lectures at UTS. Two of his children, Nicholas Hill and Virginia Phillips, hold degrees in property development and work at Hill's firm (in fact, when he returned to UTS to study a Master of Property Development, Martin completed a group assignment with his daughter). His eldest daughter, Sarah Hill, is an adjunct professor at UTS and CEO of the Greater Sydney Commission.

Hill got his big break in 2000, when the goods and services tax was introduced. "All the big companies were scrambling to work out how it would impact their cash flow and all of a sudden we started selling all this additional software. I thought it was just a flash in the pan," says Hill.
It wasn't: revenue increased at 100 per cent for the next eight years and HillPDA opened offices in the UK, US and Dubai. Following the 2008 global financial crisis, the company continued to grow internationally as accurate feasibility studies became critical to securing bank loans. In 2017, Hill sold the software to multinational competitor Altus Group.

Under the University Partnership Program, he has distributed the technology to more than 30 universities around the world so students could learn to use it for free.
Throughout his career, Hill has initiated several housing-affordability schemes. In the late 1990s, he founded not-for-profit Metro Housing, which was responsible for the financial modelling and master plan of a joint-venture development in Canberra, in which profits were invested into affordable housing. The model has been replicated by several non-profits in the years since. More recently, Hill has been working with Sydney councils to create incentives for developers to incorporate below-market-rate housing in their projects to supply to essential workers, such as nurses.

Maya Newell
Bachelor of Arts in Communications (Media Arts and Production) (2010)

When the 2015 documentary Gayby Baby was banned from being shown in class time in NSW schools, it triggered a national conversation about LGBTI families. Directed by Maya Newell, the film records children's experiences of those families - a subject close to Newell's heart, having grown up with two mums.

Her second feature, due for release next year, is about 10-year-old Arrernte boy Dujuan. They're two very different documentaries but the goal is the same: Newell wants children to have their say.

"I'm very interested in the concept of children's agency and what they have to teach us," she says. "Growing up, politicians and public figures were constantly speaking about how children like me were being harmed by our parents, but not one of them sat down and asked me what I thought."

Newell has been working in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, for eight years, creating films with Arrernte families and Elders. Not for public release, the films are an educational resource, used for passing on language and culture. "Through that work I have been privileged to witness the most incredible moments," says Newell. "I saw children going to their Country for the first time and grandmothers teaching them songlines."

She also met Dujuan, star of the documentary she's currently producing under the working title Kids. "Everyone has an opinion about how to 'save' Aboriginal kids, but this film is an opportunity to actually listen to those children," she says. "Dujuan is an intelligent, outspoken young person who's supported by a strong family.

With the guidance of those on-screen and Arrernte advisers, it's my intent to show the other side of the story: what it's like to be a child who has Australia's dark colonial history weighing on his shoulders and is navigating a complex bi-cultural world."

Newell has just returned from the Sundance Institute Film Music and Sound Design Lab in the US, where Kids was selected for workshopping. She's also been holding family-diversity workshops for teachers, designed to support the lesson plans the filmmakers developed to supplement Gayby Baby (the NSW government's ban was lifted earlier this year).

"I've always been driven by the desire for social change," says Newell, who completed a degree in Media Arts and Production at UTS to supplement the technical skills she'd learned at Sydney Film School. "At UTS, there was a focus on media, society and politics. I think to be a good filmmaker it's important to be acutely aware of the world around you and to be clear about what you want to say."

Nicholas Stewart
Bachelor of Laws, 2009

Nicholas Stewart, a partner at Australia's only "out loud and proud LGBTI law firm", has spent four years campaigning for an inquiry into one of NSW's darkest chapters: the gay-hate crimes and bungled police investigations that plagued the state from 1970 to 2000. In that time, more than 80 gay men and transgender people are thought to have been murdered and a large number of those cases remain unsolved.

"There are people who've committed murder walking amongst us in Sydney," says Stewart, who works in commercial and criminal law at Newtown's Dowson Turco Lawyers. For years, he's acted for pensioner Alan Rosendale, who was attacked in 1989 by men he claims were police officers. He's also represented gay police in the largest homosexual discrimination lawsuit ever filed against an Australian law-enforcement agency. He says being part of a private firm, rather than a non-profit, gives him the freedom to speak out about public interest matters.

A parliamentary inquiry into historic gay-hate crimes appears imminent, largely due to Stewart's campaign. Though he's aware of the limitations, he says it's a step in the right direction. "I want justice for the victims and I want to see the police force acknowledge that gay men, trans people, and lesbians - to some extent - were treated differently to other victims of crime."

His commitment to social justice began in 2003 when he volunteered as a Lifeline telephone counsellor to develop the communication skills he'd need in his professional life. "Initially it was strategic rather than being about helping," he says. "But it exposed me to a side of society that needed help and I became conscious of how privileged I am."

In the final years of his time at UTS, where he studied a Bachelor of Laws (Graduate Law), Stewart was appointed President of Caretakers Cottage, a Bondi refuge for homeless youth. He went on to corporate positions at the Nine Network, MinterEllison and Optus, while remaining on the Caretakers board. "I wanted to see resources flow," he says, "I lobbied the big law firms to give money to Caretakers. Minters was a sponsor of Taronga Zoo and had free passes for its staff, so I arranged for the passes to go to the refuge. I used whatever I could, in my privileged position, to make sure the kids had access to what I had."

Stewart now volunteers as a Director at Rainbow Families NSW, the group he incorporated in 2013 that supports families in the LGBTI community, with a focus on regional NSW and inner-city families. He's a pro bona lawyer at the Inner City Legal Centre and mentors UTS students. He also sits on the executive management committee and is Co-Chair of the LGBTI subcommittee at Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, a group of judges, lawyers and academics that reviews new legislation to ensure it meets Australia's human rights obligations.

Vivian Wong
Bachelor of Applied Science in Computing Science, 1993

Computing Science graduate Vivian Wong is one of the few female senior engineering executives in the US. But that's not the only thing that sets her apart. As Vice-President of Oracle's Higher Education Technologies division, Wong is renowned for her human-centred approach, both to design and to her international team of software engineers.

"I'm not the kind of engineer who sits behind a desk," she told her employer in 2015, when she was appointed Chief Technology Officer of software company TargetX. "I enjoy interacting with custome.rs and building products around their strategic and operational needs."

Since graduating in 1993 from a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computing Science degree at UTS, Wong has held leadership positions at enterprise-software companies in Australia and the US. In 2014, she was appointed Senior Vice-President of engineering at California's ServiceMax, where it was her job to speed up the delivery of new products.

Writing for Fast Company about the importance of gender diversity in the workplace, ServiceMax Chief Marketing Officer Stacey Epstein described Wong's approach to the role: "Her first plan of action was not to dive into the code, but rather to meet with every engineer on the staff and understand them - what motivates them, how they're feeling and how she can make them more productive."

At Oracle, a Silicon Valley company with almost 140,000 employees, Wong is responsible for the roll-out of Oracle Higher Education products. Designed to help universities better communicate with their students, the information system has been adopted by almost 900 higher education providers and is used by 12 million people in 47 countries.

Wong is also leading the new development of Oracle Student Cloud, designed to disrupt the higher education industry via emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, chatbot, and blockchain.

Wong says she's inspired by her mother, a railway engineer who moved the family from China to Australia whan Wong was 11 years old. "We were illegal immigrants so my mother washed dishes," said Wong. At age 40, her mother enrolled in an Australian engineering degree and, after 10 years, she led the design of the railway track built for the Sydney 2000 Olympics. "If my single mother could do that," said Wong, "everything I'm doing is a piece of cake."

Mikaela Jade
Bachelor of Science in Environmental Biology, 2004

In 1998, Cabrogal woman Mikaela Jade enrolled in a Bachelor of Science degree at UTS with dreams of becoming a park ranger. Now a tech entrepreneur, she connects Aboriginal communities with Microsoft executives and campaigns for digital equality, including representing Australia at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. It's a different career to the one she envisioned, but Jade is determined to see Indigenous Australians included in the digital revolution.

"Our people already have a significant gap in education and I don't want that gap to manifest itself in the digital economy," she says. "If we don't have an opportunity to learn tech skills now, before the internet arrives in communities, we'll be left behind again."

Jade completed the final year of her degree remotely while working as a ranger in far north Queensland (she sat her last exam in a tiny library on Cape York). Government roles followed, including a public-sector innovation position in Canberra, where she experienced augmented reality for the first time.

"I thought, 'Imagine if we could use this to share our people's knowledge systems,"' she says. "I went out to tender twice to get development partners and I got told I was mad - people said stuff like, 'Indigenous people don't use technology.'”

Determined to see her start-up succeed, Jade cold-called companies around the world. "I said, 'I'm a girl in Australia, I have a $25,000 research grant and I want to build this app that tells Indigenous stories in remote communities that don't have internet."'

UK company Harmony Studios came on board and Jade moved to Kakadu in the Northern Territory to develop the augmented-reality app with local Elders. Called Digital Rangers, the app is designed for the tourist market; when a user points their smartphone at an activated site or artwork, an animation appears to explain its significance. The community receives 50 per cent of profits and retains rights to the data.

The next step, says Jade, is mixed reality. She's partnered with Microsoft to utilise the company's Hololens headset technology. "It's great because you put this device on your head but you're still in the environment; you can see other people and interact with them - the same way we've shared culture forever."
In September, with the support of Microsoft Philanthropies, Jade will launch a 12-month Digital Custodians course for 30 Indigenous women from Cape York, the Torres Strait, and the Kimberley. Jade will teach the women to develop content for the app and to create their own economic opportunities in the digital economy.

Hoang Dao
Bachelor of Engineering, 2006

Tech entrepreneur Hoang Dao still remembers the challenges of his early days at UTS. In 2002, he left Ha Tinh, a small province in central Vietnam, to study software engineering on an Australian Development Scholarship. Though he and his roommate, Binh Nguyen, would go on to launch Vietnam's most successful news aggregation site, Dao found the first few months in Sydney difficult. His English was so poor, he says, people struggled to understand him.

His three daughters will never know that particular challenge because Dao has dedicated himself to helping them - and millions of children around the world - learn English. Now based in Hanoi, he's behind two of Vietnam's top five most-downloaded apps, including Monkey Stories, which offers gamified English lessons to young children.

Dao developed an interest in early-childhood education when his eldest daughter, Khanh Linh, was born in 2011. "All I wanted to do was play with her and make her laugh," he says. "Then I stumbled on somebody talking about early education and how children's brains develop massively in the first six years of ' their lives, so I started speaking to her in English and tried different methodologies to teach her to read. I was amazed by how fast she learned and how much she loved it." At 22 months Khanh Linh could read simple books in Vietnamese and English, "not because she's a genius" says Dao, "but because we were teaching her."

At the time, he was working at BH Media, the software company he and Nguyen started in 2007 with the website VietBao, a similar service to Google News. Though it was doing well - the site has millions of daily users - Dao had set himself a new goal: he wanted parents around the world to give their children a head start.

He partnered with early-education specialists to create his flagship app, Monkey Junior. Catering to children as young as a few months old, it has reading materials in six languages and is the most downloaded learn-to-read app in the US. Monkey Junior relies on children's natural learning processes - the same techniques they use to learn to walk and talk. The methodology is based on the work of brain-development specialists Glenn Doman and Dr Bob Titzer. It's not about handing over the iPad, Dao says, but a tool parents can use to teach their kids more effectively.

In 2016, Dao beat more than 1000 entrants from 100 countries to win first place in Silicon Valley's Global Innovation through Science and Technology Tech-I Competition, an initiative founded by former US President Barack Obama. But he's not done yet: in the next couple
of months, Dao will launch maths and phonics apps, and he has plans to increase his international reach. "We're the leading early-education company in Vietnam," he says. "But we want to be world leaders."

Dr Ponndara Ith
PhD in Health, 2013

Students in Cambodia who undertake a Doctor of Medicine study up to four years longer than their Australian counterparts and get little practical experience. As Head of the medicine faculty's Bureau of Academic and Training Affairs at Phnom Penh's University of Health Sciences, Dr Ponndara Ith is determined to change the way doctors are trained in his home country.

"When my colleagues get sick, I ask them where they're going for treatment and most middle-or-high-income earners say they're going to Vietnam or Thailand," he says. "Why is it that doctors with eight years of training are not providing quality healthcare?" The answer, he says, are courses that prioritise learning content over competencies and a lack of research work - even professors aren't required to publish papers.

Ith grew up in Prey Veng, one of the country's poorest provinces, at the time of the Khmer Rouge. A good student, he was awarded a university scholarship and trained as a clinician and general surgeon. He still practises medicine, returning to his home town on weekends to provide subsidised healthcare for up to 5o patients a day.

In 2003, Ith was granted an Australian Development Scholarship to study a Master of Public Health. Few Cambodians are trained in public health and Ith saw a need for better healthcare policy. To his delight, his son is currently studying public health.

Six years later, while serving as Chief of a provincial health department, Ith was selected to undertake a PhD on a prestigious Australia Awards scholarship. Beginning his thesis at UNSW before transferring to UTS, he used the opportunity to examine clinical practices in Cambodian labour wards. The maternal mortality rate in his home country is among the highest in South ­ East Asia; at the time of his research, there were 206 deaths for every 100,000 live births.

Returning to Cambodia, Ith set about reforming maternal care in public hospitals. Among his strategies are improvements to hygiene standards, preventing unnecessary medical intervention and encouraging a more professional manner among birth attendants.

Maternal care is subsidised by the government but, says Ith, "most women prefer to use traditional birth attendants because of the attitudes of our midwives and because they don't allow the person to be accompanied during labour." Change has been slow but mortality rates are dropping and Cambodia is on track to meet the World Health Organization's 2020 target of 130 deaths per 100,000 live births.

Josephine Cashman
Bachelor of Arts in Communications Journalism, Bachelor of Laws, 2006

A descendant of the Warrimay people, Josephine Cashman was the instructing solicitor for Lani Brennan, an Aboriginal woman whose historic legal battle is detailed in the book Lani's Story. "We won the highest sentence for a living victim of domestic violence at the time - 28 years," she says. "The case highlighted the plight of Aboriginal women, which is what I wanted to achieve when I went to uni. It was taboo to talk about violence in Aboriginal communities, but we really opened up the conversation."

Cashman, who'd been a trainee social worker on NSW's far south coast, came to UTS with a goal: "I was committed to overcoming the problems that beset Aboriginal communities with policing reform, service delivery and victim support." While working in Narooma, she'd been shocked by the violence and lack of services for Aboriginal people. When a medical provider ignored a mother's phone call, resulting in the death of her newborn, it was the final straw. "I immediately thought, 'I'm going to university and I'm going to make changes,'" says Cashman. "One week later, I packed the car and drove to Sydney."

In 2006, Cashman graduated with a double degree in journalism and law. A decade later, while serving on the Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Council, she was invited to speak at the United Nations Human Rights Council about the role of the justice system in Indigenous communities. "When a victim feels heard in a public forum - and the evidence is judged by a jury, that's when cultural reform can happen," she says. "It's about making sure institutions, such as the police and prosecutors, do not excuse bad behaviour or maintain lower standards for Aboriginal people. It's not okay to say, 'Well, that's part of the culture because this is not true."'

Cashman now dedicates her time to Big River, the social impact investment group she founded in 2013 to ensure money spent in Indigenous communities delivers results. The organisation's three arms include: Big River Consulting, which advises governments and corporations on Indigenous policy and economic development; Big River Impact Investments, which uses the group's own revenue, as well as private and public support, to fund social projects that deliver returns to investors; and the Big River Impact Foundation, which measures the social benefits of investment projects.

"It has been reported that there are over 1000 programs in the Indigenous sector funded by state and territory governments, as well as philanthropic groups, and we don't know how successful they are because less than  10 have been evaluated," says Cashman. "Social impact investing brings together the best of the private sector to manage and monitor investments." The model, which is well established in the US and Europe, is still in its infancy in Australia and Cashman is currently undertaking a PhD at UTS to investigate hurdles in the local market.

Dr Eric Chow
Bachelor of Science - Biomedical Science in Forensic Biology, 2008

Though he completed his PhD just four years ago, sexual-health researcher Dr Eric Chow is already considered the 15th most active academic in his field internationally, having produced more than 140 publications. In that time, he's also managed to challenge 100 years of conventional thinking about gonorrhoea.

Though it's long been considered a sexually transmitted infection (STI), Chow has discovered that gonorrhoea can also be spread through saliva, including through kissing. The disease is easily treated with antibiotics but increasing resistance around the world has prompted him to come up with a novel treatment.

"We asked men with oral gonorrhoea to gargle with antiseptic mouthwash," he says. "After five minutes we tested them and half didn't have gonorrhoea." The effect appears to be relatively short-term so Chow is now working on a national clinical trial of 530 people to determine whether daily use can be an effective preventative measure against the spread of the disease. He'll present his preliminary findings at the STI & HIV 2019 World Congress in Vancouver in July.

Chow holds NHMRC research fellowships at the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre and Monash University. While many of his colleagues came to the field as physicians, his background is in forensics, having graduated from UTS with a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Science (Forensic Biology) in 2008. "Because I've got that basic science background - and I've also done master's degrees in public health, biostatistics, and bioinformatics, I can bring new learnings and concepts to the team," he says.

After graduating from UTS, Chow assisted with biotechnology research in his native Hong Kong, prompting him to switch from forensics to research. Australia's reputation as a world leader in controlling the human papillomavirus (HPV) is part of what attracted him to the field of sexual health. He's currently studying the effects of the national vaccination programs that began in 2007, and his research into the spread of HPV among gay men has resulted in free vaccines being made available to young gay men in Victoria in 2017 and NSW in 2018.

Chow has also been working with a commercial app developer to create a smartphone program to help users self-diagnose STIs. Targeted at young people, particularly those in regional Australia who don't have access to a sexual-health clinic, the app asks users a series of questions then identifies the probability of various STIs and possible treatments. "The idea is that they can print off a referral letter and show it to their GP." he says. "Some GPs don't know how to treat or manage certain STIs, such as syphilis and gonorrhoea. But the letter documents what tests to do, what specimens to provide and treatment recommendations."

Thanks to Chow's research, in years to come, that might just include a daily gargle with antiseptic mouthwash for gonorrhoea prevention and control.

Violet Roumeliotis
Master of Management in Community Management, 2011

When Violet Roumeliotis was appointed CEO of Settlement Services International (SSI) in 2012, it was a very different organisation to the one she heads today. Back then, the asylum seeker and refugee support group had just 60 staff and a budget of $9 million; within five years, it had grown to 700 staff and had an annual turnover of $110 million. In the past 14 months alone, it's helped almost 2000 new Australians find work.

Roumeliotis came to the organization with 25 years’ experience and had recently completed at a Master of Management (Community Management) at UTS. Under her watch, SSI has taken a more corporate approach to the social sector, which was not without its challenges. "It took a lot of communicating and ensuring that we were taking our staff with us," she says.

"I wanted them to understand that you can still lead with heart, but have a head for business and look for revenue."

The group receives funds from the federal government's Humanitarian Settlement Services Program. Under the agreement, it helps refugees in NSW find their feet during their first 18 months in Australia. Support covers everything from registering with Medicare to helping people find work, housing and form friendships. To make this happen, SSI calls on its network of 45 partner organisations.

It supports NSW's multicultural community in other ways, too, including arranging foster care for children from culturally diverse backgrounds and helping people with disabilities access the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

SSI reinvests revenue from government funding into several social enterprise programs, including Ignite Small Business Start-ups. In just over four years, Ignite has helped launch more than 100 new businesses from cafes and catering companies to recruitment agencies and security services. The program now has a spin-off, lgniteAbility, which encourages entrepreneurship in people with disabilities.

When SSI contracted UTS Business School's Professor Jock Collins to review the Ignite model, he concluded: "By all accounts this program should have failed because it's targeting newly arrived refugees who don't have English language, don't know the market, have no capital, have no networks ... and yet it worked."
But Roumeliotis knew it would work because she'd seen that entrepreneurial spirit in her own parents, who migrated to Australia in the aftermath of World War II.

"They couldn't pursue their education or chosen profession so they turned to the salvation of many Greeks at the time - they started their own business, a corner shop," she says. "Their story is no different to the stories of families that come here today: they want to be part of the community and they're aspirational. I take those principles to work with me every day."

Dr Dominic Hare 
Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Applied Chemistry, 2006, PhD in Science, 2009

Analytical chemist Dr Dominic Hare believes Parkinson's disease will be as treatable as diabetes in  20 years' time, if research is adequately  funded. In part, that's due to work he began in his mid-20s with Professor Philip Doble. In 2008, the two co-founded UTS's Elemental Bio-Imaging facility, where they developed a method of mapping periodic elements in human tissue.

"The technology was really designed for the mining industry; it's for measuring elements in rocks using lasers," says Hare. "But it allows us to see how these fundamental building blocks of life - chemical elements - change in disease. We can look at very tiny changes in one element and how it relates to another and another ... and that gives you the signature of a disease."

At age 30, Hare was made a fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry. Awarded a UTS Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the same year, he used the opportunity to share his imaging technology with The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health. "That's the role I've aspired to take since I was at UTS," he says. "I want to shorten the time it takes from understanding how a disease happens to actually using that information in a medical laboratory to develop new treatments."

A visiting fellow at UTS, Hare now heads Florey's Atomic Pathology Laboratory. Working with researchers in Australia and abroad, he's helped identify what's thought to be one of the first chemical reactions that triggers Parkinson's. "These two chemicals - iron and dopamine, which we have to have in our brain - don't play very nicely together," he says. "We think they're coming into contact and making really toxic chemicals."

Scientists in France are conducting a 'phase two' trial of a drug that's expected to stall the disease by targeting this reaction. Hare hopes it can also be used as a preventative measure and is working on a technology that analyses a person's risk of developing Parkinson's. "With Parkinson's, you don't show symptoms until 50 per cent of the cells that die in the brain have already died, so I'm trying to identify people who are at risk before those cells have started dying."

Hare is driven by his own experience of the disease: he was in the early years of his PhD when he lost his "surrogate grandmother" to Parkinson's. He now travels around regional Australia as a scientific liaison for Parkinson's Australia. "I think it's important to provide information to people with the disease and their carers," he says. "And it's amazing to see how much they care about the research being done."