HEDx

Recorded live at the 2026 Student Voice Symposium & Student Summit, this episode explores one of the central themes emerging from the event: how trust, safety and meaningful participation shape student voice.
Across two days of conversations, students, staff, sector leaders and policy-makers came together to examine what it takes to create environments where students feel safe to speak up, confident they will be heard, and empowered to contribute to decisions that affect their education.
In this episode, Student Voice Australasia speaks with event contributors and delegates, capturing diverse perspectives on student partnership, representation, governance and institutional culture.
Together, they reflect on the importance of moving beyond consultation towards genuine collaboration, and what it means to create tertiary education environments where student voice is not only heard, but trusted, valued and acted upon.
Hosted by: 
Belinda Brear (SVA National Coordinator)

Francesca Harrison (SVA Student Partner)

Megan Pozzi (Director Student Life, University of Southern Queensland)

Featuring:
The Hon Prof Bill Shorten, Vice Chancellor, University of Canberra (UC)

Aaron Saint-James, Student, University of New South Whales (UNSW)

Sam Jacob, CEO of Australian College of the Arts (Collarts)

Simone Chitsinde, Student, University of Canberra and President of the UC Student Representative Council (UCSRC)

Sarah Bendall, First Assistant Ombudsman, National Student Ombudsman (NSO)

Universities are branching out. La Trobe’s AI Business Studio connects students with small and medium businesses to tackle real AI challenges — and the results are already being felt in the community. Patricia Haueiss, Managing Director of the La Trobe AI Institute, and Nyo Manwijesinghe, Senior Leader of Information Management and Technology at Bendigo Community Health Services, join Annabel to talk about what work-integrated learning really looks like in an AI-first world.

As AI reshapes how students learn, get assessed, and enter the workforce, one question is becoming more urgent: do students actually know what makes them uniquely human? In this episode, Annabel is joined by Timothy Hodges, Executive Director of the Clifton Strengths Institute at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, and Anne Lingafelter, Principal at Gallup, to explore how strengths-based education builds the self-awareness, confidence, and human capability that no AI can replicate. Because in a world where everything can be generated, knowing what you do best — and leaning into it — might be your greatest advantage

Most universities have AI ambition. Far fewer have figured out how to turn that into something students actually feel. In this episode, Annabel is joined by Kate Shum, Product General Manager at Technology One, and Gail Bray, Chief Transformation Officer at Victoria University, to talk about what it actually takes to move from experimentation to real impact. They cover where to start, how to build a framework without stifling innovation, what happens when an idea is ready to move into the tech stack, and why legacy systems are still the biggest blocker nobody wants to talk about.

Valerie Singer leads the Global Education Team at Amazon Web Services, working with universities across more than 200 countries. In this episode, she and Martin talk about the gap between what employers need and what graduates actually bring, why 53% of employers say AI skills are their biggest hiring challenge, and what universities can do right now, this semester, to start closing it. A conversation about applied learning, institutional courage, and what higher education needs to look like in 2030.