"Samantha Reynolds is an educational visionary and innovator. She is a recognised expert in her chosen fields (Enterprise, Business, Visual Arts, Film and Television, Design and Applied Science) and has regularly provided consultation for government and private education organisations."

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"Sam goes above and beyond to engage the community to improve and give real world learning opportunities for her students. From having students create branded Snap Chat emojis and App prototypes to promote businesses, she has even used social media to secure small business and startups mentors for the Year 9 Business course where students build their own startup. Her latest project is creating a Podcast Series with local small business owners that students can use as part of their learning in Enterprise Education. Design students are often given real world design challenges to solve including the design and redevelopment of the new Enterprise Centre at Saint Stephen's College. The designs converted four old traditional spaces into flowing, collaborative spaces perfect for developing the College's pedagogy in these areas. Pitching concepts to stakeholders beyond the classroom is a vital part of the learning processes she teaches. These links with external practitioners and experts provide crucial understanding of the challenges the students will face in business and how to work through them for success."

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"Samantha was integral to the development of the new Senior Design Syllabus which is part of the Technologies suite for QCAA (Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority).  The three year writing process allowed her to collaborate with six other design experts from Universities and schools across Queensland to produce a Design curriculum that flows into higher education and at the very core is problem solving, divergent thinking, convergent thinking, and communicating; skill sets that are now considered some of the most desirable enterprise skills in the future. Samantha has also consulted and evaluated senior text books for Cengage Publishers, delivered Syllabus implementation workshops for all Design teachers in Queensland. Schools and Universities are regularly asking to meet with Samantha, view her classrooms and discover what she is doing in the classroom and collaborated with QUT, Bond University and Griffith University on links and the transitions between Senior School and University as well as the Design Teacher Professional Development."

 

"As a part of her networking business portfolio, she regularly attends business, design, visual art meet-ups including presenter at the School Planning, Design & Construction Summit, Entrepreneur Workshops Brisbane, Female Entrepreneurs, Gold Coast Business Club, Rivercity Labs and more recently been invited as an Education representative at the Gold Coast Techspace/Makerspace and Startup Weekend Gold Coast, and i Youth Entrepreneurship with Bond University. She has also been invited as an industry leader to Griffith University Creative Summits, Bond University BUFTA, Bond Business School Pitch@Palace Australia with the Duke of York, Adobe Master Classes in Sydney, Car Wrapping for Shell Racing and the ACCE Digital Technologies Summit."

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"Samantha has also put countless hours into planning new building opportunities that cater for senior students. These include a new Enterprises Centre and the Arts and Applied Technology Precinct, which is often considered as one of the most workable spaces that evokes creativity. The open planned space was designed to allow students to work in an environment that is similar to internationally recognised design spaces such as Google Headquarters. Samantha is an award-winning costume, set and graphic designer; in the ten years she has worked at Saint Stephen's College, she has volunteered her time and design skills for twelve school and community theatre musicals including The Lion King, Into the Woods, Footloose and Mary Poppins."

 

"Over the years Samantha has developed Art camps that allows Visual Art, Design and Film industry experts, deliver workshops to students on topics that they would not typically be exposed to in the day to day delivery of subjects. This included having professionals the Gold Coast Film Industry teach Special Effects make-up, Video Editing, Gold Coast Designers teach Pattern Making and Interior Design and local photographers and film makers. Samantha finds it extremely important to expose students to industry standards."

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"Samantha also coordinates the successful P-12 and Open Visual Art Exhibition. This is a massive undertaking across 13 year levels and two campuses, and is a popular event for students and parents alike. It involves the exhibition of student art and the judging of hundreds of pieces. One of her other stand out projects is the Year 9 Future Millionaires Expo. Now in its sixth year, the expo showcases the 100 plus start-up business concepts created by Year 9 students. Drawing upon Samantha’s philosophy that students need engagement with external practitioners and experts, she invites small business owners, university professionals, teachers and the wider community in to ‘invest’ in the students' ideas. Each person who attends the expo receives $50,000 ‘Monopoly’ investment dollars. Attendees listen to each of the student’s elevator pitches and prototypes. They ‘invest’ in the businesses they think most viable to succeed and the student with the most investments becomes the Future Millionaire for the Year. The assessment itself has seen multiple students offered real investment and mentorship."

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"As Head of Arts and Applied Technology, Business and Enterprise at Saint Stephen’s College, she is responsible for twenty one subjects and a team of ten teachers and teacher assistants. Units of work are regularly evaluated and modified to meet the current cohorts skills and learning requirements."

 

With the introduction of Blended/Flipped learning in the school setting, she has created and manages thirty online courses through a Learning Management System. The courses have been designed in such a way that not only engages the students in their learning on a more individualised pathway, catering to their specific needs, but it also has elements such as conditional release, self-marking exams and drop boxes with due dates, that ensure that each student works to their own ability, but also regulates that they are learning as they move through the course. "

Matthew Jorgensen​, Director of eLearning, Saint Stephen's College

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Throughout my career I have been in multiple leadership positions where I have not only been required to motivate staff, but have set many goals in order to meet KPI’s. From my early years of establishing my first business as a florist, to working as the State Sales Marketing Manager for Optus, I was required to train and motivate sales staff on a daily bases to meet expected sales targets. Using proven sales and marketing and sales techniques, the South Australian team regularly met sales target similar to that of the eastern states.

 

Discovering a gap in the small business market for them to have access to professional marketing teams, my business partner and I established AYMs www.ayms.com.au,  in which we contracted marketing services to SME’s. Although the business started relatively small, it quickly gained demand from a handful of regular clients, particularly in the fashion industry. S&M Marketing can be credited to the success of one SME increasing turnover by 300%  in a matter of six months of contracting us to the business. The business was recently merged with another established finance company.

 

As each of the clients were from various industries, we regularly met with clients, established marketing plans that suited their target audience and marketing budgets. In many cases, working with SME’s, this meant that much of the marketing strategies had to be very cost effective if not any cost at all. We worked hard in establishing many business to business alliances with complementary businesses where we were able to cross market in different industries, with the same target audience.

 

As Head of Arts and Applied Technology, Business and Enterprise at Saint Stephen’s College, I am responsible for twenty one subjects at the college and a team of ten teachers and teacher assistants. Although this is a very different environment to that of the retail and marketing industry, the planning, organisation and goal setting are very similar. Weekly meetings, staff observations and staff feedback on performance criteria on their classroom pedagogy and reporting on student performance is a requirement of the job. Units of work are regularly evaluated and modified to meet the current cohorts skills and learning requirements. Being Head of the Arts and Business Departments, we hold regular exhibitions of student work, including a Business Expo, Wearable Art  and Design Show, Film Awards and Art Exhibition. The planning and goal setting include everything from OH&S requirements through to catering and budgeting.

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A range of technology is used in order to meet the goals and expectations; on a day to day basis, Outlook has been used to set and manage both tasks and appointments, but more recently with the application of digital ink, OneNote has been incredibly useful for note taking, particularly in meetings, and for unit and goal setting. It allows you to organise notes in a very quick, meaningful and organised way that can incorporate photo’s screenshots and drawings on a digital device.

As Social Club President for four years at my current employer, Saint Stephen’s College, I realised that a strong social balance at work is vital to the staff’s performance. I regularly do complimentary morning tea/lunches for staff, as a way to motivate, socialise and a quick pick me up during busy periods, as well as outings outside of the working week that allows the staff to wind down and meet outside a work setting.

 

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