Non-Executive Board

The two non-executive members of The Innovation Unit's Board, Tony Mackay and David Albury, are supported by an executive team of Partners.

Tony Mackay - Co-Chair, The Innovation Unit Limited

Tony Mackay is Executive Director of the Melbourne based Centre for Strategic Education, Australia, a Centre focused on leading educational thinking and practice at state, national and international levels. Tony is also an Honorary Fellow in the Faculty of Education at The University of Melbourne. Tony specialises in the areas of school and system leadership, improvement and innovation.

Tony's work at state, national and international levels focuses on strategic thinking and facilitation for Government bodies, education agencies, think tanks, school boards and leadership teams. It encompasses the areas of school and system leadership, improvement and innovation, teacher professionalism and curriculum and assessment policy and includes the design and implementation of Research and Development Programs and Leadership Development Programs.

Tony was a founding member of the Governing Council of the National College for School Leadership in England and is a Visiting Fellow at the London Leadership Centre. He is an OECD Senior Consultant for the Schooling For Tomorrow Project, Improving School Leadership Project, and Alternative Models of Learning Project and a DEMOS International Associate.

He is currently working on a number of ‘Next Practice Projects' on School Leadership and School Improvement and Reform in Australia, UK, Europe, Canada, New Zealand and Hong Kong. Tony is President of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI).

Tony has a Bachelor of Economics and a Bachelor of Education from Monash University and a MA in the Economics of Education from the University of London. Tony is Deputy Chair of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER); a Board Member of The University of Melbourne, Graduate School of Education; a member of the Advisory Board of the Asia Education Foundation (AEF); a Board member of the Foundation for Young Australians; a Committee Member of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA), and a Governing Body member of a Prep to Year 12 Melbourne school. He is President of the Australian Curriculum Studies Association.

Tony is a Fellow of the Australian College of Educators (ACE) and the College's 2006 Medallist; a Fellow of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL), the ACEL Leaders 2008 Nganakarrawa Award recipient and a Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA) (V).

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David Albury - Co-Chair, The Innovation Unit Limited

Since January 2001, David has been an independent organisational, management and policy consultant. He specialises in strategy formation and consequential organisational development, in leadership and improving organisational performance, in organisational and systemic change in public services, and in establishing and developing public-private sector partnerships.

From May 2002 to January 2005, David was also a Principal Adviser in the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, playing a leading role in a number of projects including long-term reviews and strategies for education and health, the path-breaking analysis of the strategic issues facing London, an analysis of - and recommendations for the removal of - systemic causes of unnecessary bureaucracy, and system design principles for public services. He was co-author, with Geoff Mulgan, of the highly influential report on Innovation in the Public Sector. He also advised David Milband and the Department of Communities and Local Government on development of the Thames Gateway Strategic Framework; chaired a Review of the National College for School Leadership; advising Ministers and senior officials in the Department for Education and Skills on developing and implementing policy for local education and children's services. He has also led projects within the NHS relating to Primary Care Trusts.

Previously David was a Senior Fellow at the Office for Public Management, a visiting Research Fellow at the London School of Economics; Director of Corporate Strategy at Thames Valley University; Dean of Educational development and Director of the Docklands project at NE London Polytechnic (now University of East London). He has a BSc (Hons) Logic-with-Physics - from the University of Sussex from 1969 to 1972 - and he has also done postgraduate studies in Paris and Sussex on technological and organisational development and the management of innovation and change.

Throughout his career David has published extensively, been the keynote speaker at many major conferences and been interviewed several times on television and radio. He has undertaken a wide variety of leadership and management development programmes and participated regularly in a large range of policy and organisational development round-tables, workshops and seminars, as well as numerous private reports and presentations to Government Ministers, senior officials and other clients.

David is also Member of the International Board of KaosPilots, Denmark - International School of New Business Design and Social Innovation; Member of the Advisory Board for the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery.

He is a former Member of the West London Leadership Board/Park Royal Partnership and a former Member of the Advisory Board for ESRC Programme on Information and Communications Technologies (PICT).

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