Meet our facilitators

Mark Soar

Swinburne Edge facilitator – Auditing

Mark has a diverse background in Work Health and Safety (WHS) consulting and is an experienced WHS facilitator. He is passionate about promoting and delivering training to professionals and works effectively with employees from all backgrounds and industries to improve safety culture and safe work practices.

Mark specialises in creating opportunities to identify and explore improvement potential that assist individuals and organisations to achieve best practice industry benchmarks. With a diverse client portfolio, Mark’s consultancy and professional coaching services empower both individuals and businesses alike, to achieve work practices that meet industry demands and legislative requirements, while ensuring effective resource management and sustainability.

Peter Schmideg

Swinburne Edge facilitator - Business Skills

Peter has been a facilitator and coach for over 20 years, with lots of local, national, and international experience. He is a published author and has worked across many industry sectors from banking and IT to academia, retail, government, law, manufacturing, automotive and construction. He is comfortable at all levels of the organisation from CEO to frontline staff.

Peter provides a learning atmosphere that is highly interactive and engaging, encouraging dynamic learning. He brings a level of creativity to his sessions, which are always practical with strategies that easily transfer back into the workplace. He is also on Swinburne’s Curriculum Advisory Committee for the Faculty of Business and Law.

Marisa Dantanarayana

Swinburne Edge facilitator – Coaching

Marisa has been an executive coach and facilitator since 2002, has coached hundreds of executives (over 2,000 hours) and has international business and not-for-profit board experience. Her experience spans a diverse range of clients from large corporations to small businesses, from the public to private sectors. She works with teams, groups and individuals, from C-suite to middle management.

Prior to executive coaching and leadership development, Marisa had a highly successful track record as an executive in the corporate world, having worked for leading global companies; and has a track record of growing businesses across multiple industries. 

As an IT sales executive, she worked across banking and finance, telco, utilities, retail, government and transport and logistics. Marisa was a Regional Board Member of the International Coach Federation Australasia and President for the Victorian Chapter. She is also the co-founder and Director of footprint, providing a leading software solution to the mentoring and coaching market.

Rachel Moore

Swinburne Edge facilitator - Communication Skills

Rachel specialises in emotional intelligence (EI) profiling and feedback, coaching, and career development. With 20 years of experience in the learning and development field, she works with individuals to develop their self-management and relationship management skills, and to improve their professional performance and career success. Her focus is on providing opportunities and knowledge to become successful at work.

Rachel is a passionate professional with years of experience working with EI profiling tools and coaching senior executives, people managers, and frontline employees in the development of their individual EI goals. She is accredited in the tools of Genos, Six Seconds, EQ-i 2.0 and EQ360 Emotional Intelligence.

Rachel has a strong interest in health and wellbeing and facilitates programs in workplace wellbeing and brain health.

Terry Gaven

Swinburne Edge facilitator – Finance

Terry brings to management and leadership development a wealth of experience gained over 20 years at senior executive level. He has worked as a consultant and facilitator for the past twelve years, specialising in business management. Terry's background is in corporate management, with an emphasis on business finance and administration. He has worked with public sector organisations at local, state and commonwealth levels, as well as private sector companies. 

Terry is a Fellow of Certified Practising Accountants Australia, an Associate of the Institute of Corporate Managers, Secretaries, and Administrators, an Associate of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators, and a member of the Australian Institute for Learning Practitioners.

Peter O'Donnell

Swinburne Edge facilitator - Health and Safety

Peter has a passion and enthusiasm for learning which sees him inspire others. With over 25 years working in leadership, coaching and mentoring roles, he works to combine his experience and facilitation skills to share his knowledge and encourage others to develop themselves in their chosen fields.

Peter has worked in both the private and public sectors with clients varying in SMEs, large Australian and international organisations and federal agencies including Origin Energy, Coles Myer, Diners Club International, GE Money, Telstra, the Australian Electoral Commission, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia Post and major banks. He has been responsible for relationships, human resources management and staff development in his career.

His experience has led him to work across a range of cultures, industries and organisations; embracing the diversity that exists in each client group.

Cheryl Crostwaite

Swinburne Edge facilitator – Human Resources

Cheryl has over 30 years’ experience in leadership and management in Australia and internationally, and brings a wealth of both theoretical and practical aspects to her clients. She is a well-rounded, flexible management consultant and trainer, results-driven with both public and private sector experience. She is mature and experienced, with a strong customer focus and a high degree of professionalism, and believes strongly in a team approach to the provision of quality services. Her experience in the public service sector and as a cost centre manager in Australia has given her an excellent grounding in all avenues of management and as her experience has been with a very decentralised human resource function it means she was involved in many varied aspects of human resources.  

Terrence Yakub

Swinburne Edge facilitator - Information Technology

Terrence has over 25 years of experience in Training and Management. His success is in developing an interest and aspiration for learning within people and to assist individuals to develop competence and confidence in using software programs in a relevant, enjoyable, and interactive manner.

Terrence delivers courses and manages multi-national projects both overseas and in Australia for clients such as Australia Post, ANZ Bank, Telstra and Realestate.com.au. He also incorporates training needs analysis and creates and develops software training programs for the retail, manufacturing, educational, finance, and the food industries, as well as government departments.

Robert Mackinnon

Swinburne Edge facilitator – Innovation

Robert is an accomplished executive leader, facilitator, consultant, and coach. He has a great passion for developing leadership capacity and organisational effectiveness in others. Leveraging his own visionary, collaborative, and insightful leadership style, Robert has crafted a strong reputation as a builder of organisations in education, not-for-profit, and entrepreneurial start-ups.

Robert has held management roles in the education industry and is passionate about entrepreneurship. He has extensive experience with start-up efforts having established a Christian church congregation and launched a private consulting practice. Robert is currently the Director and Founding Partner of Virtuity Consulting Group, an innovative organisational development firm with a unique diagnostic model to assess the alignment of personal energy and effort across organisational systems.

Margo Lockhart

Swinburne professional facilitator - Leadership and Management

Margo Lockhart is a highly regarded facilitator, designer and coach with an earned reputation for developing trust and rapport in the working environment. With an academic background in education, counselling and organisational dynamics, Margo brings a disciplined and reflective focus to her work.

Margo has extensive experience in program design, implementation, and presentation in a diverse range of organisations. She regularly facilitates management and leadership programs, as well as courses in emotional intelligence (EI), negotiation and influencing skills.

She is an experienced board director, having spent over 10 years on the boards of various environmental groups.

Mark Lewis

Swinburne Edge facilitator - Organisational Change

Mark has had an extensive Human Resources (HR) career commencing with Crown as their Customer Service Development Training Manager through to major casino and hotel openings. He then moved to Caterpillar where he enjoyed a long career in senior HR leadership roles both in Australia and in the Asia Pacific. More recently Mark was the Principal and Asia Pacific HR Leader for Mercer Outsourcing.

Earlier this year Mark completed the Executive Coach Certificate Program through Swinburne and is currently providing executive coaching and HR consulting within several organisations, as well as completing an international MBA.

Mark’s ongoing career mission is to assist leaders to achieve significant and sustainable results through their people, to leave a legacy of high-performance organisations with engaged work cultures and to build best in class HR practices that deliver optimal organisational capability.

Stephen Abrahams

Swinburne Edge facilitator - Project Management

A graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, Stephen’s military and business career of over 30 years includes leadership in logistics support, asset management, program and project management, business management and training roles in both operations and corporate environments.

Stephen’s clients include a broad range of medium to large government and commercial clients in diverse industries including automotive, agriculture, construction, education, entertainment, human services, immigration, police, retail, logistics, utilities, travel, security and professional services. Stephen specialises in developing the creative potential in organisations by linking strategy to execution and empowering individuals and teams.

Gillian Harris

Swinburne Edge facilitator - Risk Management

Gillian is an experienced facilitator and trainer in project management, agile project management, business analysis, organisational change management, innovation and leadership. With over 20 years’ experience in senior executive roles, she has developed and launched new services and products for business and consumer markets and has led both small and large teams.

She works in the private and public sectors, with small start-ups supporting innovation, and with large organisations to build project outcomes and develop project and leadership capabilities. Committed to organisational performance, Gillian takes a systemic approach which recognises the need to blend process, people and project skills.

Gillian brings a breadth of experience, an enthusiasm for innovation, and she drives the advancement of sound processes, good stakeholder collaboration, and ultimately, a pragmatic approach.

Elle Taurinskaite

Swinburne Edge facilitator – Strategy

Elle brings 20 years of business experience including marketing, leadership and education management. Prior to starting her consultancy, she worked for the government and the private sector.

Elle has extensive international experience, having worked in the European Union’s economic development and investment programs and later with global marketing communication networks Saatchi & Saatchi and FCB as an Account Director. She led strategic brand communication projects, engaging mostly with Scandinavian clients and has been involved in designing new products and developing brand strategies for manufacturing organisations and facilitating strategic planning in not-for-profit organisations.

As a professional facilitator and instructional designer, Elle collaborated in international business education programs with UK universities and guest-lectured in Asia and Europe.

Anna Mastwyk

Swinburne Edge facilitator

For the past 25 years, Anna has worked as a Learning & Development Consultant providing competency-based training and assessment in industry, and facilitates nationally accredited courses and customised programs. She has a diverse background having worked in both the public and private sectors. Anna is passionate about sharing her knowledge and encourages a friendly, experiential and flexible learning environment with a strong emphasis on the transfer of learning into the workplace.

As a training consultant, Anna liaises with training and personnel managers across a wide range of organisations and is committed to working with clients to identify training needs and work towards providing solutions in line with performance requirements.