Alumni creating a world worth living in

Our donors often tell us that seeing Charles Sturt University graduates making a difference in the world is the ultimate outcome for them, and the reason they give so generously to the university. Your support as donors means that our students can do the work they love and make this a world worth living in – like Master of Information Technology graduate Andrej Verity, who was recognised in our inaugural Alumni Awards, launched in August 2020.

Andrej Verity

Service to the Community Award

Playing a humanitarian role in some of the world’s biggest disasters and other major crises, Andrej Verity has been working as a disaster responder on the global stage ever since he was awarded his Master of Information Technology through Charles Sturt University in 2010.

Hailing from the small Canadian town of Carnduff in the province of Saskatchewan, Andrej is an information management officer at the United Nations (UN) Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in New York and a co-founder of the Digital Humanitarian Network. It was while working in the UN’s Geneva office in 2010 that Andrej was sent to Haiti after a huge earthquake devastated the small nation. Six months later, he was in Pakistan in the wake of massive floods. These events were described by the UN as ‘the largest humanitarian crises the UN and its humanitarian partners have ever responded to’.

Although not deployed in person to crises in Libya and Japan in 2011, Andrej was appointed the strategic and technical lead in the OCHA’s collaboration with the emerging Volunteer and Technical Community during these times.

Between responding to emergencies, Andrej leads OCHA’s multi-skilled shared digital services team providing strategic end-to-end service development and managing platformas-a-service support to a variety of sites ranging from ReliefWeb to the Humanitarian Data Exchange, and the Financial Tracking Service.

For Andrej, the key to his career success is simple.

“I have a passion for simple and sometimes even seemingly childish innovative new concepts. I want people to collaborate with me to find the best solutions, new ideas, problems with my logic, and new bits that make my ideas work. I want to put my pieces on the table and start working. I do not believe that I have brilliant ideas, but rather I want to discover them.”

And the winners are…

From almost 100 entries, five winners and two highly commended submissions were chosen in each of four categories. Along with Andrej, the winners are…

Professional Achievement Alison Michalk

Alison graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Communications) in 1997. She now lives in Avoca, NSW and is the CEO and Founder of Quiip, a leader in online community management and moderation services.

Young Alumnus of the Year Dr Sarah Verdon

Sarah graduated with a Bachelor of Health Science (Speech Pathology) (Honours) in 2006 and obtained her PhD from Charles Sturt in 2015. Sarah’s research aims to inform the development of high-quality, equitable and culturally responsive health and education services for children. Professional Achievement (Research) Dr Kathryn Crowe

Kathryn completed her PhD studies in 2013 and was awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue research at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in the United States. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Iceland.

Association Member Simon Selvakumar

Simon graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Public Relations and Organisational Communications) in 2001. Currently living in Singapore, he has been the Charles Sturt Alumni Coordinator for Singapore since 2002 and is also the founder of Dark Glass, which helps disadvantaged communities gain access to resources.