Kathryn Thomson has been the Head of Education and Professional Development at the Chartered Institute of Brewers and Distillers since January 2024. A former teacher, trainer, and teacher trainer, she worked for five years at Cambridge Assessment, the international exam board of the University of Cambridge. She has been in the field of lifelong learning for the last 30 years all over the world including Australia, Malaysia, Iceland and France. Since 2004 she has specialised in leading the education departments of membership bodies (science, geography, corporate governance, engineering), mostly on the interface between higher education and professional qualifications. This has included developing apprenticeship schemes, writing curriculum materials, leading on compliance and gaining accreditation. She has worked closely with the Privy Council and helped organisations and individuals gain Chartered status for their subject specialism expertise. Kathryn is delighted that the IBD is now the CIBD, with a renewed focus on lifelong learning for members. Craig Crosby has over thirty years of experience in the Brewing Industry, across Brewing, Packaging, Logistics, Project Management and CI roles in the UK, US, South Africa and, latterly, Australia. His current project is process optimisation and cultural renewal as Head of Supply Chain for Tribe Breweries, a medium-sized Brewery (and Australia’s largest independent commercial brewer) in NSW’s Southern Tablelands. Anne Gigney believes education is the key to unlocking further global opportunity for the already impressive Australian distilling industry. Anne has been working as a training provider in the distilling industry since 2015, and has supported more than 1000 Australian and New Zealand distillers on their journey to open or work in a distillery and many of those have becomes greats of the industry. Anne is a former Board Director for the Institute of Brewing and Distilling Asia Pacific, Founder and Director of the Tasmanian Whisky Academy, Co-founder and Director of the Distillers Institute and delivers CIBD's technical courses in the Asia-Pacific region as well as being a marketing and communications professional. She recently completed a Churchill Fellowship in Europe, studying distilling and brewing education best practice. Her hope is to help the Australian industry continue to build gold-standard training for the distilling industry, to build useful connections and help Australian businesses build the skills and knowledge to continue to impress on the world stage. Sarah Jones is an experienced facilitator with a track record of supporting businesses across a range of sectors to better collaborate and grow. She commenced at the University of Tasmania (UTAS) in 2018, supporting industry engagement activity as well as shaping the development and delivery of ‘demand driven’ short courses and micro credentials working closely with industry and community. Prior to joining UTas, Sarah worked as a Business Facilitator for the Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) delivering the Commonwealth Governments Entrepreneurs Programme, working to build strategic supply chain alignment and support high growth businesses within Tasmania to realise their potential. She has also worked as General Manager, Industry Development at Clean Energy Council Australia on projects to address areas of impediment to growth and promote best practice in the renewable energy sector. She commenced her career in Victorian local government including working at the Municipal Association of Victoria managing policy, corporate and governance functions.