Our 2021 UTS Alumni Award winners achieve excellence across a range of professional and academic backgrounds. They demonstrate the immense talent that exists within the alumni community, both professionally and in the broader community and exemplify the UTS core values — commitment to excellence, innovation, entrepreneurship and social justice.
Dr Sarah Benson PSM is the Chief Executive Officer of Sport Integrity Australia (SIA), appointed by the Federal Government following her impactful leadership as Acting CEO and senior executive within the agency.
Dr Sarah Benson PSM
Science Award recipient
Meet your 2021 winners
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Alumni Award profiles written at the time of the Awards Presentation in 2020.
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PhD Science, 2009; Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Applied Chemistry and Forensic Science, 2000
Dr Sarah Benson PSM is the Chief Executive Officer of Sport Integrity Australia (SIA), appointed by the Federal Government following her impactful leadership as Acting CEO and senior executive within the agency. Since joining SIA in 2023, Dr Benson has driven a nationally coordinated response to sport integrity issues, championing initiatives that safeguard sport from a broad spectrum of integrity threats.
She was the inaugural leader of the Safety in Sport Division, and architect of the Empowering Women & Girls in Sport Integrity Program—both pivotal in strengthening protections across all levels of Australian sport. Her strategic leadership continues to shape SIA’s evolution as a trusted national and global leader in sport integrity.
Prior to her role at SIA, Dr Benson served as Chief Forensic Scientist with the Australian Federal Police (AFP), leading a team of 350. Her forensic expertise supported major international operations, including disaster victim identification efforts following the MH17 tragedy and the White Island volcanic eruption.
Dr Benson holds a PhD in Forensic Analysis of Explosives and a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Applied Chemistry from UTS. Her research has contributed to terrorism prevention and advanced forensic methodologies used in complex investigations worldwide.
In recognition of her contributions, Dr Benson received the Public Service Medal in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List (2021), the Science UTS Alumni Award for Excellence, and the UTS Chancellor’s Award for Excellence.
With deep expertise in science, operations, and international collaboration, Dr Benson leads SIA with a clear vision: to ensure trust, fairness, and safety in sport through to 2032 and beyond.
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Bachelor of Arts in Communication, 1983
Alana Valentine is one of Australia’s most highly respected playwrights whose visionary work puts the human experience squarely on centre stage.
Throughout her distinguished career, Alana has collaborated with a host of Australian communities to ensure a diverse range of marginalised voices are heard. With care and sensitivity, she has developed works with a long and original list of real people with real stories – including women incarcerated in managed care for being ‘uncontrollable’, prison inmates and their families, high school children who have been cyberbullied, flood victims, and Pitjantjatjara dialysis patients.
Her highest profile work, Parramatta Girls, was produced by Belvoir Street Theatre well before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse began. Other work that has toured extensively is Letters to Lindy and Head Full of Love, and The Sugar House will have its European premier at the Finborough Theatre in October 2021.
Alana has had three plays included on the NSW HSC Drama syllabus – Parramatta Girls, Run Rabbit Run and Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah – and published more than 20 works including two books of non-fiction. Her writing appears in numerous collections and anthologies. She has written for mainstream and independent television, produced short films and is an acclaimed multi-media artist, librettist and dramaturg, working with Bangarra Dance Theatre, Belvoir Theatre, Merrigong Theatre, Bunya (Film) Productions and the 2022 Adelaide Festival.
She has won countless accolades including four Australian Writers Guild awards, an AWGIE Award and a Churchill Fellowship. As co-writer, with Ursula Yovich, of Barbara and the Camp Dogs she won Best Musical and Best Original Score at the 2019 Helpmann Awards, the highest accolade of the Australian Entertainment Industry.
In 2021 Alana wrote and directed the Sydney Festival/Walkley Award series The Journalist Gene, innovatively incorporating interview panels as a performance element. In April 2022 Belvoir will present her commissioned play Wayside Bride about people who were married at the Chapel in Kings Cross.
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Bachelor of Arts in Communication, 2002
El is passionate about the meaningful involvement of people with disability in public policy and public life. She has devoted over fifteen years to working in policy, strategy and advocacy for the rights of people with disability and is a highly respected expert in the media and policy.
El was part of the team that campaigned to establish the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability — the largest of its kind in Australian history. Her live analysis of the Royal Commission hearings on Twitter made them markedly more accessible. El also presented evidence to in her role as director of media and communications for People with Disabilities Australia (PwDA), a national organisation run by and for people with disabilities.
She has also worked or consulted for government and NGOs on issues including family planning and social security. In 2015, she delivered a review of social media use during the Blue Mountains bushfires for the NSW Government, looking at innovative models for managing emergency information.
El has been a leading voice for people with disabilities and chronic illness since the COVID-19 pandemic began, establishing an information clearinghouse on Facebook which was an essential source of information for many. She has been recognised for her volunteer work, winning the Lesley Hall Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Awards for Disability Leadership in 2020.
An established speaker and writer, El’s work has been published by outlets including the ABC, Sydney Morning Herald, the Guardian, Overland and Eureka Street. She also has an essay in the book Growing Up Disabled in Australia, published in early 2021.
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Bachelor of Construction Project Management, 2013
Emma’s achievements in the field of sustainability have made an impact on an international scale. She is an outstanding advocate who doesn’t hesitate to call out industries where sustainability has become a buzzword or exercise in ‘ticking the box’.
She specialises in helping businesses to manage the impact of their supply chains on biodiversity, and develop globally sustainable solutions. Based in London since completing her PhD, Emma was responsible for eliminating hazardous chemicals in luxury fashion brand Burberry's global supply chain. She then worked as Sustainability Manager with food and fashion giant Associated British Foods plc, leading the development and implementation of environmental sustainability at clothing retailer Primark.
Emma is now Director of Sustainability at Vivobarefoot, a minimalist footwear company.
Prior to re-locating overseas, Emma worked on high-profile construction projects in Sydney, including the Desalination Plant, where she oversaw environmental approvals, licenses and impact mitigation.
As a new graduate, she moved to Western Australia and spent many years managing the environmental impact of multi-billion dollar mining and infrastructure projects.
While at UTS, she did a cadetship that included developing an Environmental Plan for the Sydney Opera House.
Emma continues to make a significant contribution to public debate on the tension between commercial health and sustainability. Many of her roles to date have involved liaising with NGOs such as Greenpeace and WWF in the UK and the Wilderness Society and Landcare in Sydney.
A long-term volunteer, Emma constructed a school in a remote Aboriginal community as part of the UTS Construction for Developing Communities Project and also devoted time to the Sunflower Orphanage in Cambodia, where she taught English and built classrooms and communal eating areas.
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Bachelor of Information Technology, 2004
Larry Diamond is the Co-Founder and Global Chief Executive Officer of Zip, a leading global Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) company providing fair and seamless solutions that simplify how people pay. Larry and Co-founder, Peter Gray, launched Zip in 2013 with the goal of disrupting the broken credit card model, using technology to create a transparent, fairer and more flexible alternative. Larry has led the company from its beginnings as an Australian fintech, to where it is today – an ASX200 company with over seven million customers globally and a $7 billion valuation.
Before deciding to disrupt the payments industry, Larry had spent 12 years working in retail, technology and investment banking, where he first saw the opportunity to digitise financial services with innovative products that bring customers and merchants together.
His career included two years at Deutsche Bank as a Senior Associate within the Corporate Finance team and three years as an Investment Banking Manager at Macquarie Capital. Today, Zip is a leading global BNPL player with a presence in 12 international markets with over 51,000 global retail partners and more than 7 million active customers globally.
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Bachelor of Arts in Communication, 1993
Karen has shaped the national journey towards a just, equitable and reconciled Australia. A proud Bundjalung woman, she has been involved in reconciliation for several decades, culminating in her appointment as CEO of Reconciliation Australia in 2017.
Born into a family that raised the bar in Aboriginal activism – her mother Kaye and two aunties, Olive and Ann, were trailblazers – Karen felt the pressure of expectation and responded by quietly learning, achieving and giving back.
Karen is known as a leader who will always preference action in social justice over public profile, and responsibility to community over individualism. She has been instrumental in the development of some of Australia’s watershed national events including the Apology to the Stolen Generations, Centenary of Federation commemorations, Corroboree 2000, and the 1997 Australian Reconciliation Convention.
Her work led to the development and implementation of the State of Reconciliation in Australia Report, and the Australian Reconciliation Barometer – documents upon which national reconciliation is based and measured.
She has more than 25 years’ experience in community engagement, public advocacy, communications and social marketing campaigns and has held senior public affairs and communications roles with federal government departments as well as with the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and Reconciliation Australia.
She is on the Boards of the Gondwana Children’s Choirs and the Australian Indigenous Leadership Centre, and previously held positions with the Mary Mackillop Foundation and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council.
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PhD Science, 2018
Dr Rolanda Lam came to UTS as an international student, receiving three competitive PhD scholarships to work on an ARC Linkage Project to develop novel methods to detect fingermarks.
At the end of her studies, Dr Lam moved back to Canada and trained in her second specialisation, forensic toxicology. She continued her professional progression at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Ottawa and is currently the organisation’s only full-time research scientist in forensic identification.
Dr Lam embodies the UTS ethos of academic and industry engagement to the benefit of society. She is committed to developing and applying her science to make the world a safer and more just place. Her research improved the success rate for detecting fingermarks on difficult surfaces. This helped to improve crime resolution and, ultimately, increase public safety.
Her mentorship, supervision, and public outreach work demonstrates her commitment to the next generation of forensic scientists (and young scientists in general). Dr Lam mentored and supervised students and peers at UTS and continues to do so at the RCMP and with McGill University in Montreal.
In Sydney, her outreach included being a part of the Sherlock Holmes Exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum and giving forensic science workshops to high school students. In Canada, she gets involved with annual events such as Take Our Kids to Work Days and National Police Week.
Dr Lam has volunteered with various local and national organisations throughout her studies and career. She is increasingly in demand on an international level – having her research presented to the International Fingerprint Research Group, being invited to join a panel discussion at an International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) Global Women's Breakfast, and recently being selected to become a Special Committee member for the International Association for Identification.
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Bachelor of Midwifery, 2010
Melanie is a trailblazer who is making a profound difference to the health of Indigenous mothers and babies in her region. A descendant of the Dharawal and Gumbaynggirr people, Melanie was the first endorsed Aboriginal midwife in NSW and is one of only two endorsed Aboriginal midwives in Australia.
Melanie is a senior midwife at Waminda South Coast Aboriginal Women’s Health and Welfare Corporation and heads up the Minga Gudjaga 'Mother and Baby' Maternity Service. Recognised as a model for ‘Closing the Gap’, Waminda is Aboriginal-led and community controlled, and guided by the principles of self-determination. Melanie is the lynch-pin of the maternity service, providing cultural guidance and leadership to other midwives and members of the research team.
A keystone of Waminda’s service is the innovative Birthing on Country program. Melanie has worked on the program for the last five years and was involved in its development. The ground-breaking program is designed to profoundly improve maternal, infant and child health and life outcomes. It empowers Indigenous women to have more control over the birth of their babies and will ideally be rolled out to other regions.
Melanie also spearheaded a campaign to gain visiting rights at her local hospital in order to ensure women in her care were provided with a culturally safe birthing environment. Her campaign led to a statement of commitment being signed with the Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District (ISLHD) – possibly the only one of its kind in Australia.
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Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Social Inquiry) Bachelor of Laws, 2012
Amani Haydar is a lawyer, writer and artist who makes a remarkable contribution to the community through her professional, volunteer, creative and advocacy work – despite having faced incredible trauma in her personal life.
Amani has been a passionate advocate and campaigner for ending violence against women since her father murdered her mother in 2015. She takes a multidisciplinary approach to raising awareness about gender-based violence, law, policy and the effects of structural inequality on women.
She serves on the board of the Bankstown Women’s Health Centre and in this capacity she worked with her local MP to lobby for changes to the law to allow for victims of domestic violence to access support. She has drafted submissions to the NSW Sentencing Council and advocated for changes to Parental Leave legislation.
She has also been an Artist in Residence at Sweatshop, a literary movement devoted to empowering culturally and linguistically diverse communities through reading, writing and critical thinking.
Last year Amani was named 2020 Local Woman of the Year for Bankstown and was a finalist for the NSW Premier’s Woman of the Year Award. A Community Recognition Statement was also tabled in NSW Parliament in recognition of her advocacy. Amani’s writing and illustrations have been featured in a range of publications including ABC News Online and SBS Voices. She has contributed to a Walkley Award winning journalism series and been a finalist in the Archibald Prize for her painting. Her debut memoir was published by Pan Macmillan in June 2021.
Amani was carving out a successful career as a litigator when her mother was murdered. Prior to graduating, she was a stand-out student at UTS who was already committed to making a difference.
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Master of Business (Banking and Finance), 1995; Graduate Diploma in Banking and Finance, 1994; Graduate Certificate in Finance, 1993
Don Koch is an accomplished leader with global expertise in the finance sector – particularly digital banking, where he specialises in creating value by focusing on shareholder and customer outcomes.
His stakeholder and regulator relationship skills, combined with international cross-cultural awareness and market knowledge, have been utilised in senior executive roles at banks around the world.
Don started his career with various roles at the Commonwealth Bank, before progressing to Citibank before joining ING in Australia in 1999. He was the CIO and technical leader of the program to launch ING Direct in Australia and Italy. He then became Chief Operating Officer in Poland, then India, and then in Thailand with TMB Bank PCL. Don was then appointed CEO and managing director of ING DIRECT in Australia, which was followed by similar roles at ING Italia and ING Asia. He is currently Non-Executive Director and the Chairman of BNK Group; as well as Chair of the Remuneration Committee.
He is also a member of the Board of Glaucoma Australia and a Governor of the Research Foundation at the Cerebral Palsy Alliance.
Don is a highly valued member of the UTS Business School community. He is a member of the Business School’s Industry Advisory Board, regular guest speaker at UTS events and a mentor to staff and students. Together with his wife Jennifer, Don recently created a scholarship to support rural female candidates who may not have the financial means to study in Sydney.
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Bachelor of Business, 2012
David Brennan is a senior executive in the investment management industry and a seasoned non-executive director across the finance services, healthcare and not-for-profit landscapes in Australia, Singapore and New Zealand.
David began his investment career at Macquarie Bank as a graduate and currently serves as the Principle - Business Development at AustralianSuper, which is Australia’s largest superannuation fund and one of the largest pension funds globally.
As treasurer of the foundation, A Start in Life (which supports disadvantaged young people in rural areas), he set about aligning the organisation’s financial and strategic goals.
As a young member of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia, he helped establish mentoring and professional development events for his peers in the industry. He is now a Fellow of the Institute.
He was also the founding Chairman of the Dry July Foundation, which raises money for cancer support services and now operates in several countries.
More recently, David has focused on organisations whose goals align with his passion for health. He believes in ‘exercise as medicine’ and is currently Chair of the Australian College of Sport and Exercise Physicians.
As Director of the Society for Hospital Pharmacists Australia, David helps address issues such as the opioid epidemic. The wellbeing of doctors is in his sights as Chair of Doctors Health Service Australia. He also sits on the Board finance committee at the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) and promotes equal access to healthcare for all women.
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