Webinar Replay: Signs Were Always There: A Conversation on Seeing Every Student Sooner

Nikki Bonus is an Australian founder, educator, keynote speaker and education technology innovator who has spent more than two decades working inside Australian schools to ensure every child is seen, safe, heard, connected and capable — regardless of background, identity, postcode or circumstance. She is the Founder and CEO of Life Skills GO, an Australian-built, AI-powered early identification, engagement, learning and school improvement platform. Life Skills GO gives schools and the support networks around them real-time visibility of what may be preventing students from attending, participating, belonging and learning — automatically surfacing the right evidence to the right person at the right time, without adding to educator workload. The platform's purpose is clear: to connect information, reduce unnecessary burden on schools, and equip educators and decision-makers with the evidence they need to act earlier. Because earlier action changes outcomes. Belonging drives engagement. Engagement drives attendance. Attendance drives attainment. Life Skills GO was not designed from the outside. It was built from the ground up over nine years, co-designed in direct partnership with more than 1,000 Australian schools — shaped by students, teachers, school leaders, wellbeing teams, psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists, child development experts, learning support staff, families and carers. This multidisciplinary foundation — spanning data analysis, education design, cognitive neuroscience, child development and research evaluation — ensures the platform is grounded in evidence, tested in practice and built to generate insights that are meaningful at the classroom, school and system level. Nikki came to this work not as a technologist, but as a practitioner. For 15 years before founding Life Skills GO, she worked directly inside schools delivering social-emotional learning programs. The problem Life Skills GO was built to solve was not identified from a distance — it was surfaced from within. Students needed a structured, safe way to communicate what they were experiencing. Teachers needed real-time visibility of patterns forming beneath the surface. Wellbeing teams needed earlier signals before situations escalated to crisis. Leaders needed whole-school trend data to inform resourcing, planning and improvement. Families needed a clearer picture of their child — not just academic results or behaviour incidents. At scale, Life Skills GO gives schools the infrastructure to see what is unfolding in a student's world before it becomes a crisis — to understand why it may be happening, and to know what to do next. It enables evidence to inform not only individual support, but whole-school improvement and the broader network of people working around every child. The platform was built with more than 1,000 Australian schools across government, Catholic, independent, specialist and hospital settings. Its 15 million student check-in responses represent one of the largest real-time evidence bases on student wellbeing ever assembled in this country — with state-by-state data published openly by jurisdiction. Nikki's conviction has not changed since the beginning: no child should fall through the cracks because of the circumstances they were born into. Every child can thrive when they are met with the right environment, the right skills, the right support and the right tools at the right time. Life Skills GO exists to make that possible — consistently, equitably and at scale.

Julian Leeser has been the Federal Member for Berowra since July 2016. He currently serves as Shadow Minister for Education and Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians. As the Federal Member for Berowra Julian has been a vocal advocate for the local community. Serving the community through elected office has been a life-long passion for Julian. He was the youngest councillor in Australia when he was elected to Woollahra Council at age 19 and an elected delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1998 aged 21. Julian has degrees in Arts and Law from the University of NSW and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He spent a year as a Visiting Fellow at the Taubman Centre at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and was the recipient of the 2024 McKinnon Prize for Political Leadership. Prior to his election, Julian was variously a senior executive at Australian Catholic University, Executive Director of the Menzies Research Centre, a lawyer at Mallesons Stephen Jacques (now King & Wood Mallesons) and was an associate to High Court Justice Ian Callinan. Julian served on several boards including Mercy Health and Teach for Australia. Julian is a person of faith and is committed to a strong diverse Australia. Julian is the first Jewish person elected to the House of Representatives from New South Wales for the Liberal Party. Julian is passionate about the Australian Constitution and proud of its link to the electorate of Berowra. In 1891 a group including Australia’s first Prime Minister, Sir Edmund Barton, and the first Chief Justice of the High Court Sir Samuel Griffith, took the steamer Lucinda up the Hawkesbury from Brooklyn and worked on the first draft of the Australian Constitution. Julian was born and raised in Sydney and lives in the Berowra electorate with his wife Joanna, their son James, and daughter Ruth.