St Rita’s College’s most outstanding former students
We asked Brisbane schools to nominate their most outstanding former students and the response has been overwhelming. Today we present the most notable alumni of St Rita’s College, Clayfield.
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WE ASKED Brisbane schools to nominate their most outstanding former students and the response has been overwhelming. From Supreme Court judges to musicians, artists and more than a few politicians, their lists prove our schools have long been producing leaders in their fields and continue to do so. Today we present the most notable alumni of St Rita’s College, Clayfield.
BRISBANE HIGH SCHOOLS ALUMNI HONOUR ROLLS
* Brisbane Girls Grammar School
JULIEANNE ALROE
Businesswoman
Regarded as one of Australia’s top business leaders, Julieanne left St Rita’s in 1971 and completed a Bachelor of Economics at the University of Queensland before becoming a leader in the Australian aviation industry.
In July 2009 she was appointed CEO and managing director of the Brisbane Airport Corporation, making her one of only a handful of women in the world to run a privatised airport.
She planned the $1.3 billion development of Brisbane’s parallel runway, one of the largest infrastructure projects in Australia, before retiring in June 2018.
Previously, Julieanne held a number of executive management positions with Sydney Airport Corporation, in the commercial, operations, corporate affairs, and planning and infrastructure departments.
She has been a member of Urban Futures Brisbane, the Brisbane Infrastructure Council, and the Queensland Climate Advisory Council and has been chair of Infrastructure Australia since 2017.
Her previous board appointments include chairman of both Airports co-ordination Australia Ltd and the Airports Council International Safety and Technical Standing Committee.
She was also deputy chair of Tourism and Events Queensland until August 2018 and a board member of The Queensland Theatre Company, Australia Trade Coast Ltd and the International Grammar School Sydney.
Julieanne was appointed chair of the ERM Power Board on March 1, 2019. She is also chair of the boards of Infrastructure Australia and the Queensland Ballet, the inaugural president of the Queensland Futures Institute, and a member with each of the University of Queensland Senate, the advisory board of the Committee for Brisbane, the Council of Governors of the American Chamber of Commerce Qld and Chief Executive Women.
In 2016, Julieanne was granted an honorary doctorate from Griffith University.
ELOISE AMBERGER
Synchronised swimmer
A 2014 graduate of St Rita’s College, Eloise was a competitive swimmer at state age level, but her interest in ballet and gymnastics steered her towards synchronised swimming at the age of 11.
She first qualified for a national junior team in 2002, when she attended the Junior World Championships in Montreal.
In 2003, she began training with duet partner Sarah Bombell, in hope of competing in the 2006 Commonwealth Games. They did not realise this dream until 2010.
Eloise joined the Australian team in 2004, competing in the duet event in the Swiss Open and in the solo event at the Junior World Championships in Moscow that same year.
In 2007, she represented Australia at the World Aquatics Championships in Melbourne, qualifying for the final in the free combination event - the first time an Australian team had qualified for the final in an international synchronised swimming event.
Eloise qualified for her first Olympics in 2008, when the Australian team finished in seventh place in Beijing - the country’s highest Olympic synchronised swimming result.
In 2010, she was one of three synchronised swimmers selected to compete for Australia at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. She competed in the duet event with Sarah Bombell, finishing third.
Eloise performed in the duet and team events at the 2012 London Olympics, finishing eighth in the teams and 24th in the duets.
KATE CANTRELL
Academic and author
After leaving St Rita’s College in 2004, Kate studied education and applied linguistics at the University of Oxford and also completed a PhD in women’s travel writing.
From 2015 to 2016, she was a Visiting Lecturer at City University of London, as well as an Honorary Research Fellow in Widening Participation at King’s College London.
She was the first arts researcher in Australia to be awarded a Queensland Smart Futures Fellowship for her doctoral work on female “wandering”.
She is also the only Australian to be selected for Researchers in Schools: a prestigious postdoctoral program that employs academics to teach in London.
In 2016, Kate represented the Australian Federation of Graduate Women at the 60th Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations in New York.
She has worked on global campaigns against human trafficking and gender disparities in higher education and has taught writing in Thailand, Japan and the United Kingdom.
Her short stories, essays and poetry have been published in international magazines and journals and she is the recipient of three international writing residencies in Ireland, Wales, and Spain.
KATE MCCARTHY
Footballer
Originally a champion touch football player who represented Queensland and Australia, Kate saw Australian Rules as a new challenge and attended a training session with a friend.
A heart condition which saw her need to have a pacemaker inserted at the age of 12 has never held her back and she started playing in the QWAFL competition in 2015.
Kate was taken with the No. 82 pick by the Brisbane Lions in the 2016 AFL Women’s draft and made her debut in the Lions’ inaugural game against Melbourne in the opening round of the 2017 AFL Women’s season.
She is noted for her speed and ability to kick the ball accurately while sprinting.
At the end of the 2017 season, Kate was named in the 2017 All Australian team.
In April 2019, she joined the St Kilda club.
SR ELVERA SESTA OAM
Teacher
A renowned educator and pioneer of Catholic education for girls, Sr Elvera was sent to St Rita’s College as a Year 4 boarder in 1947 and has almost never left.
She entered the convent of the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1960 and at the same time began teaching science and mathematics at St Rita’s.
After a long stint as a classroom teacher, Sr Elvera was named deputy principal in 1986 and became principal in 1989.
She held that position for 20 years, making her the school’s longest-serving principal.
A strong believer that education has the power to change the world, Sr Elvera was embracing technological change long before other schools were doing so and embedding it into the curriculum.
She is a former board member of the Queensland Catholic Education Commission - the key body for all Catholic schools in Queensland - a member of the Curriculum Committee of the Board of Senior Secondary School Studies, which oversaw all new subject syllabuses in senior secondary education in Queensland and in 2011 received the The Courier-Mail Queensland College of Teachers Professor Betty Watts Memorial Award for Outstanding Contribution to Teaching.
That prestigious award acknowledged her 51 years of service to education as teacher, as principal of St Rita’s and as a contributor to the wider Queensland educational community.
She was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2017 for her contribution to education and in the same year was named School Leader of the Year at the Community Leader Awards.
CHRISTINE CORBETT
Businesswoman
After leaving St Rita’s at the end of 1985, Christine studied at QUT before establishing herself in the corporate world.
She held several important leadership roles at Australia Post over a 27-year period, including two years as Chief Customer Officer from 2016 to 2018, responsible for group channel operations, marketing, digital and customer experience.
Christine was interim CEO at Australia Post prior to joining Price Waterhouse Cooper in 2018 as a special Adviser, consulting for a range of clients including in the energy sector.
In June 2019, she was appointed Chief Customer Officer with AGL Energy.
LOUISE EVANS
Journalist
Louise started her career as a reporter at the Gold Coast Bulletin in 1983 before going to the nation’s capital for a two-year stint at The Canberra Times from 1984.
She became the Sydney Morning Herald’s first female sports journalist in 1987 and was appointed The Australian’s first female sports editor in 2001.
At The Australian she enjoyed a 10-year career progressing from sports editor, to national deputy chief of staff, features editor, Olympics editor, managing editor and then commercial editor.
She’s also a major sporting-event specialist, working for the Games News Service at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics as well as night communications manager at the 2012 London Olympics.
Louise has covered six Olympics and is also a published author, with her first book, Passage to Pusan, detailing her grandmother’s emotional fight to find the grave of her son, who died fighting in the Korean War at the age of 24. The book was later turned into a documentary.
She is the founding editor of the internationally-accredited AAP FactCheck unit which is responsible for keeping politicians and business leaders honest by testing their quotes and fact-checking them.
Louise is now the communications director and mentor for Women Sport Australia, the peak national body for women in sport.
In 2019 she was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in the Queen’s Honours List for services to the media and sport and was named in the Financial Review’s Top 100 Women of Influence for her services to the arts, culture and sport.
SOPHIE CONWAY
Footballer
Growing up in Brisbane, Sophie was a rising hockey star who achieved All-Australian status but found herself at a crossroads when she started succeeding in Australian Rules.
After much deliberation, it was football that won.
Sophie was playing for Zillmere in the AFL Queensland Women’s League when she was chosen by Brisbane in the 2017 AFL Women’s draft, despite having been playing for less than two seasons.
She made her debut in the Lions’ first round game against Adelaide in February 2018 and a fortnight later received a nomination for the 2018 AFL Women’s Rising Star award.
Sophie took the AFLW by storm in her first season with her accurate boot in front of goal. Sadly, she missed the entire 2019 season after rupturing her ACL but has been signed by the Lions for another two seasons.
KATIE MALYON
Lawyer
After starting out as a physical education and geography teacher, Katie was motivated to change direction and study law.
She began her legal career with Clayton Utz and was the firm’s first ever part-time employee to be made a senior associate, specialising in immigration law.
In 1996, Katie was elected president of the NSW Branch of the Migration Institute of Australia (MIA) and in 2005 established Katie Malyon & Associates, which grew to become Australia’s second largest immigration law firm and gave her the opportunity to lead and mentor women in the legal profession.
Within just five years of establishment, the corporate immigration law firm was recognised in the BRW’s Fast 100.
Katie’s firm integrated with EY’s Human Capital practice in late 2012, where she was an executive director for two years before her appointment as a member of the Migration Review Tribunal-Refugee Review Tribunal.
She was recognised as one of the best lawyers in Australia working in immigration by the AFR’s Best Lawyers Australia peer review 2009-2014 and named one of Australia’s leading corporate immigration law lawyers 2008-2014 by global legal directory Who’s Who Legal.
In 2011 she was a finalist for NSW Woman Lawyer of the Year and the following year was a finalist in the Telstra Business Women’s Award NSW.
In May 2013, Katie wrote the Law Council of Australia’s submission to the Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in relation to aspects of the 457 visa program and also appeared before the committee in Canberra.
In the first half of 2014, she was appointed to the Federal Government’s 457 visa review panel.
This year, Katie was nominated for the NSW Women Lawyers Association Mentor of the Year Award.
JUSTICE JULIE DICK
District Court Judge
After graduating from St Rita’s, Julie studied law and was admitted to the bar in December 1975, before being appointed Senior Counsel in November 1997.
She had an extensive practice in criminal law, appearing in almost 50 murder trials and many other high profile criminal matters.
Julie was a member of the Law Reform Commission (Criminal Law Subdivision), a committee member of the Queensland Bar Association and a member of the committee overseeing the 1997 Review of the Criminal Code.
She was the inaugural Parliamentary Criminal Justice Commissioner between 1998 and in December 2000 she was appointed a District Court Judge.
Julie was the president of the Children’s Court of Queensland from 2007 to 2011, Acting Supreme Court Judge in 2011 and a member of the Higher Courts Benchbook Committee since 2000.
She has also served as an acting Judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland.
In recent years, she has presided over some of Queensland’s most high-profile criminal trials.
CHRISTINE JACKMAN
Journalist
Christine began her career as a journalist with the The Courier-Mail in Brisbane in 1993, where she first began writing about politics, including the rise of Pauline Hanson and One Nation.
She has worked in New York as a foreign correspondent for News Ltd, in the Canberra press gallery, as The Australian’s social issues writer and as a feature writer for the Weekend Australian Magazine.
Christine has covered several election campaigns at close range, including the 2000 US presidential campaign as New York-based correspondent for News Corp Australia, and many federal campaigns in Australia since 1998.
She is the author of Inside Kevin 07 – The People, The Plan, The Prize and in 2013 her article “World of pain” won the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) Media Award for the best news story or feature about anaesthesia or pain medicine.
In 2014 Christine joined communications campaign consultancy Crosby|Textor as senior writer, responsible for complex issues investigation and messaging.
JUDITH ARTHY
Actress
Judith began her theatrical career in a production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible with the Brisbane Repertory Theatre in July 1957 and went on to carve out a successful stage career.
She appeared on Australian television from 1962 and made her cinematic debut in the 1966 Australian film They’re a Weird Mob.
In 1966, Judith began an extended stay in the UK where she made her mark on television before making her London West End stage debut in 1969 with William Douglas-Home’s The Secretary Bird.
In 1975 she resumed her stage and television career in Australia but eventually moved onto a high school teaching career back in Brisbane.
She also began writing, with her first novel Goodbye Goldilocks published in 1984 and her second, The Children of Mirrabooka, in 1997.
Brisbane audiences saw Judith return to the stage at La Boite Theatre in 2002 for Peta Murray’s Salt.
JUSTICE SUSAN BROWN
Supreme Court Judge
A graduate of St Rita’s in 1983, Susan took degrees in arts and law, the latter with first class
honours from the University of Queensland, following those accomplishments with a scholarship to Cambridge University, from which she returned with a Master of Laws.
She was then admitted as a solicitor in 1992, as a barrister of the Supreme Court of Queensland in 1998 and appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 2011.
Susan has long been a stalwart of the Bar Association Council and in 2015 became its first woman vice-president.
She has been a director of the Law Council of Australia, a councillor of the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting Queensland and a member of the Supreme Court Library Committee.
In 2016 she was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland and also named Woman Lawyer of the Year by the Women Lawyers Association Queensland.
LORETTA RYAN
Radio host
Loretta was a fresh-faced 17-year-old straight out of St Rita’s when she started in radio back in 1983.
Landing a job in the schedules department of Radio Ten, she also developed skills in production before being offered a cadetship in the newsroom.
After seven years, Loretta moved to Triple M where she presented news, had a stint as acting news director and co-hosted a successful afternoon entertainment/sports program Blood Sweat and Beers.
She stayed with Triple M for 16 years, before deciding to take up the challenge of breakfast co-host at Radio 4BH. That was followed by a move into the world of news-talk at Radio 4BC, where she co-hosted the afternoon shift and then the very competitive breakfast slot.
Loretta’s passion for the media has also seen her fulfil a dream to work in television. She worked as a journalist/presenter on Channel 9’s former afternoon news/lifestyle program Brisbane Extra.
Loretta’s other television credits include hosting a television entertainment program FMV TV, where she interviewed local and international celebrities. She also fronted a locally produced real estate show and home improvement program.
Loretta moved to the ABC in 2015 and has presented on all programs across ABC Radio Brisbane and was the 2016 Regional Drive presenter.
JANET MAY STEINBECK
Swimmer
Janet May Steinbeck, also known by her married name Janet Murray, was a top-class swimmer during the 1960s who competed in the Olympics and Commonwealth Games, winning two silver medals as a member of Australian relay teams.
As a 15-year-old at the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Jamaica, she won a silver medal in the women’s 4×110 yard freestyle relay, three-tenths of a second behind the world record setting Canadians.
She also swam in the individual 220-yard backstroke, finishing eighth in the final.
At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Janet won a silver medal as a member of the Australian women’s team in the 4×100-metre medley relay.
She was also part of the Australian team that came fourth in the women’s 4×100-metre freestyle relay.
Individually, she competed in the semi-finals of the 100-metre freestyle and the preliminary heats of the 200-metre freestyle.
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