Revealed: Where 70 chief executives of top Australian companies attended high school
Many of Australia’s top CEOs went to blue-chip private colleges – but some reckon a public education at their local high school gave them a leadership edge.
Will going to one of Australia’s top private schools boost your child’s chance of becoming a CEO of one of the country’s top companies?
Exclusive analysis by News Corp shows elite schools give kids a slight edge, but attendance offers no guarantee of success.
Examination of the high schools attended by 70 CEOs of top Australian companies reveals 55 per cent are privately educated, narrowly outnumbering their publicly educated peers. Just 36.7 per cent of all Australian primary and secondary students attend private schools.
Institutions listed in News Corp’s Top 100 Private Schools feature prominently, including list-topper Sydney Grammar School, where Afterpay founder and Reshop CEO Anthony Eisen graduated from in 1989.
Top 10 school Pymble Ladies College, where Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson finished up in 1987, also made the list.
Overseas schools account for 30 per cent of the colleges attended by the 70 prominent CEOs. The CEO list was compiled through interviews with the high-flyers and background information on the public record.
It shows there is no single pathway to corporate domination, given that it features underdogs who never graduated from school, including Melbourne Airport CEO Lorie Argus and Worley CEO Chris Ashton.
And many of the country’s best-known corporate leaders, including warring supermarket chiefs Amanda Bardwell of Woolworths and Leah Weckert of Coles, started out at their local public high schools.
School photos unearthed by News Corp show Seven Group CEO Ryan Stokes as a fresh-faced student of the private Christ Church Grammar in Western Australia, and two top CEOs, Andrew Yates of KPMG Australia and Dig Howitt of Cochlear, serving as captain and vice-captain on the same cricket team at the private Canberra Grammar School.
Private schools have an edge, but public schools foster independence
Soul Patts CEO Todd Barlow, who graduated from Sydney public school Hunters Hill High in 1996, said it was hard to deny the opportunities available to private school students were “very good”.
“When I look at the facilities and opportunities that are at the private schools that my kids go to, I would’ve flourished in that environment,” he said.
“The networks that you’re tapped into are very positive, and I think that there’s a real focus on excellence at those top schools, with passionate teachers who are dragging you along.
“At my school you wouldn’t have known any lawyers or doctors anything like that – those sorts of things were all foreign to us.”
But public schooling had its advantages for lawyer-turned-CEO Mr Barlow, who took the top job at ASX-listed investment firm Soul Patts in 2015 and whose salary in 2024 was $1.6m.
“Hunters Hill wasn’t a particularly academic school – it certainly wasn’t well-resourced – but I think what my school gave me was teaching me that I had to be self-directed,” he said.
“I had to make my own path because there wasn’t the same discipline or expectations that many of the private schools provide. I actually saw that play out at university where I thrived in the unstructured environment.
“It also made me realise that I had to work harder than the next person in my career – I always felt like I was starting the race from behind, and I think that can be a good thing. You turn a disadvantage into a motivating force.”
Academic success not the only indicator of leadership potential
Mr Barlow graduated top of his class, but like many students who go on to become business leaders, studying was not the only area in which he excelled.
He was also school captain, achieved success in multiple sports and was editor of The Fig Leaf, the school newspaper.
Under his leadership, The Fig Leaf was crowned the state’s top school newspaper, winning him a cadetship at News Corp – an opportunity he ultimately turned down to study law at University of Technology Sydney.
Executive coach Dan Auerbach said students developed leadership skills through sports programs and extra-curricular activities offered by schools more than academic study.
“Sometimes that’s where private schools have a bit of an edge,” he said. “They’re able to put more time beyond the basic learning into sports, extra-curricular culture building programs, personality building programs. It’s a really unfair advantage, but it does exist.”
Mr Auerbach, who has worked with top Australian CEOs, said some leaders were inspired by great teachers who encouraged their interest in a particular subject – “but that then becomes somebody who’s a subject matter expert, not necessarily a leader”.
“Leadership skills really happen more through either the sporting arena, or the schools that have got extra-curricular activities where they’re asking the kids to be leaders in various ways.”
The CEOs who moved too fast to finish school
Mr Auerbach said there was also a subset of top CEOs who had been “almost defined by their resistance to their schooling experience”.
“Those are the ones that might be seen as disruptive or not really that engaged in school – really do a mediocre job of it – just because they’re wanting to move at a much faster pace,” he said.
“In current parlance you might say some of them display traits of either ADHD or even learning difficulties like dyslexia, but they’re extremely quick problem-solvers, and they’ve got a bias for action.”
Melbourne Airport CEO Lorie Argus, who did not graduate in her final year at Victoria Composite High School in Alberta, Canada in 1990, said this description rang true for her.
“People used to say, ‘you’re so mature for your age’,” she said. “By 17, I had my first apartment, I was working full-time, I was paying bills, I was moving on with my career.
“I came from a bit of a broken home. I moved in between parents back and forth, I moved to (different) towns throughout that period.
“My schoolwork just wasn’t my main priority at the time, and that ultimately resulted in not completing grade 12.”
Instead, Ms Argus focused on her start in the aviation industry, beginning in entry-level jobs as she followed in the footsteps of her air traffic controller father.
In 2022 she was appointed CEO of Melbourne Airport, which turned over more than $1.2bn in revenue and had 36.5m passengers in the 2024-25 financial year.
Balancing study and practical experience
“I always had a fast-paced energy and attitude, and impatience,” Ms Argus said. “I still thrive to do things quickly, keep things moving.
“I certainly gravitated more towards hands-on experience than I did to just picking up a textbook.
“The advice I’d give my daughter now (who is in year 12) is that there’s a path for both. In your studies, you can learn some very valuable lessons around academic models that you can apply to different strategies and decision making, but I don’t think you can underestimate what real life experience gives.”
Ms Argus returned to study in 2016 as a mature-age student, completing an MBA at Bond University.
“I was a far better student in my 40s, because I had that 30 years of experience before I went back,” she said.
Her story echoes that of Chris Ashton, CEO of global engineering firm Worley, who left school in England at 16 to take an apprenticeship in a shipyard, before going on to study electrical engineering at a night school and later completing an MBA.
Mr Ashton said by the time he attended night school he was “incredibly motivated” and credited his first boss as an electrical apprentice for instilling in him a passion for learning.
“People have the capacity to achieve great things, but not everyone has the same access to the opportunities available,” he said. “Sometimes we need someone to believe in us and support our dreams, to light the spark and show us what’s possible.”
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Originally published as Revealed: Where 70 chief executives of top Australian companies attended high school
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