Team
FOUNDER & CEO
Paul Salmon
Successful professional athlete, media personality and businessman in Australia for over 35 years. Inducted into the Australian Football League ‘Hall of Fame’. Paul has also been an entrepreneur since the age of 17 having built a number of start-ups to successful exit.
HiJo is an extension of his passion to empower our youth to better connect the physical world to the digital world and has been years in the making. Paul also enjoyed an extensive media career and was awarded the Victorian Father of the Year in 2000 along with the AFL ‘Personality of the Year’ and the ‘Australian Sports Medal’ to name a few. He is a leader in the community in his ambassadorial roles for charities over many years.
SCIENCE & RESEARCH LEAD / ADVISOR
Professor Jo Salmon
Alfred Deakin Professor.
Wife of Paul and world leading researcher in children’s physical activity. Jo’s expertise in research and school based programs has been integral to the development of HiJo.
Director of the Institute of Physical Activity and Nutrition at Deakin University, a ‘Highly Cited’ Researcher 5 years running, Founder of Transform-Us and the Australasian Society for Physical Activity [ASPA].
EDUCATIONAL ADVISOR
Dr Natalie Lander
An Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow, in the strategic research centre ‘Research for Educational Impact’ (REDI), at Deakin University. Natalie has a Bachelor of Applied Science and Education (RMIT University), Masters in Educational Psychology (QUT), Honours in Health Sciences (Deakin University) and a PhD (Deakin University).
YOUTH ADVISOR
Renee Bilby
Third-year Commerce student majoring in Economics and Finance as well as Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship course at the London School of Economics as well as Entrepreneurial Finance. She loves various art mediums, hiking and camping as well as volunteers as a Scout Leader.
LEAD TECHNOLOGY ADVISOR
George Stavrakakis
George is the former Director of both the Public and Education sectors at Microsoft. He lead the education team across multiple functions including sales, marketing, channel sales and programs
ADVISORY BOARD CHAIR
Sophie Valkan LLB, B.Com, GradDip CSP, CPA, GAICD
Sophie’s expertise covers business management and structure including strategic planning & facilitation, corporate structuring, marketing, IT, legal, risk, governance and finance with significant experience in business systems, due diligence, business acquisitions and divestitures.
SCIENCE ADVISORY TEAM:
Professor Craig Olsson Director Centre for Social and Early Emotional Development, Deakin University Expertise as a developmental psychologist focusing on children and young adult behaviours.
Associate Professor Matthew Fuller-Tyszkiewicz
Director, Data Science Unit – Deakin Strategic Research Centre for Early Emotional Development, Deakin University
Expertise in identifying individual and environmental-level determinants of mental and physical health.
Professor Doug Creighton
Deputy Director, IISRI, Deakin University. Brings expertise on modelling, simulation, AI and data analytics.
Professor Jeff Simons
Professor in Kinesiology specialising in psycho-social aspects of motor behaviour. California State University, East Bay, San Francisco.