A warm welcome to Kelly McCarthy, (Deputy Manager, Flinders NT) and Michael Keating, (Executive Officer) who both recently began working in the College, based in Alice Springs.
Kelly McCarthy hails from the US state of Montana, which he left at the age of 19 to commence service in the US Air Force. He served for 23 years in the Defence and Intelligence Communities including eight years alongside Australian Defence Forces. During this time Kelly earned a Bachelor of Science in Professional Aeronautics from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and later an MBA in Global Business from University of Texas at Dallas.
After returning to Montana in 2008, he joined a regional banking firm where he was tasked with improving profitability and modernization ahead of the firm’s impending IPO.
In 2012 Kelly was elected to the Montana House of Representatives where he continued to serve until he and his wife Glenda (a long time Territorian), returned to Central Australia in 2018. While serving in the Montana legislature, Kelly led the Minority Budget team where his policy efforts focused largely on economic development, equality, and education.
Kelly also founded a consulting firm to focus on economic development projects when not engaged with legislative responsibilities. He oversaw a multi-year healthcare innovation pilot. The project’s aim was to trial a more holistic approach to healthcare that addressed social determinates contributing to poor health outcomes.
Upon returning to Australia, Kelly was tapped to lead the VET Trades team for Charles Darwin University. His team delivered over 800,000 hours of vocational education annually and innovated approaches that resulted in increased numbers of trades qualifications delivered onsite in remote communities.
Through his relationships with Native American communities in Montana, Kelly witnessed the adverse impacts that a lack of access to quality healthcare can have in remote communities. Seeing similar challenges in Australia, Kelly viewed the opportunity with Flinders University as a promising avenue to enhance health outcomes in remote communities in Australia.
He hopes to be able to channel a diversity of career experiences to support Flinders NT’s continued growth and innovation in their aim to improve conditions in the communities they serve.
Mike Keating hails originally from Newcastle, his early background was predominantly in sport, recreation, and tourism roles including sports coaching, management and adventure tour guiding before moving into education in 2005. For the past 15 years he has been working as a formal educator within the Australian education system as an academic and manager.
He completed a Bachelor of Social Science (Recreation & Tourism) degree through the University of Newcastle in 2002, where he majored in recreation and tourism studies. He then completed an Honours degree in Recreation and Tourism by thesis in 2003. In 2005 he was recruited to a position as a university lecturer at the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education in the Northern Territory as the Sport and Recreation Course Coordinator.
He left BIITE in mid-2008 and joined the Australian Pacific Technical College based in Vanuatu as the Tourism Course Coordinator, working for Boxhill TAFE.
His speciality area was tourism management and tour guiding. During 2008 he completed a Master in Adult Education degree at the University of Technology, Sydney where he developed his skills as an adult educator and manager of education programs to a higher level.
At the end of 2010 he returned to Australia and in early 2011 he briefly worked for the Blue Mountains International Hospitality Management School (BMIHMS), delivering the research unit in their Hospitality Management degree course. For most of 2011 he worked for Hunter Community College (HCC) in Newcastle, NSW as a VET Education Consultant and also delivered VET Diploma in Business units for Advanced Careers College.
In late 2011 he returned to BIITE in Alice Springs to be an Academic Support Advisor. In this role he managed a range of processes and was active in developing and delivering a range of support workshops and materials to support VET students and university students studying in the Australian Centre for Indigenous Knowledges and Education, a higher education partnership with Charles Darwin University.
In January of 2015 he started as Team Leader for the Tourism & Hospitality Central team of CDU, based in Alice Springs. This team delivered tourism, guiding, hospitality, commercial cookery, and butchery qualifications. He was responsible for 15 dedicated VET courses, as well as operating the “Desert Lantern”, a fine dining training restaurant open to the public. He was a senior manager for the university and a Senior Lecturer in his speciality field of Tourism.
Across his academic career he has been fortunate to experience many different educational settings and has also been involved in several research projects and publications. He is excited to be joining Flinders University and hopes to use his skills, knowledge, and experience to assist staff and students to get the most out of their time and really enjoy the opportunities on offer.