Safer shared air schools webinar
It was our pleasure to host the final in our 2025 webinar series, Safer shared air in schools, on Tuesday 9th September 2025. The webinar brought together global experts to explore the role indoor air quality plays in creating safe and inclusive learning environments. Speakers shared compelling evidence and lived experiences demonstrating how inadequate ventilation in schools contributes to health risks, disrupts learning, and reinforces structural inequities - especially for students with chronic illnesses, disabilities, or who are at heightened risk of poor outcomes from airborne infections. The discussion also highlighted practical steps schools can take now, and called for stronger policy, and investment to ensure all students have access to healthy air in the classroom.
Safer shared air in schools webinar recording
If you missed the webinar or would like to revisit the discussion, you can view a recording here.
Webinar speakers
Kevin Browne-MacLeod, Chief Operating Officer, Zircon Smart Buildings
Kevin Browne-MacLeod is a senior leader with over 20 years of experience across the public, private, and voluntary sectors. A specialist in human rights. he spent over a decade leading an award-winning charity that shaped UK law, policy, and practice. He has led national training programmes for the Scottish Government, held advisory roles appointed by Scottish Ministers, and delivered international programmes with the United Nations on human rights and the environment. His contributions to social justice earned him an Honorary Doctorate. Kevin’s commitment to equity and wellbeing led to a natural transition into the built environment, where factors like air quality, damp, and mould are increasingly recognised as human rights and public health issues.
As Chief Operating Officer at Zircon Smart Buildings, he leads the company’s mission to make the invisible visible – using data and smart technology to uncover inefficiencies, enhance building health, and support Human Rights to be upheld
Kerry Goldhagen, School Principal (Retired)
Kerry Goldhagen has been working as a teacher and leader in NSW public schools since 1984 - more recently as a primary school principal of 14 years (retired in May 2025). At a local level, Kerry’s advocacy for clean air in schools has been well received by students and staff.
Prof Geoff Hanmer, Thrive
Geoff Hanmer is a Managing Director of ARINA and an Associate Director of the ARC funded research centre “Thrive”.
For the last five years he has been researching the impact of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) on the spread of pathogens. He is on the Advisory Board of the NHMRC CRE on Epidemic Response “Breathe” with Professor Raina Macintyre and is a member of the ICC Pandemic Taskforce.
His articles have been published in refereed journals, the SMH, the AFR, The Australian, the Canberra Times and The Conversation and he is regularly seen and heard on TV and radio.
Liesl McConchie, Clean Air Allies
Liesl McConchie is an international expert in cognitive neuroscience, and co-author of best-selling book Brain-Based Learning with Dr. Eric Jensen and author of Building a Positive Math Identity: A Brain Science Approach. With over 25 years of experience in education, Liesl has a rich background in education that includes creating new schools, leading whole-school reforms, delivering workshops to educators, and speaking at conferences. As a mother of three school-aged kids, Liesl has advocated for cleaner indoor air in schools to improve both health and cognition. She is the co-founder of the California Alliance for Clean Air in Schools, an advocacy organisation working to improve education, legislation, and regulation of indoor air quality in schools. Liesl also serves as the Executive Director for the Corsi-Rosenthal Foundation that deploys supplies for Corsi-Rosenthal Boxes to be placed in under-resourced schools and communities.
Dr Michelle Scoullar, Clinic Nineteen
Dr Michelle Scoullar is a paediatrician, international health specialist, and senior research fellow with expertise in health system strengthening, maternal, newborn and child health, and implementation research in the Asia Pacific Region. Michelle also leads the paediatric component of a long COVID specialist clinic, providing evidence-informed care to children and adolescents with long COVID. Her primary focus in research and clinical practice is on issues of health equity, improving child health outcomes and quality care.
Plum Stone, Founder of the Safer Air Project
Plum has worked in health policy and public affairs for the last 20 years, with experience in the UK Parliament, international public affairs agencies and in-house for patient advocacy organisations. Plum wrote her undergraduate dissertation on learning the lessons of pandemics of the past to prepare for pandemics of the future and has an MSc in Public Health (Nutrition).
As a result of Plum’s professional background, and personal lived experience with an immunocompromised and high-risk family, she has founded The Safer Air Project, with a mission to get indoor air quality recognised as a critical accessibility and inclusion issue for people living with chronic health conditions, in order to make indoor air safer for everyone to breathe.