Meet the 2024 Alumni Award winners

The annual Alumni Awards are an opportunity for us to celebrate the strengths of our alumni community. Nominees are judged on their integrity, creativity, determination, leadership, resilience, compassion and achievement. These awards are an opportunity for us to recognise the strengths of our alumni community, acknowledge their career achievements and celebrate their global impact.

Join us in celebrating our incredible winners! Read on to hear more from our six Alumni Award winners and seven Graduate Medallists.

Katherine Bennell-Pegg (BE(Aerospace)(Hons) '08, BSc '08)
Australian Astronaut, Australian Space Agency

What piece of advice would you give your younger self?
Going the extra mile is more important than talent alone. (Doors will open you can't even imagine.)

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. (The more experienced I get the more basic the questions I ask.)

Embrace not being the smartest or most qualified in the room. (This is how you learn the most, how you can also see things others can't, and add unexpected value with fresh ideas.)

Anything can be learned with sufficient time and effort. (Effort is more important than talent alone - even on astronaut training!)

Kip Williams (BA (Media & Comm) '09)
Artistic Director, Sydney Theatre Company

What piece of advice you would give your younger self?
The most rewarding moments in my work have come from taking a big creative leap of faith into the unknown. My advice would be to pursue the ideas that stretch you beyond what you think you are currently capable of. We can be guaranteed a level of success in doing things we already know how to do well, but the greatest growth and inspiration comes from doing that which we do not yet know whether or not we can do.

Dr Richard Brennan AO (MBBS ’84)
Regional Emergency Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, World Health Organization

What piece of advice would you give your younger self?
Do not neglect your spiritual life. As you get caught up in the pressures of study, work, family life, and social life, reserve some time each day – regardless of how short – to reflect, meditate or pray. Feeding your soul daily will be an enormous help in your personal and professional development, and in your relationships.

Phoebe Saintilan-Stocks (BA '15, LLB '16, MPACS '19)
Founder, Missing Perspectives

What piece of advice would you give your younger self?
One of the (many!) lessons I have learned over the last few years is to take the risk and try new things that might seem scary at the time. It's a mindset that has served me personally and professionally - but it definitely took me a while to get to that point. I was that university graduate with a 10-year career plan all mapped out - but my career ended up taking twists and turns that I would never have expected or planned. As a law graduate who wanted to become a human rights lawyer, I would never have pictured myself working at a media startup or journalism - but looking back, all the roles early on in my career really pointed me in this direction and you can really connect the dots looking backwards. Even the roles that didn't seem like a good fit for me at the time ended up teaching me lessons that I took into the next role I embarked on. The key thing to remember is your dream job might not exist yet, so just follow your passion and gut instincts, take the risks, and see where it takes you.

Louise Herron (LLB '82, BA '86)
CEO, Sydney Opera House

What piece of advice would you give your younger self?
To embrace uncertainty. While the world is unpredictable and plans change, what matters is how we respond. I’ve always loved being thrown off course. It’s exciting. So instead of worrying about far-off ambitions, I prefer to be ready for whatever challenges and opportunities arise and approach them with curiosity and joy.

George Peppou (BSc '12)
CEO and Founder, Vow

What piece of advice would you give your younger self?
A shocking amount of the world is built on blindly followed dogma, if you think something can be done better it likely can. It's a lot easier to prove that by doing it than to convince others to do things differently. Being relentlessly curious is a powerful tool to do this, hone and use this skill at every opportunity.

Each year, we award Graduate Medals in six categories to our newest alumni in recognition of their achievements in a number of categories. The awards celebrate the recipient’s visionary leadership, excellence and dedication early in their career. This year, we awarded two medals for sporting achievement.

Read on to meet our medallists.

Congratulations to our 2024 Alumni Award Winners and Graduate Medallists. Know an outstanding alum? Find out more about the nomination process.