Consultant and Staff Profiles

Craig Holmes worked in the Royal Australian Air Force as an Aircraft Mechanical Engineer from 1991 – 1997. After this period he was self employed as a graphic designer and consultant to the photographic industry from 1997 to 2000. He then trained as a Senior consultant for Learning Alliance from 2001 to 2003 and then six months for Pollak Learning Alliance.

In May 2003, he opened up his own training company (Raising the Bar Pty Ltd) specialising in mobile training for corporate enterprises. Craig has a Certificate IV in Workplace Training and Assessment and is a Microsoft Office Specialist Master Instructor who trains in all levels of Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, VBA programming, Photoshop and Project to an intermediate level.

After a successful 8 years in 5 star hospitality, John rekindled a childhood fascination with computers when he made a drastic career change in 1996 and became an apprentice computer trainer. Spending all his savings on a computer and Microsoft Office, he put himself through a rigorous self study program, as well as sitting in on countless courses with his new employer, and after 3 months was ready to train his first Excel Introduction Course early in 1997. Since then, he has worked for many prestigious training companies, as well as holding Learning & Development positions, most notably working for HSBC as their Online Learning specialist for 3 ½ years.

John also has a keen interest in web design, and has nurtured the web site flatmate.com from it’s humble beginnings to an internationally recognised share accommodation portal. John trains in all levels of Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project (certified), Word, Excel VBA, Adobe Captivate (certified) and Adobe Dreamweaver (certified).

Tom Atkins started as a Microsoft Office trainer/consultant in 1995. His credentials are best listed in point form.

• Trained and qualified as Secondary Science/Maths teacher – Newcastle University
• Worked in the NSW Education Department for seven years
• Created software development business - writing company specific applications
• Re-entered the teaching environment in 1995 as a contract Microsoft trainer
• Consulted/Worked for a number of the highest profile training authorities in Australia
• Having a Teaching Certificate allowed access to confidential statutory authorities: CSIRO, Universities, Police, Dept Of Defence etc..
• Well versed in Microsoft Excel and Access – especially VBA

Jonathon graduated with a degree in Chemistry from the University of Sydney and taught science in a high school and TAFE, whilst taking photographs in his spare time. He then worked as a commercial and fine art photographer for many years -- his photographs are have been widely published and are in a number of museum collections including the Australian National Gallery in Canberra.

He started using computers when he needed to manage a complex photographic project, then became involved in multimedia CD-ROM production. He has been involved in web development since the early days of the Web, starting with the Mosaic browser, which became Microsoft Internet Explorer. His first experience of dynamic web development was working on a Cold Fusion project in 1996.

Jonathon taught photography at tertiary level for a number of years and has been teaching web development since the late 1990's. Although he has taught Authorware, Director, Flash, Fireworks, and Captivate, his current training interests include HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript. Jonathon continues to be fascinated by the intersection of science, technology, and art and he derives a great deal of satisfaction from assisting students to gain the confidence and competence to build websites for themselves, their employers, and their clients.

Mark Van Heythuysen began his career in the training industry over fifteen years ago. For the first five years he was involved in production and sales of self-paced video and CD-ROM based software training courses. In this role, he cemented a number of strong relationships with many corporate and government clients. After gaining experience in that role, he commenced a ten year career at what was then known as ‘Pollak Partners’, starting back then as an Account Manager and finishing up in 2009 as the NSW Sales Manager at ‘Pollak Learning Alliance’.

In November 2009, after taking a few months off in the form of long service leave, Mark joined the team at ‘Raising the Bar’ in the role of Sales Manager.

With over 18 years of professional experience Randall Magro has a thorough knowledge and technical expertise in the field of graphic design and digital media. Qualifications include an Associate Diploma of Arts, Graphic Design a Diploma in Digital Media and a Certificate IV in Assessment and Workplace Training.

Randall is an excellent communicator, friendly, very patient, well-organised and really enjoys the rewards and challenges of design and digital media education. He is also passionate about new technology, design and teaching.

Randall’s teaching expertise extends to all the Adobe CS4 versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver (including CSS and Advanced CSS), After Effects, Premiere Pro, Fireworks, Flash, Acrobat and HTML.

Cerena Howell is a valuable team member who organises and maintains the training centre on a day to day basis. Cerena coordinates the training schedule and consultants, so if you would like to discuss your training requirements with her please don't hesitate to contact her on (02) 9929-8845.

Anita has had a career that has revolved around the IT industry in one way or another. With roles in sales, manufacturing, quality assurance, project management and finally training, where she has stayed. This varied work history, gave Anita her passion for computers and the opportunity to bring her two loves together – teaching and technology.

During the last 17 years Anita has been designing and delivering both Business Management and Computer Application courses to individuals, small business and large corporations in a wide variety of fields and industries. This has also involved a large amount of Consulting to develop customised solutions for the clients. Also Project Managing entire system upgrades for large companies, including their network, hardware, software and their training.

Anita’s focus as a trainer has been to sift through all the theory and bring practical knowledge to the forefront. Consistently using accelerated learning tools in all training to enhance the learning experience for the participant. This means training by using as many of the senses as possible.

Having expertise with the entire Microsoft Office Suite, allows Anita to aid the participants to integrate the varied software to the most efficient solution for their needs, and thereby increasing their proficiency in using the products.

"…My personal philosophy is that education is the first step to discovering and improving ourselves in the workplace and in life…"

Sean’s work life started with materials management in the automotive industry where his skills and passion with computers soon blended with and eventually overtook working with components and assembly lines. After a formal education in various computer programming languages his ability to communicate these concepts lodged him firmly in the IT Applications training industry. Since 1995 Sean has been working for some of Sydney’s largest IT Training companies, Delivering a mix of Microsoft Office Applications including Excel and Access VBA, HTML/CSS/Web Design, Adobe Photoshop and other image editing software.

Sean has a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment and is registered with the Australian Public Service (APS) Panel for facilitating training with Government Organisations.

Nicole Turnbull started her career as a Secretary/PA. She has worked in Retail, Medical and Legal companies providing Secretarial and Office Management services for 8 years. A career change lead to her passion for IT training. She has been delivering IT training for over 10 years and specialises in Microsoft Office and Adobe products.

She trained for 10 years for at ‘Pollak Learning Alliance’ and also worked for 2 years as the Scheduling Manager, overseeing all the courses scheduled and assigning and managing trainers.

Nicole has a Certificate IV in Workplace Training and Assessment and trains Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Word, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign (certified) & Adobe Illustrator.

She loves the challenges of training and problem solving for participants and incorporates various adult learning techniques within her training sessions. She also believes in having fun during the training day as it aids in retention and encourages participation.

Caroline Bain has been in the IT Training industry for 15 years, specialising in MS Office products. She has extensive knowledge of adult training techniques and strong communication and inter-personal skills that allow her to develop and deliver IT training courses to suit client needs.

In various roles throughout her career, Caroline has gained valuable hands-on experience of software applications and has sound workplace knowledge of the products she trains. Caroline has a Certificate IV in Workplace Training and Assessment (TAA) and is qualified as a MTM (Microsoft Training Master) in Office 2007 products. Caroline trains all levels of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Project. She also trains to an Intermediate level in Adobe InDesign.