Versatile award-winning composer and performer Kate Miller-Heidke is QUT’s Alumnus of the Year.
A graduate of the university’s Creative Industries Faculty, Ms Miller-Heidke has made an impressive contribution to Australian culture.
Singing long before she could speak, Ms Miller-Heidke’s work traverses the worlds of contemporary, pop, folk and opera.
An inspiration to current and aspiring artists, Ms Miller-Heidke has forged an independent path, breaking crowd-funding records with her latest album O Vertigo! which debuted at number four on the Australian album charts.
Accepting the award, Ms Miller-Heidke said recognition by a respected institution gave music a weight and a gravity in the larger culture.
“A culture which at times seems intent on undermining the value of music and the arts, in an era when it has never been needed more,” she said.
“The arts fill the vacuum left behind, for want of a better word, spirituality and spirituality is a necessary function of being human.
“I want to live in a world where beauty, storytelling, the sublime and the wonderful fill that vacuum. Today the arts are the closest thing we have to magic.”
Also classically trained at the Queensland Conservatorium, Ms Miller-Heidke has appeared in high-profile operas across the world and her self-composed opera, The Rabbits, based on the Australian book of the same name, won four Helpmann Awards including Best Score and Best New Australian work.
With four studio albums released, Ms Miller-Heidke has achieved multi-platinum status and had eight ARIA nominations. Her albums and singles have appeared in the top 10 charts many times over.
Ms Miller-Heidke’s humanitarian and compassionate traits are well-known through her advocacy for MTV EXIT (End Exploitation and Trafficking), an initiative that raises awareness and increases prevention of human trafficking and slavery. She has also donated five per cent of all income generated by O Vertigo! to the World Wide Fund for Nature to preserve the Great Barrier Reef.
Ms Miller-Heidke is also QUT’s Creative Industries Faculty Outstanding Alumni Award winner.
The annual QUT Outstanding Alumni Awards recognise outstanding graduates of the university (and predecessor institutions), who have displayed exceptional professional, academic or research achievements and contributions to the community.
The other QUT Outstanding Alumni Awards are:
Young Alumnus of the Year: Jessa Rogers
Ms Rogers achieved first-class honours in a Bachelor of Education (Secondary) and Bachelor of Creative Industries (Drama). A mother at 16, Ms Rogers strove to gain her education and last year became the founding principal of a unique boarding school for Indigenous teenage mothers and their children, the Cape York Girl Academy.
Special Excellence Award: Paul Quilliam
Mr Quilliam holds an Executive Master of Business Administration. He drew upon the expertise of his EMBA cohort and QUT Business School, gained bi-partisan political support and grants of $5.5 million each from the Federal and State governments and sponsorships to establish Hummingbird House, a ‘home away from home’ for children with life-limiting illness and their families to gain respite, support and end-of-life care.
Special Excellence Award and Faculty of Health Outstanding Alumni Award: Greg Dower
After graduating from QUT in 1992 with Bachelor of Applied Science (Distinction) Podiatry, Mr Dower went on to play an integral role in the establishment of my FootDr, which is a podiatry group treating more than 75,000 patients across 20 clinics in Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and China. His entrepreneurial spirit and enthusiasm for excellence in clinical outcomes has seen him advance podiatric technologies that have been adopted worldwide.
Special Excellence Award: Dr Lim Su Lin
Dr Lim Su Lin completed her QUT doctoral studies as an external student in conjunction with her role as chief dietician and senior assistant of the Dietetics Department at the National University Hospital (NUH) in Singapore. Dr Lim is best known for designing the three-minute nutrition screening tool to help identify those Singaporeans at risk of malnutrition.
Business School Outstanding Alumni Award: Caitlin Wilson
Ms Wilson is a Bachelor of Business Management graduate is currently Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of Australia to the United Nations. Her most recent Canberra-based role was leading the G20 Development Working Group while one of Ms Wilson’s strongest international community contributions has been supporting gender equality, including the education of girls in Papua New Guinea and the recruitment and retention of women in the law and justice sector of Solomon Islands.
Faculty of Education Outstanding Alumni Award: Maryanne Walsh
Since completing a Bachelor of Education (Secondary), Ms Walsh has held various roles and is currently principal of Centenary Heights State School in Toowoomba with responsibility for more than 1600 students across three campuses. In addition to its mainstream campus, the school also has a vocational TAFE program which delivers trade training and accreditation to students completing their Queensland Certificate of Education. Ms Walsh has overseen the development of an award-winning Flexi School (capped at 70 students), at the campus which caters for at-risk young people who have become disenfranchised from mainstream education.
Faculty of Science and Engineering Outstanding Alumni Award: Richard Eastes
Graduating from QUT with a Bachelor of Information Technology, Mr Eastes was integral in growing car rental comparison site VroomVroomVroom from a small start-up company into a multi-national organisation with an annual turnover of $60 million. His latest endeavour is GreenSocks, an online business that applies an Uber model to gardening services. A well-regarded member of the start-up community, Mr Eastes shares his knowledge by providing mentorship and resources for aspiring entrepreneurs at River City Labs.
Faculty of Law Outstanding Alumni Award: Roman Quaedvlieg
A Bachelor of Arts (Justice Studies) graduate Mr Quaedvlieg is Australia’s first Australian Border Force Commissioner responsible for protecting the country’s physical frontline. The Australian Border Force is a key agency in government efforts to target national security threats and employs counter-terrorism units at Australia’s major airports. His achievements include leading investigations into major criminal activity such as drug trafficking, people smuggling and child sex tourism offences.
Media contact: Rose Trapnell, 0407 585 901 or media@qut.edu.au.
