Professor Pascale Quester | Swinburne University of Technology

In this episode of the Broken Education Podcast, host Joel Di Trapani, Co-Founder of Vygo, sits down with Professor Pascale Quester, Vice-Chancellor and President of Swinburne University of Technology, for a refreshingly direct conversation about leadership, strategy, and why higher education must let go of nostalgia if it wants to remain relevant.Pascale is one of Australia’s most distinctive higher education leaders. A globally recognised scholar in consumer behaviour and marketing, a former Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean at the University of Adelaide, and a recipient of France’s National Order of Merit (twice), she brings an uncommon mix of academic credibility, commercial thinking, and fearless clarity to university leadership.From the outset, Pascale challenges the idea of universities as “vanilla” institutions trying to be everything to everyone. She explains how Swinburne deliberately reclaimed its identity as a university of technology, built around a unifying vision: where people and technology work together for a better world. What followed was not incremental change, but strategic focus—four bold “moonshots,” the courage to say no, and a refusal to invest in work that doesn’t align with Swinburne’s purpose.