In addition to career long experience leading adult and community education organisations, Shanti is an experienced adult educator and researcher. She has been a LLEN Executive Officer, Community Liaison Officer (Melton) for Victoria University, and worked for 15 years in adult education as Executive Officer in Colac and Business Development Manager in Geelong.

Shanti completed her PhD on The Practice and Progress of Geelong as a Learning City in 2004 and has extensive experience in action research. She applied this expertise to her work with the Geelong Region Local Learning and Employment Network (GRLLEN) assisting the 17 secondary schools involved in the Expanded Pathways, Improved Transitions (EPIT) Project in developing their action research skills in order to improve the outcomes for their students. The effectiveness of this was recognised by the award of Geelong’s ‘Researcher of the Year’ in 2008 and again in 2011 to the Project.

As an independent educational consultant, Shanti has developed plans and conducted evaluations for a range of community and educational organisations. She was a principal researcher for Deakin University’s Evaluation of the Workplace Learning Coordinators Program (2010-2011) and principal consultant for Improving Communications in the Workplace – A national strategy for increasing participation in workplace literacy training for production workers in manufacturing for MESAB (2009). In 2008 she completed a report on the lessons learned from the Victorian Learning Towns Program for the Victorian Department of Planning and Community Development and reviewed the Adult and Community Education funding model for the Department of Education NSW. She has completed a year-long evaluation of The BizE Centre and Work’s 4 Me, two work placement programs for disengaged young people conducted by YouthNow, a Workplace Learning Coordinators Program in Melbourne’s West.

Shanti was a Research Fellow and sessional Lecturer in Deakin University’s Faculty of Arts and Education. In that role, she was a principal researcher for the Formative Evaluation of the Workplace Learning Coordinators’ Program 2010-11, for DEECD. She has undertaken research for the School Centre for Teaching Excellence Project at Northern Bay College, Geelong and for the University’s First in Family Project.