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Meet Colleen Hayward
Colleen Hayward AM has built a career that moves from the primary school classroom to the boardrooms of Mineral Resources and the Fremantle Dockers, by way of the Aboriginal Legal Service, ATSIC and Edith Cowan University. She has led a meaningful career driven by a lifelong commitment to social justice, human rights and education.
The daughter of Len Hayward, Western Australia’s first Aboriginal teacher, principal and South Fremantle premiership player, Colleen speaks candidly about the culture shock of arriving at Dalkeith Primary in the 1980s, why normalising school attendance across generations matters more than any single program, and what separates a genuine university-community partnership from a transactional one.
She reflects too on Fremantle’s standout record on Aboriginal inclusion in the AFL, what being named NAIDOC’s National Aboriginal Person of the Year meant to her, and what advice she would offer her 18-year-old self.
