MsMegan Gilmour

Megan Gilmour is a social innovator, global education ambassador for children with complex school attendance and health conditions, tech entrepreneur and champion for human-centred solutions to complex social problems. She is CEO & Cofounder of MissingSchool & Robots4Good.

Summary: Megan is a governance expert on students with complex health conditions and has pioneered and executed world-first solutions through high-level action. Her career, started in a government minister's office, and evolved to leading senior global experts to manage complex large-scale social and economic development interventions across 24 countries. A Deakin University Honorary Fellow, author/adviser to national reports, policy driver, and media voice, Megan's lived experience and challenger spirit, leverages systemic innovations.

Publications: Authored or contributed to publications on issues of Australian national interest.

• 2015 School connection for seriously sick kids: Who Are They, How Do We Know What Works, and Whose Job Is It? generated a Australian Prime Minister's statement of support and 170+ syndicated national media articles
• 2018 Missing School – Telepresence Robots: Building Better Practice for Connecting Students with Serious Illness or Injury to their Classrooms. Canberra, ACT
• 2021 publication Don't Wait Until They're Well: School Policy And Technology To Keep Sick Kids Connected applies the public policy hierarchy she configured to achieve a national education policy pathway before the 2022 Australian Election
• 2023 article for United Nations SDG Action Campaign: MissingSchool Initiative Bridges the Educational Gap for Health-compromised Children
• 2024 360info article Blockbuster Lesson for Schools on Kids in Classrooms calls for a reimagining of school attendance, moving beyond physical presence to embrace the possibilities of "learn from anywhere" digital telepresence
• 2025 global public policy article on Open Access Government Why “learn-from-anywhere” technology can help solve chronic school absence
• 2025 Why schools must have a seat at the economic reform table  observes that as Australia plans economic reform, schools remain sidelined. But no lasting productivity gains are possible without fixing the foundation: our education system
• 2025 Chronically absent, systematically forgotten: What NAPLAN doesn’t show posits that beneath every ‘achievement’ statistic lies the conspicuously unaddressed problem of chronic school absence. Why isn't anyone talking about it?

Innovations: Co-founded tech startup Robots4Good virtual care solution for education, aged care, health and industry (2019). Designed a dynamic world-first innovation for Australia-wide systemic implementation to connect children with chronic medical and mental conditions to their classrooms through telepresence robots (2017). Initiated activities engaging 500+ schools, training 700+ teachers, capturing data through 1,500+ surveys and interviews with parents and teachers.

MissingSchool - Key Achievements (2015-2024)

• Initiated an Australia-first report on school connection for kids with complex health conditions, with a Prime Minister’s statement of support and widespread media (2015)
• Led the activation and methodology for the first Commonwealth report auditing state and territory education practices for students with health conditions (2016; 2019)
• Conducted research on responses in six countries through Churchill Fellowship (2017)
• Launched world-first national school telepresence service (2017)
• Secured policy approval for school telepresence service in every state/territory (2018-22)
• Designed and ran a policy project to guide NSW Education on scaling telepresence (2020)
• Secured tri-partisan support for solving school isolation through meetings with MPs (2021-22)
• Developed and presented a policy impact paper with Centre for Policy Futures at University of Queensland and the Winston Churchill Trust (2020-21)
• Activated Ministerial trigger for Commonwealth policy implementation of a new “health condition” absence code for national implementation (2022)
• Provided expert testimony (picked up in media coverage) on Senate inquiry into the national trend of school refusal (2023). See MissingSchool submission #62
• Implemented Seen&Heard in an Australia-wide pilot for Emerging Priorities Program with Commonwealth small competitive grant funding (2023-24)
• Launched Seen&Heard Helpline managing ~600 monthly interactions and National Insights for Education Directories including 300+ health consumer organisations (2023-24)
• Released primary and secondary school empathetic peer animations, reaching 57,000 views (2024)
• Developed a 30-unit teacher training framework and digital forum for production (2023-24)
• Translated ~7,000 data points into a world-class dataset for research (2018-2024)
• Generated 370+ earned television, radio, print, and digital media articles (2015-24)
• Connected 7,050+ classmates, trained 700+ teachers, conducted 1,390+ teacher/parent surveys and interviews (2018-24)
• Invited to write thought leadership articles for international policy audiences (2024)
• Achieved $3 million in market-rate media pro bono, and a social advocacy campaign creating 4.6 billion impressions and reaching 14.1 million Australians (2024)

Awards: ACT Australian of the Year and national finalist (2025); Deakin University Honorary Fellow (2023); Deakin Alumnus of the Year (2020); Churchill Policy Impact Fellow (2020); Australian Financial Review 100 Woman of Influence (2019); Canberra Business Women’s Award in Innovation (2019) ACT For Purpose and Social Enterprise Winner Telstra Business Women’s Awards (2019); Australian of the Year Finalist ACT (2018); TEDx Talk (2018); Churchill Fellow (2016).

Grants & Partners: Secured >$15 million pro bono contributions through partnerships with Australia Post, UnLtd, Cocogun, Scoundrel, Zenith Media, Half Dome Digital, G-Squared. More than 58 education, health, advertising and media, NGO, and private sector partners. Written and won over $2.36 million in grant funding.

Media & Spokesperson: As a keynote speaker and media spokesperson, Megan has a TEDx Talk (with over 967,000 views, and more than 83,000 likes/1,113 comments). Since 2013, Megan has been interviewed/consulted in 400+ television/digital/radio/print-press articles and made 50+ keynotes/presentations on school isolation/attendance, telepresence robots, entrepreneurship, and changemaking.