Introducing you to our Editors

Lena Gan, Program Director of the Master of Ageing courses

Lena is the Program Director for the Master of Ageing courses. She has consulted for over 25 years in sustainable communities, business, marketing and management. Sectors include: financial services, technology, state and local government, not-for-profit arts, academia, architecture, hospitality, health and fitness, and education. She has developed community plans and Positive Ageing Accords, facilitated forums around ageing, and undertaken reviews in the ageing sector for local government.
She holds a Master of Environment and Project Management Professional qualifications. Lena worked for eight years in Paris, Barcelona and Brussels with multi-national clients on pan-European projects. She has also held executive director roles in the not-for-profit arts sector in Australia and worked as a researcher in education and architecture at the University of Melbourne. Areas of interest include interdisciplinary practice and societal problems such as ageing and climate change.

Dr Ruth Williams, Academic Convenor of the Hallmark Ageing Research Initiative and Research Fellow at the Centre for Workplace Leadership

Ruth’s research on social gerontology focuses on the relationship between age and the labour market. She has project managed research exploring the experiences, meaning and importance of older worker’s work-life transitions, employer attitudes, workplace policy, the relationship between health and employment, and caregiving and labour force participation. She has also worked in collaboration with a number of industry partners and organisational case studies from domestic and international government, university and private sectors to identify and implement strategies to maximise the benefits of an ageing workforce. Ruth is the author of the Age Management Toolkit for Employers and has previously worked as a Research Fellow at the National Seniors Productive Ageing Centre and in the Faculty of Business and Economics at Monash University.