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Our Team

Meet the Little Learners team!

Maureen Pollard

Maureen is our director and founder. She is a passionate advocate of developing children’s skills in learning to read, write and spell. Maureen has a B.Ed specializing in Learning Difficulties and has taught in Australia, England, Spain and South Africa. Maureen was awarded the Bruce Wicking Award from Learning Difficulties Australia for her contribution to education in 2012 and she continues to personally support many schools and families to improve literacy.

Alexandra Harper

Alex is Little Learners Love Literacy's CEO. Like all of the team at LLLL, Alex is passionate that all children have the opportunity to learn to read, write and spell with confidence. By spending lots of time working with teachers and children, as well as keeping up to date with the latest literacy research Alex ensures all our resources are the best they can possibly be. Alex loves to talk to teachers and your little learners and hopes to have a chat with you soon!

Amy Nicholls-Diver

Amy Nicholls-Diver is the Editorial Manager. She has extensive experience developing and editing primary literacy resources, as well as editing and project managing secondary educational texts and trade books for children. Amy is an avid reader and is passionate about making reading accessible to everyone.

Anita Mullick

Anita is our publisher - she specialises in primary and early education with experience of the UK and Australian education sectors. As a languages nerd (French, German and Spanish), Anita has always been interested in the sounds and systems of language. Anita is also an author and has written a number of engaging decodable books and teaching resources!

Erin Saunders

Erin pick, packs and dispatches your Little Learners Love Literacy® orders with gusto! We pride ourselves on our quick delivery times and Erin is behind a large number of the parcels that leave The Little Learners warehouse. Erin has two daughters and a black Labrador who sometimes likes to take a visit to the Little Learners Hub for pats and a good sniff around.

Vansh Sethi

Vansh provides our business a continuous positive direction by collating and analysing the data, and leading continous improvements in our operations. He interprets and provides solutions to mitigate our business hurdles. He has a passion for cooking delicious food, eating out at new places and loves Formula 1.

Lauren Munari

Lauren is our Senior Marketing Executive. She has had extensive experience in advertising and marketing working across various brands and industries. She has worked in the primary sector giving her a good understanding of how teachers approach learning within the school curriculum. Lauren is passionate about children meeting their full potential.

Olivia Durnan

Olivia is a primary educator who is passionate about providing every student with the opportunity to succeed when learning to read. She has experience implementing the Little Learners program in junior classrooms and has witnessed its immense impact on student achievement. Olivia is excited to play a role in supporting other educators using the program and helping as many students as possible become confident, successful readers.

Queenie Zhu

After working in hospitality for 15 years, Queenie has transferred her customer service skills and wonderful attention to detail to fulfill your orders in our warehouse. In her spare time, Queenie enjoys taking long walks in the park to take in the fresh air.

Michele Tunks

Michele is our Customer Service and Office Manager who has spent her entire working life interacting with people from diverse backgrounds and age groups. Over the years, Michele has developed a deep understanding of what makes people happy and how best to help them. Her bright and bubbly personality is infectious and she enjoys a good laugh!

Narelle Anderton

Narelle is a Primary School Teacher with 25 years of teaching experience. She has worked in many areas of school life, from Librarian through to Principal class. Narelle is passionate about Early Years Literacy and ensuring all students are provided with the best opportunities to read and write. She has experience using Little Learners Love Literacy® in the junior years classroom and has witnessed the positive impact the program has on all students. Narelle is looking forward to working with educators by supporting them to implement the Little Learners program in their own school and classroom.

Oscar Rodriguz

Oscar is a valued member of the warehouse team, efficiently picking, packing and preparing for delivery orders for our valued customers. He has a Masters of Finance and was a business administrator for his own branded sportswear in his native Columbia before moving to Australia to further his international experience. Oscar loves sport and keeps fit by cycling 30-40km a day.

Zainab Bilal

Zainab is the Digital Product Manager at Little Learners and is passionate about using technology to make education accessible for everyone. Zainab has been working on digital products in various capacities for 6+ years. She loves netball, is a massive Harry Potter fan and enjoys watching superhero movies with her boys.

Elissa Day

Elissa has joined our warehouse team after working in education support for over 10 years with students who have a range of learning needs, in both primary and secondary schools. Elissa has a passion for literacy and helping children grow their love of reading. She loves to dance, spend time with family and friends and play with her mini labradoodle.

Aastha Joshi

Aastha has previous warehouse experience, and appreciates the importance of pick packing at a high level with a focus on customer value. She has a passion for adventure and spends her spare time in the woods winding down or chasing adrenaline.

Meet the authors and illustrators!

Berys Dixon

Berys is both as experienced teacher and writer. Berys wrote the Pip and Tim stories for Stages 5-7, as well as The Wiz Kids series and a number of other teaching resources and games. Berys always dreamed of being a writer – she loves writing and children love her stories. She has an amazing imagination and a talent for writing natural-sounding, engaging books within the tight restrictions of a phonics scope and sequence. Berys has also written the Pocket Rocket series and continues to tutor students alongside her writing.

Danielle McDonald

Elenio Pico

Elenio illustrates The Wiz Kids series for Little Learners Love Literacy®. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1960 and has lived in Barcelona Spain since 2000. Elenio is an artist in many fields including painting, illustration, animation, comic, ephemeral artistic interventions in urban spaces. His illustrations have been published in Argentina, Spain, Holland, Australia, New Zealand and Korea among others. Elenio's children's books "Lía Mei y Said" and "De un lado y del otro" were awarded by the Professional Association of Illustrators of Catalonia in 2010 and 2011.

Lorraine Lea

Lorraine wrote the Pip and Tim stories for Stages 1, 2, 3 & 4. Lorraine created the Zan family – Pip, Tim, Sam the dog and Tip the cat. Lorraine and Maureen taught together at Tintern Grammar in Ringwood, Victoria before collaborating on the very first Pip and Tim decodable books for the Little Learners Love Literacy® program.

Wendy Hopkins

Wendy has had 30 years of teaching experience in the inner north and west of Melbourne. She shared a class with her friend and colleague Berys Dixon, and together they went on a quest to improve their students’ literacy outcomes!
Wendy is currently tutoring students in literacy, whilst collaborating with Berys in writing the Little Learners Love Literacy® Teacher Activity Resource books. She uses the tutoring and her vast teaching experience to inform her contribution to these books, and the activities to support her lessons.

Anita Mullick

Anita Mullick is a primary and early education author, publisher and editor, with experience of the UK and Australian education sectors. As a languages nerd (French, German and Spanish), Anita has always been interested in the sounds and systems of language and enjoys the puzzle and the challenge presented by writing decodable books. She has created a range of fascinating nonfiction for the Little Learners, BIG WORLD series working alongside Pip and Tim author Berys Dixon.

Matt Porter

As an experienced primary school teacher, Matt Porter understands the importance of engaging and high-quality texts for young readers. His years in the classroom and his time working as a specialist mobile library teacher give Matt an in-depth understanding of what kids love to read. He has currently published ten hilarious books for kids and has more in development. Matt wrote three books in the Little Learners, Big World series and thinks kids and teachers will love reading the whole set.

Tomi Liddle

Tomi is always looking for ways to interest and excite kids in learning. An experienced primary school teacher, she enjoys the creative challenge of crafting decodable books to help children learn to read. Tomi has delved deep into nonfiction exploration for the Little Learners, BIG WORLD series. As well as imaginative adventures for Little Learners, Tomi provides research-based intervention for students with reading and spelling difficulties as a clinician at a university reading clinic in Sydney. 

Meet the Little Learners presenters and coaches

Lisa Bellman Ansell

Lisa Bellman Ansell is a teacher and intervention specialist at New Gisborne Primary School, Victoria.

She is reading recovery trained and was a firm whole language advocate before returning to study and uncovering the research about explicit sequential phonics. Lisa now teaches using evidence-based methods and has recently completed the rigorous LETRS training program through DSF SPELD foundation.

Jamie Coombs

Sarah Collins

Sarah is a primary school educator with over 17 years experience. She has a Masters of Education and has held roles such as classroom teacher, Literacy Coach and Literacy Leader.

Sarah has implemented Little Learners Love Literacy® at her school and at home with her sons. She is passionate that all children learn to read, write and spell with confidence.

International Distributors

Liz Kane Literacy (New Zealand)

The Reading League (USA and Canada)

Work with us

Want to join the Little Learners team? We love to connect and collaborate - please browse the information below for current vacancies and opportunities.
If you can't find what you are looking for please Contact Us.

What do we do?

Our team create evidence-based, explicit literacy teaching and learning resources that engage children through success. We also support teachers through a range of professional learning and support services.
You can read more about our team and our mission here: About Us.

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Advertised positions

We post our advertised positions below. If you see a job that looks like a good fit for you, please click on the Apply button. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Model schools

Would you like to work with us as a model school? How does it work? We support you with training, some resources and possible school visits. And you will welcome other teachers who want to hear about (or see) LLLL in action. You might also trial new resources and provide feedback. We love building close relationships with schools using LLLL, if this sounds appealing to you please get in touch!

Submissions

Due to the rigorous nature of our program and resources we mostly commission writers and illustrators to a brief. However, if you think you have the perfect concept/resource for us to publish, please submit a short proposal outlining the educational purpose of the resource and how it fits the LLLL program in addition to a sample or excerpt. We will review your proposal and let you know if it's a good fit for us or not.