Sarah Richardson

Dr Sarah Richardson is the Executive Director of the Asia Education Foundation (AEF) at the University of Melbourne. This is Sarah’s latest leadership role in a career in the education sector spanning 30 years. She has experience as a teacher, researcher, evaluator and consultant and has worked across the education systems of most countries in South, East and South-East Asia, as well as in other parts of the world.
Sarah’s PhD focused on cosmopolitan education – looking into the extent to which local and international students at Australian universities engaged with each other, and the potential for building better global competence. A book based on her thesis was published by Routledge in 2016 and has subsequently been translated into Farsi.
From 2010 to 2023, Sarah worked for the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), as a Research Director in Australia and Deputy CEO of ACER in the United Kingdom. She spent three years as Research Director in the New Delhi office of ACER, building a research profile and implementing projects in Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan and throughout India.
Sarah has extensive experience leading large, globally dispersed and diverse teams, and successfully managing relationships with a wide array of stakeholders. She has led teams to implement major projects for the World Bank, UNICEF, the International Baccalaureate, the British Council, DFAT, the Department of Education, the OECD and numerous national and state governments.
Most recently, Sarah was the Assessment Operations Manager and head of international liaison for the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2025 cycle, working to support teams in 92 countries. In March 2023 she led a team to implement what the OECD referred to as the “best PISA National Project Manager meeting ever”.
Sarah is based in her rural home in Queensland and visits the AEF headquarters in Melbourne on a regular basis.