Ailsa has 30 years of experience in international relations and capacity building, including almost 20 years in the international education sector. She founded Pomegranate Global in 2016, a company dedicated to guiding the education sector to do more to tackle climate change. In 2017 Ailsa trained as a Climate Reality Leader in Pittsburgh, USA with the The Climate Reality Project, former US Vice President Al Gore’s foundation to catalyse a global solution to the climate crisis.

She has served as Pro Vice-Chancellor International and Social Innovation at CQUniversity Australia where she led the university to become the first Australian institution recognised as a Changemaker Campus by the Ashoka U global network of universities, as Executive Director International at RMIT University, and International Director at James Cook University. Before joining the international education sector, Ailsa had a varied career in economic development, trade promotion, and capacity building in Eastern and Western Europe, and ran her own interpreting and translating business. She brings personal experience to her work, having been an international student in the USSR, Germany and Papua New Guinea.