Alan Manly
Alan Philip James Manly (born in 1950) is an Australian entrepreneur, company director and published author. Career. After dropping out of year nine at Bacchus Marsh High School in the north-west of Victoria, Australia, Alan worked as a postman before securing an apprenticeship as a television repairman. For eight years, Alan worked at Digital Equipment Corporation first as a computer technician, then in sales and marketing. Alan commenced his entrepreneurial career as a founding Director of a software company that developed and sold computerised freight tracking and integrated management systems used by major independent freight companies. Alan  then moved into the education industry, delivering papers on trading educational services in China and India. He is a former Director of the Australian Council of Private Education and Training, the industry association that then represented private colleges in Australia. He represented the industry before the Australian Senate supporting the introduction of government supervised trust accounts for student funds. In 2013 he joined the board of the Council of Private Higher Education, a national industry body representing independent Higher Education Providers. He is currently the Managing Director of Group Colleges Australia (GCA), a company that has raised public and private  funding to develop distance education using the Internet. GCA was amongst the first private colleges in Australia to implement distance learning via the Internet to overseas students. When GCA moved its campus to the former iconic TNT Towers in Lawson Square, Redfern in 2008, Alan stated his support for revitalising Redfern into "a modern cosmopolitan suburb." The renamed GCA towers dominate the local area. In 2017, GCA moved all its colleges into the Sydney CBD. The Higher Education division, Universal Business School Sydney (UBSS) was re-established in a modern CBD campus at 233 Castlereagh Street, Sydney. Coinciding with this  move Alan released his book "The Unlikely Entrepreneur". Alan received a Tourism Training Australia award in 2009 for "outstanding support and leadership in tourism and hospitality in Australia." In 2010, Alan was interviewed in "BRW Magazine" on Australia's education sector. In 2016 Alan was interviewed by CEO magazine. Alan was appointed by Minister Hawke to the Ministerial Advisory Council on Skilled Migration in February 2021 In 2021 Alan was honoured in the Queen’s Birthday Honours with the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for "service to tertiary education" Alan has been active in the media with interviews  and has published extensively on the topic of entrepreneurship. He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and a Justice of the Peace.