As the handover period between Primary Ethics leaders Evan Hannah and Laura Ramos comes to a close, we gave them both a Q+A. So it’s farewell to Evan after over eight years in the role and welcome to Laura!

Evan Hannah

When did you start working for PE and what drew you to the job?I first ‘worked’ for Primary Ethics as a volunteer coordinator at my son’s school – Five Dock PS – for several years from 2013. I became CEO in July 2017. My motivation came from seeing how powerful the program was and wanting to do what I could to take it to more students in more schools.

How many locations have you worked in since you started? Five – with three of those being in the same multi-storey office block in Potts Point! We love where we are now (co-located in the city with The Ethics Centre), but my favourite was the wonderful purpose-built space at the Paddington offices of our great supporter Rob Keldoulis and his Vivcourt company. We were there for a happy 12 months before Covid pushed us to our home spaces!

How many staff were there when you started and how many now? We had six people (five full-time and one part-time) when I began. As I hand over to Laura we now have 17 staff (seven full-time and 10 part-time.) We’ve increased our staff to meet the growing demands of recruiting and supporting volunteers – and we’re busier than we’ve ever been.

You’ve done numerous media interviews over those years, which was your favourite? My favourite interview was with ABC Radio 702’s Sarah Macdonald in their Ultimo studios. Sarah was well across what Primary Ethics does, which made the interview relaxed, but what made it a favourite was when one of her regular contributors – film academic Bruce Isaacs – called in to talk about his own experience teaching ethics with us. It was such a positive and fun interview, which created some good listener interest in volunteering.

You will have heard many stories about the impact of ethics lessons. What stands out for you? Perhaps the most moving was when a parent told me his son had talked about how thinking things through as they did in ethics classes helped him deal with the grief of losing a grandparent. It’s both fulfilling and deeply sobering to hear how what we do can give students those tools.

What are you most satisfied with as you leave? I’ve had a bit of time to think about this and there are two examples out of many satisfying outcomes.

First was our successful multi-year campaign to allow parents to choose ethics at the same instant they were told about SRE (scripture) – Department procedures originally forced parents literally to opt out of scripture twice before they could be told ethics was available at their school. It was unfair and frankly unethical! The change meant information and choice is now equitable, opening the way to more student enrolments and more volunteers.

Second is how our volunteers responded during the long Covid lockout from schools, when our hard work to keep people engaged kept them keen and eager to return to schools when they re-opened. Our volunteers stayed with us during that difficult time, when many other not-for-profits had trouble keeping their volunteers on board.

I leave knowing we continue to have an amazing committed staff and a fantastic group of volunteers.

What’s in your future? I’m incapable of sitting still for long, so I’m already thinking about a couple of ways to keep busy. Leading such a great organisation as Primary Ethics has shown me the rich satisfaction you gain when you’re able to see effort at one end of our program turn into great outcomes at the other, so I’m certain I will seek to again be involved in an organisation or social enterprise that benefits the community.

And I’ll keep up with my cricket umpiring!

Laura Ramos

What drew you to this job? Knowing about the amazing work of the organisation and the opportunity to be part of the next chapter. I knew of ethics education from when my daughters were in primary school. My daughters (who are now at university) still have positive memories of ethics lessons.

You’re doing the ethics teacher training now, how are you finding it? I’m loving the training – and can confirm that it is thorough! It’s been really humbling to step into student-mode and realise how little I actually knew about what it takes to be a great teacher. There is so much to consider. Our trainer has been phenomenal; she’s got deep knowledge of teaching practice and is super methodical in pointing out where we’re demonstrating the right

teaching skills, when we need to finesse and when we need to try again. From seeing how training happens, I also have a far greater appreciation of the care that goes into every aspect of our program.

Is there anything surprising about it? I love that our training is set up to build teaching skills for adults who come from very different backgrounds. And yet, we’ll all be able to deliver ethics lessons now – and we’ll have access to our excellent Classroom Support resources to help us improve over time.

You’re originally from Puerto Rico and the US, have you come across anything like Primary Ethics over there? I wish! I’m pretty sure my parents would have loved having this for my sisters and me when we were growing up. I haven’t seen any program offer ethics education to students at the scale that we can, with the breadth and depth of topics and the rigorous approach to curriculum and pedagogy. Our program is pretty unique as far as I’m aware.

What have been the highlights of the job so far?

• Being blown away by the rigour and excellence built into our program.
• Realising how talented, committed and generally awesome every person in the staff team is.
• Developing deep respect for every one of our volunteers, because they make the magic happen in schools.
• Seeing our team work on setting up ethics classes for the 2026 year – exciting and a lot of work!

Tell us about your interest in AI. I’m curious and trying out different products with interest. A big part of my career was in tech-focused roles, so I guess I’ve seen many examples where IT solutions don’t meet the expectations of users and also instances where tech can be deployed to make things demonstrably better for people.

When it comes to AI, it’s fascinating to see new services that can help us solve everyday challenges much more quickly – but not always well. Nevertheless, I think there’s real value in learning how to use AI tools and also in staying informed about the potential pitfalls.

What’s the best story about ethics you’ve heard so far? I have a new one every day. Today it was a side conversation where we speculated what Socrates might have done with social media. Who says we can’t have fun with ethics?