Vinh Trinh continues the Victorian Education Department’s EMPA tradition

Vinh Trinh’s background as the child of refugees gave him a desire to give back to Australia, and his ANZSOG Executive Master of Public Administration (EMPA) has given him a deeper understanding of his role as Director of the Asset Strategy Branch at the Victorian School Building Authority (VSBA). 

His employer, the Victorian Department of Education, is a long-term beneficiary of the EMPA, with strong representation in the program over two decades, and Vinh has now sponsored a younger colleague, Charles Cornwallis who is currently enrolled in the program. 

“What attracted me to the Victorian Public Service was the impact I could have,” Mr Trinh said. 

“My parents are refugees and when my family first came to Australia, they saw all the different supports which the Victorian Government was able to provide to them. I wanted to be able to, wherever I could, provide that same level of support to our community,” he said. 

He said he saw the EMPA as a way to help him gain a better understanding of the public value that he was trying to deliver, and broader connections across the public service. 

“Often we work in a highly reactive space, so being able to take that step back and analyse a problem and see that full policy solution from start to finish, that’s one of the really key tools you’ll be able to take away from the EMPA,” he said. 

“It provides you with a range of different tools to be able to address different problems. I’ve got some experience within the public service, but being able to see it from a different lens, that’s what really attracted me to the EMPA.” 

Mr Trinh said that one of the key benefits of being part of the EMPA was to build strong connections with colleagues across other jurisdictions and departments. 

“Being able to share those different experiences, which you think is something which you might be going through by yourself, but then hearing similar problems across everywhere else as well, makes you feel less alone.”  

He said that having a critical mass of EMPA alumni within the Department of Education, added a layer of expertise that allowed them to take a standardised approach to solving problems. 

“What the EMPA does is that it allows us to have that consistent thought process and that consistent language,” he said.  

“It really does contextualise a lot of our problems. Having that common language amongst senior people really does provide that next layer of being able to understand how to solve a problem.” 

He said that he wanted his colleague Charles Cornwallis, the VSBA’s Manager Budget Strategy, to join the EMPA to benefit from the great experiences he had with the program, and for him to build his own connections. 

Mr Cornwallis said he was excited to be doing the EMPA because he wanted to gain exposure to new ideas. 

“I really enjoy my current work but I’m curious to find out more about the trends, what the hot issues are in different sectors and different jurisdictions, and gain that wider horizon,” he said.  

“The EMPA gives you that chance to stop and think, and to lift your gaze a little bit from day-to-day work to that bigger picture, those bigger questions: why are we doing this? What’s the right thing to do here?”  

Mr Trinh said that the lessons on leadership he learnt through the EMPA would last for the rest of his public sector career. 

“When I first joined the EMPA program, I’d just moved into this director role and I was still feeling my way and developing a lot of my skills as a leader,” he said. 

“The EMPA helps to build your leadership skills by giving you different tools to approach different problems. It won’t give you all the answers, because being a leader isn’t something which you’re able to learn overnight, but you build those skills through the learning, and through understanding the challenges of other senior leaders you meet through the program.”