Michelle De Highden

Michelle is an experienced high performance coach and coach developer, passionate about facilitating coach development at the high performance level. Coaching at both the development and World Championships level has enabled Michelle to understand both the athlete and coach development pathway from grassroots to international success. With over 40 years’ experience coaching, she is also a qualified teacher and coach developer; working in educational, club, state and national sport settings. Michelle has led the collaborative design and implementation of athlete-centred development systems and blended learning designs for coach learning.

Michelle’s thirst for continual learning has driven her to complete a Masters of Sport Coaching, undertaking a thesis on Utilising a 360° coach profile to design bespoke development plans for high performance coaches. More recently she had the privilege of attending the ICCE NSSU Coach Developer Academy in Japan (2019-2020) to enhance her own facilitation skills and become certified as an ICCE Trained Coach Developer.

Michelle’s role within the AIS High Performance Coach Development Team is to collaborate with sports to support the strategies and systems for development of their high performance coaches. She is leading the Women in High Performance Coaching Project which aims to investigate the narratives and experiences of women in high performance coaching to guide interventions and recommendations for future-led system wide impact.