Commander

Group Captain (AAFC) Ken Given

GPCAPT Ken Given joined the RAAF in 1976 as an Air Traffic Controller. He quickly transferred to the training world and has a long and successful career, holding a number of important and senior postings. In brief he has held the following positions:

• In January 1982, he was promoted to Squadron Leader and posted as the Senior Education Officer to RAAF Williamtown, the RAAF’s major fighter base.
• In January 1984, a short posting as senior instructor at Mechanical Trades Squadron at RAAF Wagga before receiving a two year exchange posting to America where he undertook research in human factors with his peers in the USAF.
• He returned to Australia in 1987 and headed up the RAAF’s Occupational Analysis cell.
• In 1989, Ken was posted to a tri-Service position in HQ ADF in Canberra and was promoted to WGCDR at the end of that year.
• In 1992 Ken was appointed as the Commanding Officer of the RAAF’s School of Management and Training Technology at RAAF Wagga.
• In 1994 he returned to Canberra to serve as the Defence Advisor to the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade in the Federal Parliament.
• In 1996 Ken took up the position as the RAAF’s Visiting Fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University.
• Ken was promoted to GPCAPT in 1997 and was appointed as Director of Education and Ground Training for the Air Force and moved to Melbourne to take up this appointment.
• In 1998 he moved back to Canberra to become the Director of Education and Training Policy in the Joint Education and Training Branch.
• In June 2000 he acted in the one star position as Director General Defence Education and Training for approximately six months.

Since his ‘retirement’ in June 2000, Ken has remained active in Defence work including a review into military postgraduate education and the structure and funding of the Australian Defence Force Academy. Subsequently, he was part of the team that negotiated a new ten-year agreement with UNSW for the provision of education services at ADFA.

He has also facilitated Chief of Air Force’s strategic planning conferences for the Air Force’s Senior Leadership Group and worked as an internal consultant for the Director General, Defence Education and Training Development. Currently he is Manager of the Youth Connection Program which includes the ADF’s Long Tan Leadership and Teamwork Awards and the Defence 2020 Youth Challenges, initiatives aimed at putting the ADF on the radar of senior school students.

Ken was appointed to be the Commander of the Australian Air Force cadets in October 2009.

Ken is married and has an adult son who is also pursuing a career in the ADF.