Lady Anna Cowen AM
Lady Anna Cowen AM
Lady Anna Cowen (Wittner ’42) attended St Catherine’s from 1937 to 1942, her last year being at Warburton. Similar to her Headmistress, Miss Edna Holmes, Lady Cowen was involved with the World Education Fellowship (WEF) and how it examined new ideas in education in changing times. Founded in the UK in 1921 to promote educational reform, it established branches in many countries, including Australia, and forged close links with academic institutions and UNESCO.
On moving to Brisbane in 1970, Lady Cowen helped re-launch the WEF in Queensland and served as President. In 1938, Miss Holmes was the only girls’ school headmistress on the inaugural committee in a Victorian branch, then named the New Education Fellowship.
In 2015, Lady Anna Cowen was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her significant service to youth, medical research, educational, historical and cultural organisations, and to the people of Australia through vice-regal patronages and support roles.
Supporting her husband, the late Sir Zelman Cowen, during his term as Governor General, Lady Cowen’s vice-regal roles included the patronage of 23 national organisations.
Through her life, Lady Cowen’s focus has been on education and health. In Oxford, she ran a campaign committee for cancer research. She is an ambassador and supporter of the Ardoch Youth Foundation and an ambassador of the Sir Zelman Cowen Fellowship Fund, supporting research into major health issues affecting women and children in poor and vulnerable communities in Australia and internationally. She is also patron of the Australian Jewish Historical Society (Victoria) and a supporter of the Jewish Museum of Australia, Melbourne.
In July 2017, Lady Cowen published My Vice-Regal Life, Diaries 1978 to 1982 through Melbourne University Publishing. An extraordinary record of the life of a Governor-General’s wife, her edited diaries captured the day-to-day life, the wardrobe fittings, the running of an enormous household, as well as the pomp and circumstance of vice-regal duties during the term of Sir Zelman Cowen.