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About Rodney Lunt

Founder of GradeMap · Brisbane, Australia

Rodney Lunt — founder of GradeMap

Who I am

I’m Rodney Lunt. I founded GradeMap because the study tools I needed never existed — so I’m building them.

By day I’m a sales leader in the Australian electrical wholesale industry; I’m currently Sales Manager, Brisbane at Tradezone, where Queensland North sales have grown roughly 600% year-over-year in the last 12 months. I’m also an MBA graduate (Swinburne) and a current Graduate Diploma in IT (Computer Science) student at QUT, on the pathway to the Master of IT. I hold the QUT Executive Deans’ Commendation for Academic Excellence and I’m getting Distinctions and High Distinctions. But that’s the end of the story, not the start.

The full picture (why it matters)

The version of my bio you see in author boxes is the confident one. Here’s the rest of it, because it’s the part that actually informs what GradeMap is built to do.

  • Diploma of Logistics Management (Victoria University, 2007–2008) — completed
  • Graduate Certificate in Business Administration (Swinburne University of Technology, 2017) — completed
  • Master of Business Administration (Swinburne University of Technology, 2017–2020, online, part-time) — completed
  • Graduate Diploma in IT, Computer Science (Queensland University of Technology, April 2025 – present) — in progress, Distinctions and High Distinctions, QUT Executive Deans’ Commendation for Academic Excellence
  • Multiple music qualifications across different instruments and programs (Cert IV Music Performance at Melbourne Polytechnic, AMEB Guitar Grade 5, AMEB Drums Grade 3) — completed

And the courses I didn’t finish:

  • Bachelor of Business (Marketing) at Griffith University — two years on campus at age 20, then life got in the way. Tried to return years later; missed the 7-year deferral cutoff by the narrowest of margins.
  • Master of Marketing at Deakin University — one subject, $1,500, census-date disaster. Started weeks after finishing MBA coursework.

And the courses that didn’t survive the MBA years (2017–2020, while I was also moving my family from Melbourne to Brisbane, having another baby, and leading a business turnaround from 35% to 95% on an internal audit):

  • Diploma of Occupational Health & Safety — dropped under overwhelm
  • Diploma of LEAN — dropped under overwhelm

Four dropouts. Three completions before the MBA. One MBA. A postgraduate IT degree in progress. Roughly a decade of actually being in the trenches of adult study, which means I know what it’s like to cram the night before, to stall out in week five, to quit, to come back, to do it while my kids are asleep, to do it alongside a full-time career and 17 years in Australian electrical wholesale. I know which study advice works for a twenty-year-old full-time student and why most of it doesn’t survive contact with real life.

That’s the perspective GradeMap is built from. Not “here’s how to study in theory”. Here’s how to study when you’ve already failed at it and come back.

Why I started GradeMap

Every time I re-enrolled I ran into the same three problems:

  1. I couldn’t decode the rubric. Every unit used different language for the same ideas. Every marker weighted things differently. No one teaches you how to read a rubric as a working document rather than a formality.
  2. I couldn’t plan a realistic schedule. Generic study-plan advice (“study two hours a day!”) completely ignores that I have a job, a family, and an energy budget. I needed something that worked backwards from my assessment deadlines and my actual available hours.
  3. I couldn’t tell if I was using AI tools the right way. When ChatGPT arrived mid-degree I wanted help. I also didn’t want to blow up my academic integrity. There’s almost no credible guidance on where the line actually sits for Australian students — most advice is either “don’t touch it” or “use it for everything”, and neither is honest.

GradeMap is designed to solve those three problems specifically, for Australian university students, with academic integrity as a non-negotiable constraint.

What I know something about

  • Reading and interpreting university rubrics (the thing I wish I’d learned in week one of my first degree, not year three of my fourth)
  • Planning study around a full-time career and a family
  • Mature-age student experience in Australian higher education
  • AI-assisted study that stays on the right side of academic integrity
  • What it actually takes to restart after dropping out — because I’ve done it four times

On the blog

I publish one-to-three articles a week at grademap.com.au/blog/. Everything there is either first-person experience, fact-checked research with real citations, or interviews with other Australian students. No anonymous AI-farmed generic advice.

If you want to read the deepest guides first, start with the pillar pages:

Other things I’m building

GradeMap isn’t the only thing I run. I’m also the founder of Business Review 360, an employee-innovation platform that helps Australian organisations capture, review, and actually implement the good ideas their own staff already have. And Chores and Rewards, a household chore and rewards management app for families (scratch-my-own-itch, like everything I build). Different audiences, same underlying belief: the people closest to the work usually know what’s broken — they just need a system that listens.

Elsewhere

  • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rodneylunt — the long-form CV version, plus whatever I’m currently thinking about for work
  • GitHub: github.com/rodlunt — the code side, including GradeMap’s content engine (open source)
  • Digital Leap Moreton Bay: mentor profile — I’m a business mentor with the Digital Leap Moreton Bay Mentoring Program, helping early-stage regional businesses work through strategy, digital, and operations questions
  • Business Review 360: businessreview360.au
  • GradeMap blog: grademap.com.au/blog/

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