Science Journalist; Author and Presenter at ABC

Moderating Deep Conversation:
Now to Next: How will Science and Technology help solve our problems? (November 28, 7.00pm-9.oopm)

Robyn Williams is a science journalist who is as prominent on radio as he is on television. He has presented Radio National’s Science Show since 1975 and narrated highly respected television programs including Catalyst and Nature of Australia. He appeared alongside David Attenborough on World Safari.

He is renowned for making the complexities of science accessible and enjoyable for almost everyone and three of the ten books he has authored are included on the Higher School Certificate list.

In 1993, he became the first journalist elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. In 1988, he received an Honorary Doctorate in Science from the Universities of Sydney, Macquarie and Deakin. That same year he was appointed AM in the 1988 Australian Bicentenary Honours list.

He has been elected a National Living Treasure by the National Trust and he even has a star named after him by the Sydney Observatory.

Journalist and Broadcaster; Presenter at ABC; Columnist for Herald Sun

Moderating Deep Conversation:
Getting Unstuck: Using innovation to create change in large organizations and government (November 28, 12.15pm-2.15pm)

Journalist and broadcaster Beverley O’Connor has over 20 years’ experience across both radio and television, and is currently a Presenter on the ABC’s Australia Network.

She is also a columnist for News Limited’s Herald Sun.

Beverley specialized in economics and politics, and over the years has combined her passion for sport in working as an anchor for the Seven Network and the ABC.

Beverley was the first female director of the Melbourne Football Club, where she served for nine years, seven of those as Vice-President, the only woman to hold this role with an AFL club.Beverley is a Life Governor of the Drug and Alcohol Foundation, having served six years on the Board, is an Australia Day ambassador, campaigner for breast cancer awareness, and ambassador for the children’s charities Variety and Ozchild.

CEO, Kokoda Capital Group

Michael Johnson is CEO of Kokoda Capital Group, a privately owned firm with premium clients in the Asia-Pacific region. Kokoda focuses on the commodities and wider energy sector but is also active in financial services, retail, F&B and property. The firm also has holdings in several media, entertainment and sporting related entities. Michael is also a Director of Rugby Channel Online in a partnership with Fiji TV broadcasting rugby on Google’s global online platform. Michael is also a Director of Myanmar Global Capital Partners (MGCP). Michael is also CEO of Royal Vitamins International Limited, a company manufacturing vitamins in a unique liquid format that has the potential to completely transform the global vitamins industry. Michael is President of the Australia-Asia Business Council and is also a former Member of the Australian Parliament rising to become Federal Parliamentary Whip in 2007. Born in Hong Kong to a Chinese mother and Australian father, Michael is passionate about deepening and widening the Australia-Asia relationship. Michael was the first Member of the Australian Parliament to have a part Chinese heritage and one of the youngest when elected in 2001 at the age of only 31.

Michael was educated at the University of Queensland where he holds dual degrees in Arts and Law. He was also educated at the University of Cambridge and the University of Birmingham where he holds a double Masters Degree in international relations and political science. He is also a graduate of the the Kennedy School of Government’s Executive Programme at Harvard University and has studied at Shanghai’s Fudan University and Beijing’s Capital Teachers University. Michael has spoken at conferences and events all over Asia. He has given interviews on all the world’s global media networks from CNN to CCTV. Michael sits on the Global Council of the Asia Society and is a Member of the World Chinese Economic Forum Advisory Board. He is a regular political commentator on Australia’s Sky News network. Michael has travelled all over Asia from Burma to North Korea. Michael is 42 and lives in Brisbane with his wife, Huyen, and their six old son, Ryan.

CEO of Commercialisation Australia

Mr Ben-Meir has extensive experience in the venture capital industry and commercialization more generally. Over the past twenty years, he has been involved in numerous venture capital organizations, and has been a founder or co-founder of six start-up companies, as well as an investor, investment manager, and advisor to several other companies. Thus, he has built a substantial network both domestically and internationally.

Mr Ben-Meir has wide-ranging experience in innovation, commercialization and technology across various industry sectors. Having founded and supported start-up companies, he has an intimate understanding of the practical challenges they face, and of what is required to make a company successful. Through his investments and advisory work, he has been involved in identifying and assisting innovative companies to commercialize their intellectual property and transition through various stages of business development.

His qualifications include a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering (Hons) from Monash University, Melbourne. He is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the ANZA Technology Network.

He is currently the inaugural CEO of Commercialisation Australia – an Australian Government program established to assist entrepreneurs, researchers and inventors to build sustainable businesses from their innovative intellectual property.

Leading management consultant

Tim Dalmau has worked for the last 33 years as a consultant to public and private sectors. He is one of Australia’s foremost management consultants, the author or co-author of an extensive selection of books and other publications. His practice covers the world, advising leaders of corporations and engineering focused companies in the resources and manufacturing sectors, working with Boards and senior teams, and designing systems for change.

Leading science journalist, Author: Stem Cells: Controversy at the Frontiers of Science and The Genome Generation

Ever since she can remember, Elizabeth (Ella) Finkel has been titillated by science. It’s an energy that fuelled two careers. First, as a research scientist at the University of California in San Francisco, she studied the age-old mystery of how a mush of cells acquires the plan to design a body. Second, as a Melbourne-based science writer for the last twenty years, she has told the stories of other peoples’ scientific adventures.

Ella loves nothing better than to journey to the frontiers of science and bring back stories for scientific and lay audiences. Her scientific dispatches generally go to the American magazine Science; her popular dispatches to Cosmos magazine, the multi-award winning magazine she founded with husband Alan Finkel, Wilson Da Silva and Kylie Ahern. She also occasionally contributes items to ABC Radio National’s Science Show. She has won numerous awards for her work including the prestigious Michael Daley Award for one of her radio broadcasts, multiple nominations at the Eureka awards, winner of multiple Bells awards and the National Press Club’s Higher Education Journalist of the Year in 2011.

With the publication of her first book, “Stem Cells: Controversy at the Frontiers of Science” in 2005 by ABC Books, her writing underwent a major transition to the genre of creative non-fiction where the non-fiction writer employs the tools of the novelist: character, place, plot and voice. “Stem Cells” won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Eureka Award for Advancing the Public Understanding of Science.  In January 2012 her second book, “The Genome Generation,” was published by Melbourne University Publishing. The Canberra Times described it as “science writing of the highest order”. The Weekend Australian described her as a “scientist with a journalist’s genes”.

Besides science, Ella’s other passions are singing, ballroom dancing, hiking and last but far from least spending time with her three beautiful boys: husband Alan and sons Victor and Alex.