Professor Peter Greste is an Australian-born journalist, author, media freedom activist and academic. He is a founding member of the advocacy group, the Alliance for Journalists Freedom, and the UNESCO Chair in Journalism and Communication at the University of Queensland. He is also a regular contributor to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Conversation, and The Guardian. Before joining the university in January 2018, he spent 25 years as a foreign correspondent, starting with the civil war in Yugoslavia and elections in South Africa as a freelance reporter in the early 90’s, before joining the BBC as its Afghanistan correspondent in 1995. He went on to cover Latin America, the Middle East and Africa for the BBC.

In 2011 he won a Peabody Award for a BBC documentary on Somalia before joining Al Jazeera as its East Africa correspondent later that year. In December 2013 he was covering Egypt on a short three-week assignment when he was arrested on terrorism charges. After a trial widely dismissed as a sham, he was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison. In February the following year, after 400 days behind bars, and intense international campaign, he was deported under a presidential decree. As a result of the letters he wrote from prison in the defence of freedom of the press, he won a Walkley Award in Australia in 2014, and Royal Television Society and Tribeca Disruptive Innovator’s Awards in 2015.

Michael Kasprowicz has uniquely established himself as a leading business professional specialising in the business of sport. Following his 19 year career as a professional cricketer, Michael completed his MBA at the University of Queensland and developed Venture India, a consulting company specialising in business with India. He is also on the DFAT appointed Board of the Australia India Council.  Michael is the youngest Director on the independent, skill-based Board of Cricket Australia and has been active in the governance of the national body for the last 6 years. In 2016, Michael served as the interim Chief Executive Officer of Queensland Cricket before returning to the Cricket Australia Board.

Michael has also successfully completed a residential Australian Institute of Company Directors course and recently worked with a number of well known advisory firms in developing their sport advisory practices. Michael combines his experiences as an athlete, director and administrator of one of Australia’s largest sports to bring a truly unique perspective to the challenges both sporting and non-sporting organisations.   

International bestselling author, finance and investment expert, radio broadcaster, newspaper columnist and public speaker, Noel Whittaker is one of the world’s foremost authorities on personal finance. Noel reaches over four million readers each week through his columns in major Australian newspapers all over in Australia, is a regular contributor to magazines and websites, and appears on radio and television. He is one of Australia’s most successful authors, with 23 bestselling books achieving worldwide sales of more than two million copies. His book, Making Money Made Simple, set Australian sales records and was named in the 100 Most Influential Books of the Twentieth Century.

For 30 years, Noel was a Director of Whittaker Macnaught, one of Australia’s leading financial advisory companies, with more than two billion dollars under management. He relinquished all interests in that business in 2007. In 2011 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for service to the community in raising awareness of personal finance. In 2016 he accepted a position as independent director of VGI Global Ltd which listed on the Australian Stock Exchange on 28 September 2017. He is also an executive producer of the film Think and Grow Rich – the Legacy. Which premiered in Los Angeles in 2016. He is a Chartered Tax Adviser, a member of the Australian Securities and Investment Commission Regional Liaison committee, and is an Executive in Residence and Adjunct Professor with the Faculty of Business at the Queensland University of Technology.