About

Board Members

Mr Michael Smith, Chair

Mr Smith is the Managing Director of The Marketing Centre; a long-established firm consulting in strategy.

Mr Smith is currently Chairman of the board at Synergy and Scotch College. He is a Director of 7-Eleven Stores Pty Ltd; a chain of 350 convenience stores on Australia's east coast and of Home Building Society LTD, listed on the ASX.

Mr Smith is a Council member for the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is a Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute and the Australian Institute of Management, an executive member of the American Marketing Association, a Chartered Management Consultant and Member of the Institute of Management Consultants.

Mr Smith is also a recipient of the patrons medal (HRH Prince Phillip) for services to marketing.

Mr Dario Amara

Dario Amara is an engineer with extensive business experience gained over 28 years in Australian and international markets and across the resources, property and infrastructure sectors. He has occupied senior executive roles with major construction and engineering groups over some 16 years during which time he built a record of achievement in establishing, restructuring and rejuvenating companies and operating under challenging conditions.

He has strong business networks across Australia, Africa, South-East Asia, North and South America and Europe.

In December 2005 he co-founded Emerson Stewart Limited, a business that provides advisory, asset management and project management to the resources, property and infrastructure sectors. The business is operating throughout Australia, Indonesia and the Dominican Republic and is looking to list in the next 12 months.

He is currently a Non-Executive Director of Austal Limited, Non-Executive Chairman of Mission Biofuels Limited and Chairman of the City of Perth Heritage Appeal. He has also served as Chairman of the West Australian Opera Company and the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia.

Mr Alan Dodge

Mr Dodge is the Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, a position he has held for over 11 years. He will be retiring from this position in December 2007. Mr Dodge has 35 years’ experience in the visual arts, having worked as everything from a teacher of art history to a curator of European and American art.

Mr Dodge is currently on the board of the National Portrait Gallery and Chair of the Council of Australian Art Museum Directors. Mr Dodge is also involved in the newly-formed Committee for Perth. He is Adjunct Professor at the School of Art at Curtin University of Technology and a member of the Advisory Board of Institute of Advanced Studies at The University of Western Australia.

Mr Mack Hall

Mr Hall is the Principal of Mack Hall and Associates. He has been in the real estate industry for 26 years before which he was Executive Officer of the National Heart Foundation for five years.

Mr Hall is a member of the Cottesloe Golf Club, Peppermint Grove Tennis Club, Royal Freshwater Bay Yacht Club and The Weld Club.

Professor Alan Robson AM, BAgrSc Melb, PhD W.Aust, FTSE, FACE, FACEL, FAIAS

Professor Robson is Vice-Chancellor of The University of Western Australia where he is also the Hackett Professor of Agriculture. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Universities Australia; Chair of Australia’s Group of Eight universities; a member of the Western Australian Science Council and the CSIRO Board. In 1987 Professor Robson was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. Subsequently he was awarded the Australian Medal of Agriculture Science and elected as a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Agricultural Science. In 2003 Professor Robson was made a Member of the Order of Australia.

 

Professor Margaret Seares AO, PhD (UWA); MA (UWA), FAICD

Margaret Seares holds a PhD from UWA in Music, her field of specialty being the keyboard music of the 18th century.  From 1991-1995 she was Head of the School of Music, and Deputy Chair of the Academic Board at UWA.

In 1995 she accepted a two-year secondment to the position of CEO with the West Australian Department for the Arts (now the Ministry for Culture & the Arts). And in 1997 she was appointed to a 4-year term as Chair of the Australia Council.

She has been a member of a wide range of Boards and Councils in the government, not-for-profit, and arts sectors and is currently a board member of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, a Councillor with the WA Chamber of Commerce & Industry and with Scotch College WA, a member of the Australian Research Council’s advisory council, and a member of the board of the Council for the Humanities Arts & Social Sciences.

In 2003 Professor Seares was awarded the Officer of the Order of Australia in recognition of her work for the arts and education.

Mr Barry Strickland

Mr Strickland is a former ABC Radio National broadcaster and Senior Project Officer with ArtsWA. Since 1999, he has been freelancing within the arts, culture and broadcasting arenas, including writing documentary films such as Hoover's Gold (2005)and The Fabulous Flag Sisters (to be shot in Italy in September 2007). Most recently he has coordinated the 3rd Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth (BEAP 07).

Mr Gene Tilbrook

Mr Tilbrook is Finance Director of Wesfarmers Limited, a major Australian-listed company with diversified interests. He joined Wesfarmers in 1985 and has held a number of commercial positions in its Business Development Department and at Wesfarmers Energy. Mr Tilbrook has been involved in many of the transactions that have made Wesfarmers a successful diversified group; as well as corporate planning, information technology and project financing. He is a director of a number of Wesfarmers group subsidiaries, as well as of Gresham Partners Holdings Limited.