Who we are

After graduating in Economics from Queensland University, Lyn spent the first half of her career in the Prime Minister's Department in Canberra, specialising in micro economic and trade policy. A highlight was her deep involvement in advising on the major reforms to the Australian economy in the 1980s particularly with regard to transport, communications, industry and resources.

After a short stint in banking, Lyn returned to economic public policy, working primarily on issues of government administrative efficiency. She became executive Deputy Chair and then Acting Chair of the Australian Broadcasting Authority and led it into a merger with the telecommunications regulator. She chaired the new body (The Australian Communications and Media Authority) as a full time executive for its first 18 months until a long-term Chair was appointed.

Lyn later became the CEO of Australia's Antarctic program, which has responsibility for managing the logistics for, and operation of,Australia's four permanent stations in the Antarctic and sub Antarctic. Since retiring from executive positions in 2011, Lyn has served on not-for-profit boards in screen funding and land conservation and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Economics faculty of Queensland University. Lyn was appointed as a public member of the Press Council in August 2019.

Mohamed el Roubi is a general counsel with extensive experience in a range of multinational companies and is currently senior legal counsel at Australian tech company Seeing Machines. Based in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Mohamed is a Director and member of the Audit and Risk Committee at Mental Illness Education ACT. He has lived and worked in the Middle East, US and Europe, and is bi-lingual in English and Arabic. He has broad legal, governance, risk and compliance experience across a range of industries and is a Fellow of the Governance Institute of Australia and a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Mohamed is admitted as a lawyer of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and is also an Attorney and Counsellor at Law in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

Diana Nestorovska is a governance and legal professional with extensive experience working across diverse sectors and industries in Australia and overseas. Ms Nestorovska is a former Australian diplomat, speaks multiple languages and understands the workings of government at an international, State and Federal level. She is currently employed as the Director of Legal Services (STEM) at the University of Melbourne, is a Non-Executive Director of the South Gippsland Water Corporation and LanguageLoop and is a member of the Governance Committee of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.  She is also a Fellow of the Governance Institute of Australia, a Member of the Association of Corporate Counsel Australia, a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and has completed an MBA at the Melbourne Business School.

Sally is a consultant and board director with a deep interest in the creative industries, arts, social welfare, health, disability and not-for-profit sectors. Prior to 2018 Sally enjoyed a successful career as a senior Commonwealth public servant, holding senior executive positions in the Social Policy Division of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and as head of the Office for the Arts from 2007 to 2017. This is underpinned by over 25 years’ experience in the public and not-for-profit sectors across a range of specialties including human services, human resource management and as a social worker in a range of settings including child and family services and community health. Currently, Sally works as a consultant with a particular focus on working with NFP boards and CEOs on leadership, board effectiveness, governance, organisational change and strategic planning. She currently serves on the boards of the Art Gallery of Ballarat, Bell Shakespeare Company, the Australian National Academy of Music and the Australian Youth Orchestra. Sally has a Bachelor of Social Work (First Class Honours) a Master of Public Administration and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Aram Hosie is the Executive Director, Strategy and Public Affairs, at Save the Children Australia. A highly experienced public policy and advocacy leader, Aram has over 15 years’ experience working on health and human rights law and policy issues in both the government and non-government sectors. He has previously held executive positions with a range of organisations including the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission; community health provider cohealth; and youth mental health service ReachOut.com. Aram has also had experience providing high level advice to Ministers and senior government, including through his prior roles as a member of the Victorian Government’s LGBTIQ+ Taskforce, and senior advisor in the West Australian Department of Premier and Cabinet and Department of Indigenous Affairs. Aram currently serves on the board of Your Community Health and is primarily based in Naarm (Melbourne).

Kaaren Koomen AM is an executive leader with more than 35 years’ experience in the communication and IT law and policy environments. She is the Director of Government and Regulatory Affairs at IBM Australia/New Zealand and was previously General Manager, Multimedia Regulation and Strategy, at Cable and Wireless Optus/Singtel Optus. During the 1990s, Kaaren was the Director of Internet Content Regulation at the Australian Broadcasting Authority (now ACMA).

Kaaren has extensive board-level experience. She is a Director on the Board of IBM Australia Limited, a Director of the Australian Services Roundtable, a Member of the Edith Cowan University and IBM Future Lab Governance Committee, a Member of the CSIRO National AI Centre Think Tank and is a Member of Standards Australia AI Committee. She was Deputy Chair of the NSW Telecommunications Authority Advisory Board from 2017 – July 2023, Chair of the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka from 2014 – 2018 and has been an elected board member of the AIIA, the IIA and other industry associations over many years. Kaaren has practiced as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of NSW and has lectured in Law at Charles Sturt University.

Susan Nicholson is a senior executive with a strong focus on customer-centric and stakeholder management, demonstrated by her success in driving strategy and change initiatives across diverse sectors including high-growth technology environments. Currently serving as the General Manager of Digital Payments for Australia Post, Susan brings a wealth of experience to her role. Previously, she was Director of Product and Marketing at NYSE-listed payments processing and information management systems company WEX Inc.

Susan’s extensive strategic leadership experience includes direct reporting to subsidiary boards. She has also contributed to the advancement of gender parity, diversity, and inclusion as a Member of the Advisory Board of Women in Payments, a global organisation dedicated to supporting women in the payments and fintech industries. Susan has served on the Board of St Columba’s Primary School in Elwood, demonstrating her commitment to community and education.

Dave Braithwaite is the Head of Editorial Operations for Nine’s Metro Publishing, with extensive experience in newspaper, digital and cross-platform journalism. Previously, he held positions of Head of Video at Fairfax, Digital Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and Online News Editor of The Age.

Dave is a digital content and strategy specialist who has also worked as an Executive Producer for Digital News and Current Affairs at the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), and then Managing Editor, Online, overseeing digital content across the network.

Lachlan Heywood is executive editor of Daily Mail Australia, with more than 20 years of experience in newspaper and digital publishing. He is a former editor of Queensland’s The Courier-Mail and The Townsville Bulletin as well as a former deputy editor of The Sunday Mail.

As a young reporter, Lachlan spent several years at regional dailies and also worked as a political reporter for News Corp in the Canberra press gallery. During his tenure at The Courier Mail, Lachlan delivered rapid growth in digital subscribers and audience. Until recently, he was a member of the Queensland Premier’s Special Taskforce on Domestic and Family Violence. Lachlan joined Daily Mail Australia in late 2017.

Erik Jensen is the founding editor of The Saturday Paper and editor-in-chief of Schwartz Media. He has previously worked at The Sydney Morning Herald, where he won the Walkley Award for Young Print Journalist of the Year and the United Nations Association of Australia’s Media Peace Award. His first book, Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen, won the Nib Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Walkley Book Award and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. A film of the book, for which he cowrote the screenplay, won The Age Critics Prize at the Melbourne International Film Festival. He is also the author of On Kate Jennings and Quarterly Essay 74: The Prosperity Gospel. Erik was appointed as a small publisher Member of Press Council in August 2019.

Glenn Stanaway is National Executive Editor for News Corp Australia. Previously, he held the posts of Executive Editor of News Corp’s Sunday newspapers; Executive Editor, Deputy Editor and Digital Editor of The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph; Executive Editor (Olympics) of The Daily Telegraph; Assistant Editor and Chief-of-Staff of The Daily Telegraph.

Glenn has also been News Corp’s European Bureau Chief and Parliamentary Bureau Chief in Canberra, and The Courier-Mail’s Canberra political correspondent. He has also been an editor at the China Daily in Beijing.

Peter Kennedy was appointed as representative for Country Press Australia.

Peter is the Executive Director of Country Press Australia, the industry association representing more than 230 independent regional, rural and local news publishers.  He is an experienced General Manager and Editor working in the media production industry (especially print and more recently digital media) and previously owned and operated his own boutique public relations firm in a media career spanning more than four decades.

Peter also serves as Executive Officer of the Victorian Country Press Association.

Professor Peter Greste is an Australian-born journalist, author, media freedom activist and academic. He is the Executive Director of the advocacy group, the Alliance for Journalists' Freedom, and UNESCO Chair in Journalism and Communication at the University of Queensland. 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 90s, 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.

He hit the headlines himself in December 2013, when he and two colleagues were arrested in Cairo on terrorism charges. They were convicted and sentenced to seven years in a case that drew international condemnation as attack on press freedom. Under pressure, Professor Greste was released, and he went on to become a champion of press freedom around the world. His stance has earned him numerous international awards, including the Australian Human rights Commission Medal, the RSL's 2016 ANZAC Peace Prize, and the Australian Press Council's 2018 Press Freedom award. Peter was appointed as an independent journalist member of the Press Council in August 2019.

Julie Flynn is a retired journalist and media executive. During the transition from analogue to digital television, Julie was CEO of Free TV Australia, the industry body representing Australia’s commercial television stations. Julie joined Free TV after a distinguished career as a journalist and media executive. She was a senior executive at Radio 2UE but is best known for her work as a reporter and commentator in the Canberra Press Gallery with the ABC, the National Times and 2UE.

Julie has won a Walkley Award for Radio News reporting and was President of the Canberra Press Gallery. She has served on a range of Boards and Committees including the Walkley Awards Advisory Panel, the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Advisory Board, the Public Service Medal Committee, the National Breast and Ovarian Cancer Centre Board and the Ronald McDonald Hospital Charity Board. Julie has undertaken some media consultancies in her retirement.

Alan Sunderland is an award-winning journalist with 40 years’ experience working for the ABC and SBS. Since retiring from full-time work in 2019, he has been writing and advising on editorial issues on a project basis. These projects have included editorial quality reviews for the ABC and The Conversation website and a report on potential media self-regulation models for Ukraine, prepared for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Mr Sunderland is a Board Member of the Local and Independent News Association and a member of the Walkley Public Fund Committee. He is also the winner of two Walkley Awards for news reporting. He is the author of "The Ten Rules of Reporting: Journalism for the Community".

Ian Macintosh is a veteran international journalist and editorial manager. He held positions including Senior Vice President of CNN International (Asia Pacific), based in Hong Kong, and as senior consultant to CNN International in various regions. He also spent three years as a Vice President of CNN’s commercial arm, Turner International. Previously Ian was a radio and television journalist, news editor, and foreign correspondent with the ABC over 27 years, his overseas postings including Port Moresby, Singapore, Jakarta, Tokyo, New York and London. After 35 years in broadcast journalism, Ian founded and managed an international media consultancy. He is a passionate supporter of high standards and ethical practices in journalism, regardless of platform, technology and commercial influences.

Meggie Palmer is an award-winning journalist with more than 15 years global reporting experience. She’s the founder and CEO of PepTalkHer, a technology & consulting company focused on closing the gender pay gap. Meggie worked as reporter and producer in Australia and abroad covering stories in Italy, Syria and Zimbabwe for the BBC, CNBC, and SBS Dateline. Her films have won New York Festival TV & Film awards, UN Media awards, a Walkley award and a Logie nomination.

Most recently she was a VP at the Financial Times in New York City. Meggie has been a contributing author with Vogue and an Adjunct Lecturer at Columbia University. She regularly speaks on diversity, equity and inclusion. Based in the USA for the past five years, Meggie maintains strong ties to Australia in a professional and personal capacity. She’s a passionate angel investor and board member.

Helen Dalley is an experienced broadcast journalist. She is currently the creator and host of the podcast Build It. They’ll Come, a Governor of the Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Foundation, Patron of Healthy Bones Australia (formerly Osteoporosis Australia) and Non-Executive Director on the Board of not-for-profit Aurora Education Foundation.

Helen worked as a reporter at the Nine Network for almost 20 years. Her long and short-form reports ran on the well-respected Sunday program, where she was also a fill-in presenter for host Jim Waley. She hosted A Current Affair Summer Edition, and she was an interviewer/reporter covering several Federal election night coverages. She then spent 11 years at Sky News Australia as a host, anchor and interviewer. She co-anchored the coverage of four consecutive Federal election campaigns and hosted several national television programs for the Sky News Business channel, including Sunday Business, Business Agenda and News Now with Helen Dalley.

Helen has won a Walkley Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism and recently consulted to The Walkley Foundation over a number of years, providing integrity and fact-checking advice to the judges of The Walkley Awards.