Ben Wyatt is the former Western Australian Treasurer and has had ministerial responsibility for Finance, Energy, Aboriginal Affairs and Lands. He was the first Indigenous treasurer of any Australian parliament and he has held various shadow cabinet portfolios, including responsibility for Native Title, the Pilbara and Culture and the Arts. He retired from the Western Australian Parliament in March 2021.  

Ben holds a Masters degree with Distinction from the London School of Economics and a Bachelor of Laws from The University of Western Australia. Prior to entering Parliament, he practised as a lawyer in both private practice and with the Western Australian Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.   

Ben also sits on the Boards of the West Coast Eagles, Woodside and Rio Tinto.  

Rowena Albones has had a series of leadership, financial and project development roles at Rio Tinto since joining the company as a Commercial Analyst for Hamersley Iron in 1999. She was appointed the Managing Director of Pilbara Projects in February 2024. In this role she leads development and construction of major mine and infrastructure project investment for Rio Tinto’s Pilbara Iron Ore business.

Before returning to project development, Rowena was Chief Financial Officer for Rio Tinto Iron Ore and oversaw financial and business performance. She has held other senior finance leadership and project development roles across Rio Tinto with responsibilities including major stakeholder relationships, joint ventures and business development.

Rowena holds a Bachelor’s degree majoring in Economics and Finance and a Masters in Business Administration, both from Curtin University, Australia.

Professor James Arvanitakis is the Director of the Forrest Research Foundation based at the University of Western Australia and an adjunct professor at Curtin University. He moved to Perth, Western Australia to take up the position and was formerly the Pro Vice Chancellor (Engagement and Advancement) at Western Sydney University and Executive Director of Fulbright Australia.

After a successful career in finance and human rights, he has worked with universities for more than 15 years establishing innovative education and research programs including The Academy at Western (awarded the Australian Financial Review Excellence in Education Award) and was awarded the Prime Minister’s University Teacher of the Year Award (2012).

He has a regular segment on ABC News 24, has various Board positions including the Perth Festival and is the inaugural Patron of Diversity Arts Australia. He is a Fulbright alumnus, having spent 12 months at the University of Wyoming as the Milward L Simpson Distinguished Fellow and in 2022 he founded Respectful Disagreements, a brave spaces project.

Delwyn Everard is a strategic thinker, lawyer and advocate.  

As a partner of global firm Spruson & Ferguson, she specialised in patent and trademark litigation, acting for some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical, manufacturing and mining companies. She then spent 10 years as the Deputy Director of the Arts Law Centre, Australia’s national community legal centre, managing the delivery of its legal advice service to the creative sector. In 2017 she founded Everard Advisory, a boutique legal firm focusing on the arts.  

Delwyn has served on the board of the Australian Art Events Foundation, which produces Sydney’s much loved contemporary art festival Art Month Sydney, and she is currently on the boards of The Lester Inc which delivers an annual portrait prize and The Farm Margaret River offering annual residencies to artists whose practice is connected to place and environment.   

She has worked extensively with Indigenous artists and art centres in remote Australia, assisting with governance and business advice and major public projects. Her COVID-19 lockdown project was a podcast ‘Running the Show’ which discusses the legal and business issues confronting arts organisations and others working in the creative sector. 

Michelle Tremain is current CEO of Fini Group and has 27 years experience in the assurance, financial advisory and consulting sectors.

Michelle is highly respected across the business community and has a demonstrated passion for the arts and education.

She has been proactive in her personal support for local emerging artists and academics and is currently a board member of the Arts and Culture Trust, Deputy Chair of the Perth Festival and Forrest Research Foundation independent governor.

She holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Murdoch University (double major Accounting and Asian Studies), is a CPA and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia and the Tax Institute. Michelle also has a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment.

Simon Yeo has worked in the financial services industry since 1993. In November 2000 he established and managed the Private Client division of Euroz Securities Limited before moving to a specialised role within the Institutional Sales division from 2013 – 22 and is now in the Private Wealth division. Simon was formerly an Executive Director of Euroz Limited and Euroz Hartleys Securities Limited.  

Simon holds a Bachelor of Commerce from The University of Western Australia and was previously a chartered accountant.  He was on the board of the ACO for 10 years from 2014 to 2024. He was the Executive Producer of The Reef, being instrumental in conceptualising, financing and arranging logistics, when the ACO first launched the project in 2012 and also for The Reef redux undertaken in 2015 for the 2016 The Reef tour of the USA. He was previously a Director of Tura New Music. 

Chair of Founders Factory Australia, having brought London's leading tech accelerator to Australia for the first time, with $22 million of generous funding from Rio Tinto and the WA government to invest in clean-tech and nature-tech startups.

Rohan was previously Senior Policy Adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron and Economic Adviser to Shadow Chancellor George Osborne.

Described in the British media as "Downing Street's wildest thinker", Rohan was responsible for developing key policies to boost technology and innovation in the UK - such as Entrepreneur Visas, generous incentives for angel investment (SEIS & EIS), and the British Government's world leading Open Data agenda.

In addition, Rohan created the Tech City initiative, which helped build London into a global tech hub, attracting major investment from Google, Microsoft and Amazon. He also instigated the Government's Life Science Strategy in 2011, as well as the follow-up 2012 strategy on genomics, which committed the UK to sequencing 100,000 entire genomes - creating pathways for new medical breakthroughs.

After leaving 10 Downing Street, Rohan was appointed a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, before founding Second Home - a social impact company supporting culture and innovation in London, Lisbon and Los Angeles. In 2016, Rohan also founded Libreria bookshop in East London, a critically acclaimed space for literature and ideas.

Rohan has served on several non-profit boards, including the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London Contemporary Music Festival, Battersea Arts Centre, Fremantle Culture Council, Entrepreneur First and Code First:Girls.

He has also been named as a Visiting Professor and Honorary Fellow at the Royal College of Art in London, and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics - plus he has been a book prize judge for the Samuel Johnson Prize, George Orwell Prize and the Costa Poetry Prize.

Rohan is also a regular columnist for the Times of London and the Australian Financial Review, plus he's written widely for the Daily Mail, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and other publications. 

'We deeply grieve the passing of our colleague and friend.  Paul was everything a colleague could want, fun, wise, curious and supportive.  We loved him on our team and will miss him deeply. Ben Wyatt, Chair'

Leith is a highly regarded restructuring and insolvency specialist and litigator with extensive experience in complex insolvency matters, including voluntary administrations, liquidation and receivership, dispute resolution and corporate finance.  Leith also advises on “Safe Harbour” implementation and compliance. 

Leith has worked with some of Australia’s largest financial institutions and insolvency practitioners in a notable career that spans more than 30 years.  His practice encompasses many areas of corporate finance including financial services and business structuring.  Leith regularly acts in insolvency and general commercial proceedings as adviser and counsel in the Supreme Court of Western Australia and the Federal Court of Australia.

In addition to his particular focus on insolvency, Leith is an experienced corporate and commercial lawyer and litigator.  He provides strategic legal advice to the banking and finance sector and litigates in corporate and commercial matters.