Co-Founder

Think Forward

#AIIANextGen Speaker

Sonia Arakkal is co-founder of Think Forward, a think tank focused on intergenerational fairness. Most recently she was a Policy Fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre where she worked on Australia's economic engagement in the Indo Pacific with a special focus on Australia India relations. She was a 2022 delegate to the Australia India Youth Dialogue and comments regularly on Australian TV, print and radio on public policy. She was previously a political staffer for state and federal parliamentarians. Sonia holds a BA in international relations and an LLB with honours from the ANU. She will be undertaking an MBA at INSEAD in 2023.

Director, Australia-Japan Research Centre

The Australian National University

Associate Professor Shiro Armstrong is Director of the Australia-Japan Research Centre and Director of the East Asian Bureau of Economic Research at the Crawford School of Public Policy in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific and Editor of the East Asia Forum.

Assistant Minister for Trade

Senator Tim Ayres grew up on a beef cattle farm in Northern New South Wales. Before his election to the Australian Senate, Senator Ayres was a trade union leader who played a prominent role in Australia’s manufacturing, food and agriculture sectors. In 2019, he was elected as a Senator for New South Wales representing the Australian Labor Party, and served as a leading member of the Australian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, and Finance committees. In 2022, Senator Ayres was appointed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as Assistant Minister for Trade and Assistant Minister for Manufacturing. Tim is married, with two teenage children and lives in Sydney.

Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs

Leader of the Opposition in the Senate

Under the Morrison Government, Simon Birmingham was appointed as Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment and Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate in August 2018. Simon was then appointed as Minister for Finance in October 2020 while also having the responsibility as Leader of the Government in the Senate. Simon grew up near Gawler in Adelaide’s north on his family’s small horse agistment property and was educated at local schools before going on to study at the University of Adelaide where he completed a Masters of Business Administration. Prior to entering the Senate, Simon worked for a number of industry bodies, establishing particular experience in the wine, tourism and hospitality sectors – industries that are critical to South Australia’s prosperity. After less than three years in the Senate Simon was appointed to the Shadow Ministry, serving as Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray-Darling Basin and the Environment until the 2013 election. Following the change of government in 2013 Simon served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment, with responsibility for water policy, including the Murray-Darling Basin, National Parks and the Bureau of Meteorology. In 2014 Simon was appointed to serve as the Assistant Minister for Education and Training in the Abbott Ministry, with specific responsibility for vocational education, apprenticeships, training and skills. Simon then went on to become Minister for Education and Training in the Turnbull government in September 2015 and was made Manager of Government Business in the Senate in February 2018. Simon is married to Courtney and together they have two young daughters, Matilda and Amelia. Simon is an active advocate for mental health and ovarian cancer and is a proud Adelaide Crows fan.

Head of Navy Research

Sea Power Centre - Australia

Dr Elizabeth Buchanan is Head of Navy Research at the Sea Power Centre. She is a nonresident fellow of the Modern War Institute at West Point. Previously, she was a research fellow with the Centre for European Studies at the Australian National University and a Visiting Fellow with the NATO Defense College. She was the 2018 Australian Institute of International Affairs Early Career Research Awardee.

Senior Lecturer in International Politics

University of Adelaide

Dr Priya Chacko is a Senior Lecturer in International Politics in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Adelaide where she teaches courses and supervises research on foreign policy and South Asian politics. She previously held positions at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her current research projects focus on the impact of market reform on India’s foreign policy and social policy and the intersection of Hindu nationalism, populism and neoliberalism in Indian politics and policy making.

GALA DINNER SPEAKER

Executive Director, IISS-Asia

James plays a leading role in organising the annual IISS Shangri-La Dialogue and the IISS Fullerton Forum: The Shangri-La Sherpa Meeting, as well as the IISS Fullerton Lecture series. He also leads the growing IISS research team in Singapore focused on the Asia-Pacific and contributes to IISS publications.

Prior to joining the IISS, James was a Singapore-based author and journalist, and an Associate Professor of Practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. His best-selling 2018 book, The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age was shortlisted for the FT / McKinsey book of the year. Prior to academia, James worked for the Financial Times, most recently as Mumbai bureau chief, and has written for a wide range of global publications. He also worked as a senior policy adviser in the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He was educated at Harvard and the London School of Economic

Journalist Fellow

Australian Strategic Policy Institute

A journalist since 1971, Graeme Dobell writes on Australian foreign policy and defence. He is Journalist Fellow with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, writing a weekly column for ASPI’s digital magazine, The Strategist, since 2013. In 2021, he wrote an intellectual history of ASPI’s work over its first two decades: An informed and independent voice: ASPI, 2001-2021.

Founder

Australian Services Roundtable

Jane Drake-Brockman is an expert on international trade and regional integration and widely recognized as Australia’s foremost industry expert on services competitiveness and trade in services. She joined the University of Adelaide's Institute for International Trade in 2015 after 3 years with the International Trade Centre (Geneva). She was the previously the Chief Economist at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). Previously she taught at the MBA programme at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Current research includes the impact of new technologies and digital trade. Jane is the Founder of the Australian Services Roundtable, the peak business body for the services industries and co-convenor of the Asia Pacific Services Coalition. She has served on the Board of the International Chamber of Commerce in Australia, on the Executive Committee of the Hong Kong Coalition of Services Industries and as convenor of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) Taskforce on Services. She was a central architect of the APEC Services Competitiveness Roadmap and is credited in the literature with the original business-driven idea behind the plurilateral TISA negotiations in Geneva. Jane is a former senior Australian diplomat, serving as Chief Economist in DFAT, as Assistant Secretary, Services & Intellectual Property Branch and Minister/Charge d’Affaires at the Australian Delegation to the EU in Brussels. She studied Economics at the Australian National University as a National Undergraduate Scholar and started her career as the first female cadet with the Australian Treasury. Before joining DFAT, she spent 8 years at the OECD Secretariat (Paris) and 2 years with the Commonwealth Secretariat (London).

Stan Grant is the International Affairs Editor for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a multi-award winning current affairs host, an author and an adventurer. Well known for having brought the former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to tears when interviewed about Indigenous affairs on The Point, Stan’s keynotes are insightful, engaging, always professional and at times, controversial. Stan Grant’s Aboriginal heritage has shaped his dynamic, resilient personality. Born in Griffith in south-west New South Wales, in 1963, Stan Grant’s mother is from the Kamilaroi people and his father is of the Wiradjuri. Stan spent most of his childhood on the road living in small towns and Aboriginal communities across outback NSW. His father was an itinerant saw-miller who worked when and where he could. Stan moved so often he attended 12 different schools before he was in his teens. The early traveling gave Stan a love of adventure and stories. He grew up listening to the tales of his grandfather and uncles and aunts. Despite poverty and an early sporadic education the security of his family and the larger Aboriginal community gave him a strong platform for life. After attending University, Stan won a cadetship with the Macquarie Radio Network, launching a career in journalism that has spanned more than 30 years and more than 70 countries. In that time Stan has travelled the world covering the major stories of our time from the release of Nelson Mandela, the troubles in Northern Ireland, the death of Princess Diana, war in Iraq, the second Palestinian intifada, the war on terror, the South Asia Tsunami, the Pakistan Earthquake and the rise of China. Stan has hosted major news and current affairs programs on Australian commercial and public T.V. He has been a political correspondent for the ABC, a Europe correspondent for the Seven Network based in London and a senior international correspondent for the international broadcaster CNN based in Hong Kong and Beijing. Returning to Australia in 2013, Stan continued to cover international events for Sky News Australia and reignited his passion for telling the stories of his own indigenous people. He has worked as the Indigenous editor for the Guardian Australia, managing editor for National Indigenous Television and international editor for Sky News. In 2016 Stan Grant was appointed as the special advisor to the then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Indigenous constitutional recognition. In 2022, Stan became the solo full-time host of the ABC’s weekly flagship discussion program Q+A. Stan has won many major awards including an Australian T.V Logie, a Columbia University Du-Pont Award (the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize), and the prestigious U.S Peabody Award. He is a four-time winner of the highly prized Asia TV Awards including reporter of the year. Stan has written The Tears of Strangers and Talking To My Country (Harper Collins), and has published numerous articles and opinion pieces for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. Stan Grant is passionate about justice and humanity. His years of international reporting has given him a deep understanding of how the world works. He is deeply immersed in the politics and history of Asia and the Middle East. He can link the importance of leadership and the impact of history and above all believes in the power and resilience of people. Stan is married to ABC Sports Broadcaster, Tracey Holmes and has four children. He lives in Sydney.

National President

Australian Institute of International Affairs

Allan Gyngell AO FAIIA was appointed the National President of the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) in September 2017, having previously been named a Fellow of the AIIA in 2010. He is an honorary professor with the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific and was most recently Director of the ANU Crawford Leadership Forum. Allan has had an extensive career in Australian international affairs. He was the Director-General of the Australian Office of National Assessments (ONA) from 2009 to 2013. Prior to leading the ONA, he was the founding Executive Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy from 2003 to 2009. Additionally, he has worked at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, serving as an Australian diplomat in Rangoon, Singapore and Washington. He was Senior Advisor (International) to Prime Minister Paul Keating between 1993 and 1996. Allan was appointed as an Officer in the Order of Australia in 2009 for services to international relations. In 2007, he co-authored Making Australian Foreign Policy with Michael Wesley. His most recent book, Fear of Abandonment: Australia in the World Since 1942, was released in 2017 to considerable acclaim. A new edition of the book was published this year to cover the last six years in Australian foreign policy.

Special Counsel, Holding Redlich

Former Senior Counsel, World Trade Organisation

Michelle Healy is a Special Counsel in Holding Redlich’s Brisbane office specialising in trade, government and regulatory work. Michelle has over 25 years of experience in international litigation and cross-border transactions. For the past 15 years, she was a Senior Counsellor at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, where she was responsible for the management, analysis and resolution of complex inter-state trade disputes. She also trained diplomats and government officials on trade remedies, WTO law and the WTO dispute settlement system and supported WTO negotiations on subsidies and countervailing measures and fish subsidies. Michelle also lectures regularly on WTO law and international dispute settlement. Prior to working at the WTO, Michelle worked as a corporate attorney in New York and London where she represented corporate clients in cross-border acquisitions, mergers and a variety of financing and private equity transactions across numerous industries. She began her career working at the High Court of Australia, where she was an Associate to the Chief Justice, Sir Anthony Mason, AC KBE.

Director Research and Engagement

Asia New Zealand Foundation

Suzannah Jessep joined the Asia New Zealand Foundation in March 2019, after serving as New Zealand’s Deputy High Commissioner to India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Deputy Ambassador to Nepal and as New Zealand’s Deputy High Commissioner to Vanuatu. During her thirteen years in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, she also served in the Ministry’s Australia, Pacific and Europe Divisions, and in the area of Antarctic and security policy. She is a Board member of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs (NZIIA), and sits on the Advisory Boards of Minister Damien O’Connor’s Trade for All Ministerial Advisory Group, the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre (NZCCRC) and the New Zealand India Research Institute (NZIRI). Suzannah is passionate about Asia, and in particular building New Zealand’s connections with the fast-growing and dynamic South Asia.

AIIA China Matters Fellow

Australian Institute of International Affairs

Yun Jiang is the inaugural AIIA China Matters Fellow. She was co-founder and editor of the newsletter China Neican. She is currently a managing editor of the China Story blog. She has published and been cited widely on China-related topics, with a focus on Australia’s policies on the People’s Republic of China. She is a former researcher in geoeconomics at the Australian National University and a former policy adviser in the Australian Government, having worked in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Treasury and the Department of Defence. Her policy experience covers economics, national security, and foreign policy.

National Vice President

Australian Institute of International Affairs

Zara Kimpton OAM is the master of ceremony for the AIIA National Conference. She was appointed National Vice President of the Australian Institute of International Affairs in 2010. She completed her BA in Political Science, Fine Arts and Economics at Melbourne University. She subsequently pursued a career in stockbroking with William Noall & Son in Melbourne, the mining/investment industry with Consolidated Gold Fields Australia in Sydney and banking with Banque Nationale de Paris in Melbourne. She then worked in New York in the interior design industry and later ran her own business in this field in Melbourne. Zara joined the council of the Australian Institute of International Affairs Victoria in 1997 and was President from 2003 to 2006. She was made a life member of AIIAV in 2007. She has been involved in AIIAV study tours to South Africa (1996), Sri Lanka (2003), Russia (2008), Vietnam (2001) and China (2012) and led the tours to South America (2000) and Indonesia (2009). Zara chaired the national Fundraising Task Force in 2007 and is now the National Patron of the Friends of the AIIA. She has also represented the AIIA at conferences in Malaysia, Japan, Republic of Korea and the United Kingdom and in 2017 was a delegate to the Women 20 (W20) summit in Germany. She was the leader of the Australian delegation to the W20 Argentina 2018 summit and the Japan W20 2019 summit. She is currently a joint proprietor of a cattle and sheep station in north-eastern Victoria. Apart from international affairs her main interests are travel, the arts, tennis, horse riding, hiking, and speaking French. In 2011 Zara was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to international relations through executive roles with the Australian Institute of International Affairs Victoria.

Journalist and Commentator

Writes for The Australian

Glenda Korporaal is a Sydney based journalist with The Australian newspaper specialising in business, financial affairs and international relations. She is a former London, Washington and New York correspondent of The Australian Financial Review (AFR) and was the first woman deputy editor of the AFR (1986-1988). She has been business editor of The Bulletin magazine, editor of The Australian’s monthly business magazine, The Deal, and associate editor (business) of The Australian. She has a strong interest in Asia, particularly China, since her first visit to the People's Republic of China (PRC) on a 'farm study tour' in 1978. She was the China correspondent for The Australian in 2018 and 2019. She has lived and worked in Hong Kong (2001-2003) and Singapore (1998-1999). She has had a strong interest in the Olympics having covered Games in Atlanta (1996), Nagano (1998), Sydney (2000), Athens (2004), Beijing (2008) and London (2012). She is the author of several books including Making Magic. The Marion Mahony Griffin Story, An Olympic Life (with Kevan Gosper), The Bid. How Australia won the 2000 Games (with Rod McGeoch), The AARNet Story, 20 years of the internet in Australia, and Yankee Dollars. The Story of Australian Investment in the US. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and a Master of Arts (Economics) George Washington University, Washington DC. She was awarded an OAM for her contribution to print journalism in the Australia Day honours of January 2019.

Principal Policy Fellow

Perth USAsia Centre

Dr Huong Le Thu has over 15 years of experience working in academia and think tanks across the Indo-Pacific: in Taiwan (National Chengchi University), Singapore (ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute), and Australia (ANU and ASPI). She has held short-term visiting fellowships in the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, ASEAN Secretariat, Jakarta, KMAG, Seoul.

Huong is an influential policy analyst and a recipient of numerous awards and grants. She is a recognised expert on Southeast Asia, including on regional alignment politics, perceptions of great-power competition, and ASEAN. Her voice frequently features in global media, including The Foreign Policy, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Nikkei Asian Review, The Australian Financial Review, The Straits Times, Japan Times, among others. Huong is a prolific writer and her academic publications, including The Asian Security Journal, The Asia-Pacific Review, The Asian Policy, Oxford University Press feature on syllabuses of leading universities, including Cambridge University.

Dr Huong LE THU is also a non-resident fellow at CSIS, Southeast Asia Program and a member of the Advisory Board of the Griffith Asia Institute (GAI), Griffith University. Dr. Le Thu holds a PhD from the National Chengchi University and an MA in international studies from Jagiellonian University in Poland. She speaks five languages and has published in four of them.

Chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

European Parliament

In the European Parliament, David James McAllister is Chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, substitute member of the Committee on International Trade and the Sub-Committee on Security and Defence, member of the Delegation for Relations with the USA and the Delegation for Relations with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and substitute member of the EU-Serbia Stabilisation and Association Parliamentary Committee. McAllister was born in Berlin on 12 January 1971. His father was from Glasgow and, as civilian official for the British Army, was stationed at a number of bases in Germany from 1955 onwards; prior to that, he had served in the 51st (Highland) Division of the British Armed Forces during the Second World War. His mother was a teacher of German and music. David and his two sisters grew up in Berlin-Charlottenburg. He was raised bilingually in German and English, and initially went to a British primary school. In 1982 his family moved to Bad Bederkesa in the Cuxhaven region. David McAllister received a scholarship from the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung to study law at the University of Hannover between 1991 and 1996. In 1996 he passed the first state examination in law. After his training as a junior lawyer, he took the second state exam in 1998 and has been a lawyer ever since. He was Member of the for Lower Saxony parliament from 1998 to 2014, where from 2003 to 2010 he was Chair of the CDU Group. On 1 July 2010, the Lower Saxony parliament elected him Prime Minister of Lower Saxony as Christian Wulff’s successor, an Office which he held until 2013. At the CDU’s regional party conference on 14 June 2008, McAllister was elected regional Chair of the CDU in Lower Saxony, receiving 98.9% of the votes. He held this Office until 26 November 2016. In 2014 McAllister was the CDU’s lead candidate in the European Parliament election campaign and was elected MEP. In November 2014, he was elected Vice Chair of the International Democratic Union (IDU) in Seoul and has been Vice President of the European People’s Party since October 2015. In August 2003 he married the lawyer Dunja McAllister, née Kolleck. The couple have two daughters and live in Bad Bederkesa

Director, Centre for Gender, Peace and Security

Monash University

Professor Jacqui True FASSA FAIIA, is Professor of International Relations and Director of Monash University’s Centre for Gender, Peace and Security. She is also a Global Fellow, Peace Research Institute (PRIO), Oslo and received her PhD from York University, Toronto, Canada, and an honorary doctorate from Lund University Sweden in 2018. Previously she held academic positions at Michigan State University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Auckland as well as visiting fellowships at the Australian National University and Gothenburg University, Sweden. Her current research is focused on the Women, Peace and Security agenda: Understanding the political economy of violence against women, sexual and gender-based violence in conflict in Asia Pacific; and the gender dimensions of violent extremism and conflict. This research is funded by the Australian Research Council, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the United Nations. Her book, The Political Economy of Violence Against Women (Oxford, 2012) won the American Political Science Association’s 2012 biennial prize for the best book in human rights, the British International Studies Association International Political Economy book prize in 2013, and the 2015 biennial Australian Political Science Association’s Carole Pateman book prize for gender and politics. Her most recent books are Violence against Women: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2020). and with Sara E. Davies of The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace and Security (2019). In 2021 she was named one of the 100 most influential Person in Gender Policy – for the gender-based violence area.

National Executive Director

Australian Institute of International Affairs

Dr Bryce Wakefield is the national executive director of the Australian Institute of International Affairs and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University. He has lived, worked and researched in the United States, Japan, Europe and New Zealand. He trained as a political scientist with particular expertise in International Relations and the international affairs of East Asia. From 2008 to 2012 Bryce was the associate responsible for Northeast Asian programs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. In this role, he was responsible for conceiving, designing and organising around 60 events in Washington, including policy briefings in the U.S. Congress, on political issues in Australia, Taiwan, North and South Korea and Japan. From 2012 to 2018, he was a tenured lecturer of area studies and international relations at Leiden University in the Netherlands. At Leiden he taught numerous classes on the foreign policy and domestic politics of Japan, the politics of East Asia, comparative politics, and the relationship between politics and culture. During his time as a university academic he also delivered training, induction and briefing sessions for Dutch and international diplomats in the Hague and in Japan. He has been widely quoted in the media, including on the ABC (Australia), the Australian, BBC, Channel News Asia, CNBC, NHK, and the Washington Times. Bryce lived in Japan from 1998 to 2004 and earned his master’s degree from Osaka University’s School of International Public Policy. He earned his PhD in political studies from the University of Auckland.

Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies

The Australian National University

Professor Hugh White AO FAIIA is Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University. His work focuses primarily on Australian strategic and defence policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, and global strategic affairs especially as they influence Australia and the Asia-Pacific. He has served as an intelligence analyst with the Office of National Assessments, as a journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald, as a senior adviser on the staffs of Defence Minister Kim Beazley and Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and as a senior official in the Department of Defence, where from 1995 to 2000 he was Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence, and as the first Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). In the 1970s he studied philosophy at Melbourne and Oxford Universities. He was the principal author of Australia’s 2000 Defence White Paper. His major publications include Power Shift: Australia’s future between Washington and Beijing, [2010], The China Choice: Why America should share power, [2012], Without America: Australia’s future in the New Asia [2017], and How to defend Australia [2019]

Career highlights

1985-1991 Senior Adviser to Defence Minister and Prime Minister; 1995-2000 Deputy Secretary for Strategy, Department of Defence; 2001-2004 Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2004-2011 Head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU .