Dr Richard Walley OAM is a Noongar man and one of Australia’s leading Aboriginal performers, musicians and writers. Richard is a working director of his family-owned business, Aboriginal Productions and Promotions, which delivers cultural awareness and learning programs and has been in operation for over 25 years. Richard is a committed leader in the promotion of Noongar culture, and has extensive experience working alongside Australian and international organisations as a cultural consultant and presenter. Richard lectures on Aboriginal culture at UWA and is a regular host and participant at significant public and cultural events in Perth and the South West.

Over the last 30 years Ralph has been involved largely in mineral processing research and has managed CSIRO’s iron ore processing research for more than 20 years. He is currently a Chief Research Scientist in CSIRO Mineral Resources and is recognised throughout the Australian and overseas iron ore industries as an expert in iron ore processing and sampling.

Stephen Durkin is the Chief Executive Officer of The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (the AusIMM). Having personally led six major business transformations over his 30 year career, Stephen Durkin is regarded as a seasoned change agent. Since May 2017 Stephen has been CEO of the AusIMM, the peak body for professionals in the mining industry, following the five years prior as CEO of Engineers Australia. In both instances Stephen has led widely applauded transformations of these long-standing Institutes to rebuild them to be more contemporary, financially sustainable, and with a stronger external brand. Prior to these positions leading professional associations, Stephen was at National Australia Bank for 15 years in a number of senior executive leadership roles including as State Manager, Retail Bank NSW/ACT. Stephen Durkin holds an MBA and a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours). Stephen has extensive experience in business and association management, and possesses highly-regarded skills in government, media and community relations. Stephen’s leadership sets out the importance of teams and culture in building high performance organisations.

Bill Johnston was sworn in as the Mines and Petroleum, Commerce and Industrial Relations, Electoral Affairs, and our State's first Asian Engagement Minister in March 2017. Bill is also the Member for Cannington, having held this position since September 2008. Prior to entering Parliament, he spent seven years as the State Secretary of WA Labor, four years as Shadow Minister for Mines and Petroleum, and five years as Shadow Energy and State Development Minister. He was also a former senior official of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association, where he fought for fairness for low-paid workers in industrial rights, workers compensation and working conditions.

Koji Saito, Executive Advisor, Research & Development, Nippon Steel Corporation, holds M.S. and PhD degrees in Physical Chemistry from Nagoya Institute of Technology and Tohoku University, respectively. His career on iron making technology including coal characterization using NMR, coking process research, and blast furnace technology started in Yawata works of Nippon Steel Corporation in 1984. Then, he worked for a national project to develop a new cokes process, called SCOPE21 process in Japan, after he stayed at RWTH-Aachen University in Germany, as a visiting researcher, in order to develop in-situ NMR imaging system in 1997. He mainly clarified the mechanism of rapid heating effects using his original in-situ NMR imaging system in SCOPE21 projects. After this project, he started research management work as general manager of Iron making R&D division and also COURSE 50 projects as sub Project Leader. He was general manager in head of iron making technology division of Nippon Steel ＆ Sumitomo metal Corp. He was Project Leader of COURSE 50 until 2015. He has at least 120 papers and 110 patents. At the moment he is one of the members of Science Council of Japan (SCJ).

Allon Brent is the Principal of Perth based consultancy Global Minerals Marketing, having retired as Iron Ore Marketing Manager from BHP in 2016. Allon has over 30 years experience in the international minerals and metallurgical industries, having held senior management roles in Marketing, Technology/R&D, Business Development and Operations. Allon has PhD and MS degrees in Mineral Engineering from the University of Minnesota (USA) and a BSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cape Town (South Africa). He is the author/co-author of 26 international journal and conference papers, the co-inventor of 3 international patents and a member of the AusIMM.

Ivan Vella is managing director Supply Chain and Services for the iron ore business. He has accountability for the end to end supply chain moving iron ore from our 16 mines across the Pilbara through the rail network and on to customers via four ports terminals at Dampier and Cape Lambert. This includes accountability to bring the AutoHaul® driverless train solution into operations. Ivan is also responsible for the Core Services function which provides the support infrastructure, utilities and associated services across the iron ore operations. He is also the managing director for the Robe River Joint Venture and Dampier Salt Limited. Ivan is based at Rio Tinto’s iron ore headquarters in Perth, Western Australia and is a member of the product group’s senior leadership team. Immediately prior to this role, Ivan was chief operating officer — Coal, with accountability for Rio Tinto’s five coal operations in New South Wales, Queensland and South Africa. As leader of the Coal business, he was focused on maintaining strong safety performance and driving cost and productivity improvements to ensure the operations remained free cash-flow positive in increasingly challenging circumstances. Before his time at Coal, Ivan worked at the Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia for five years – a $6bn start-up copper and gold operation and one of the top three copper mines in the world. Ivan started in the role of vice president — Business Readiness where he led the business readiness and commissioning programme and also held the roles of vice president — Procurement and Infrastructure Development, and most recently chief operating officer (COO). As COO, Ivan was responsible for all aspects of Oyu Tolgoi’s operations and construction, including the open-pit mine, concentrator, infrastructure, inbound and outbound supply chains and community relations. Ivan joined Rio Tinto in 2003 and has led a number of large business improvement and transformation projects across various areas of the business. He previously worked with Deloitte Consulting, focusing on the mining industry. Ivan has a Bachelor of Business, a Master of Business in Operations and Quality Management from Queensland University of Technology and a Master of Business Administration from University of Edinburgh. He sits on the board of the Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia.