Key People

Office Bearers

DIRECTORS

Mr John Leake - jleake@iid.org
A Founder of IID and is its current CEO.
He has some 30 years experience as an international development specialist gained in some 29 countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. He has undertaken some 90 consulting assignments, about 50 as an inter-disciplinary team leader in subject areas related to rural development and natural resource management and rehabilitation. He has experience with several the Australian government ministries, state governments, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, several UN Agencies and private clients. Mr Leake has been a director and principal of two of Australia's largest consulting firms involved in rural development and natural resource management. He has maintained a life long interest in research and development related to agriculture and has founded two other firms based on the results of this research and been a founding director of three others.

Professor Lindsay J Falvey - lfalvey@iid.org
A Founder of IID, and is Vice President of its Development Fund.
He is a leading international agricultural authority with an interest in ethics and religions. A Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences, he has served on more than 100 international missions to Asia, Africa and the Middle East on behalf of the Australian Government, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations and other organizations, has led 35 of those teams, and has been recognized for his outstanding work with awards from the governments of Thailand and Australia, including the Australian Centenary Medal for his contribution to the nation. Formerly managing director of Australia’s largest international environmental consulting firm and then Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture, Forestry and Horticulture at the University of Melbourne, he now holds the Chair in Agriculture at the University of Melbourne and is the author of nine books and more than 100 articles. He has headed the Institute of Asian Languages and Societies, is on the international advisory board for the Asian Agri-History Foundation in India and the board of the National Thai Studies Centre at the Australian National University, and is a Director of the Global Ethics and Religion Forum.

Mr David George
A Founder of IID.
David George has been closely associated with the development of the livestock export industry from northern Australia into South East Asia since 1972. Operating from Darwin he participated in the development of many markets in the region and elsewhere exporting live buffalo and cattle to Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Brunei, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Venezuela and Guyana. In the mid 1980’s he worked with Monterey Farms (a division of San Miguel Corporation) to gain access for feeder cattle to the Philippines. His company Carabao Exports Pty.Ltd. became the major exporter of live cattle and buffalo from northern Australia plus developing Opium Creek Station on the Mary River in the Northern Territory as a breeding property and export depot. He later sold Carabao Exports to the Brunei Government. Over the last few years he has worked as a consultant with major Australian cattle and breeding pig producers to establish their markets in South East Asia. His close association with the Philippines and South East Asia has enabled him to identify and develop opportunities for IID in the livestock field.

Mr Wayne Haslam - whaslam@iid.org
A founder of IID
Mr Wayne Haslam is an engineer with formal qualifications in planning and human resource management. He has over 30 years experience in international development projects in the Pacific, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. He lived and worked on projects in South East Asia for a 10 year period. He is a project management specialist and has undertaken assignments for the major international agencies including UN Agencies, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and the Australian Agency for International Development. He has been a director of a major consulting group in Australia and is currently the Director of a number of major international projects.

Mr David J King - dking@iid.org
Mr King, an agricultural engineer, has worked for more than twenty years as an international development professional throughout South East Asia, and the Pacific. He has worked as a consultant to a range of multinational and bilateral development assistance organizations as well as with the private sector. An experienced leader of multidisciplinary teams and a project design specialist he has focused on community based projects in rural water supply, environmental health, rural development and agriculture. In particular he views the long term sustainability of many development projects requires the strengthening of linkages between communities, government and private sector partners. Since 1991 he has lived in Manila, Philippines.

COMPANY SECRETARY

Mr John Gamble
John Gamble is a corporate strategist, consulting to a wide range of business sectors including information technology, finance, tourism, transport, construction, aviation and pastoral industries. His expertise includes tax, business finance and capital raising, corporate advisory and planning and corporate reconstruction. John has established and integrated multiple accounting practices in Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine and Adelaide. The result is the accounting practice now known as Horwath SA & NT. John is a Director of the Airnorth group of companies along with a wide range of investment entities and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia.

Members

Mr Maung Aung
Mr. Maung Aung is an engineer and has over 10 years of experience in international development projects in the Pacific, Asia, and Southeast Asia. He is a project management specialist and has undertaken assignments as Project Engineer while working in Asian Development Bank. He also has over 22 years of experience holding various professional positions in Myanmar Shipyard Enterprise. He is currently working as Consultant cum Associate Director for Socio-Economic Consultants Co., Ltd., Bangkok. He is involved in bilateral joint strategic economic partnership development projects: Thailand-Vietnam Joint Strategic Economic Partnership, Thailand-Lao Joint Strategic Economic Partnership, and Thailand-Myanmar Industrial Estates Development.

Professor Richard Bawden
Distinguished Professor of International Development at Michigan State University
Professor Bawden is an acknowledged world leader in the development and use of participatory processes in organisational change. He has provided input to staff development at the Asian Development Bank and is working on a series of workshops for the World Bank destined for each of its regional offices world wide.

Simone Bernhardt - sbernhardt@iid.org
Simone Bernhardt is a cultural anthropolgist with more than 30 years experience in intercultural management, including senior professional management of international programs for all Eastern and Western Europe including Turkey and the Caucases. Her diverse experience spans more than 50 missions in inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogue, planning, promotion of understanding, appreciation of the precursors of cultural conflict, democratic citizenship education programs for emerging economics, and practical reconciliation processes applicable to specific development contexts. She is the inaugural Project Manager of the pan-European project on Intercultural Dialogue and Conflict Prevention, and is a member of the International Board of the Global Ethics and Religion Forum USA, of the Europe of Cultures Forum Belgium, of the European Cultural Centre Athens, of the Board for the Preparation of the European Year for Democratic Citizenship, and of Mentor Media Education Barcelona.

Haydn Betts - hbetts@iid.org
Haydn Betts is a professional engineer and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia. He has been involved in water resources engineering for over 40 years and during the last 18 years has worked as a risk scientist, undertaking risk assessment and public safety studies. He has lead teams for policy development for land use planning of floodplains, flood emergency planning, designed flood mitigation and construction programs for four major cities and has also been involved in consideration of the impacts of climate change on land use and development. He has developed community consultation programs and is currently researching risk communication processes and hydroinformatics. Since July 2004 Haydn has been the Australian Team Leader for the implementation of the successful Yangtze River Flood Control and Management Project in Wuhan, China and designed its Decision Support System, beginning May 2002. His work in China has included the development of policy initiatives, river basin management tools and socio-economic impact assessment procedures for flooding.

Mr Doug Campbell
Mr Campbell is a former Ambassador/High Commissioner to five African countries, and a former senior official with Australia's development agency, AusAID. A lawyer by training, he has a strong background in institutional development and an interest in developing good governance in development and administration. Since leaving the Australian civil service he has undertaken numerous missions an behalf of aid agencies in Asia, the Pacific and states of the former Soviet Union.

Mr Peter Carroll - pcarroll@iid.org
Mr Carroll is a former senior officer of the Asian Development Bank and operates IID's Sydney office. Mr Carroll has wide experience in Asia for participatory planning rural development, particularly involving livestock.

Mr Ken Granger - kgranger@iid.org
He has worked in the field of applied geography since 1961,most of that time with a focus on public or community safety. After spending two years with CSIRO and eight years working on forest resource assessment surveys in PNG, he worked for 20 years as a strategic intelligence analyst and research manager in the Department of Defence in Canberra. He moved to Queensland in 1990 to take up a position as Scientific Adviser to the Queensland Department of Emergency Services, developing geographic information applications for the police and all of the emergency services. From mid-1996 to mid-2000 he worked as a contract consultant to the AGSO (now Geoscience Australia), leading an internationally acclaimed program of research aimed at developing the science and technology to better understand community risk posed by a wide range of natural hazards. He has taken a leading role in numerous emergency or disaster risk management studies in most Australian states, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and Asia. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Spatial Sciences Institute and was awarded the J P Thomson Medal by the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland in 2003 for his career contributions to geography.

Dr Michael Heppell
A founder of IID
Dr Heppell is an anthropologist and a chartered accountant. He has some 28 years experience as an institutional development specialist in Australia, Asia and Papua Nuigini. Dr. Hepple has been a director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Housing Panel, Project Director of the Victorian Public Service Board and has undertaken numerous assignments as a social anthropologist.

Mr Song Jisheng
Mr Song Jisheng, originally head of the Foreign Relations Department of the Jinan Agricultural University in Shandong, China's oldest agricultural university, now operates his own consultancy business providing nutrition advice and micro-feed ingredients to intensive piggeries in Eastern China through his own network of agents. China has between 45 and 55 per cent of the world's pigs, depending on the relative position of the pig population cycle in the major producing countries.

Following a first degree in Arts, Mr Song has undertaken extensive postgraduate training in animal nutrition and feed management in USA over a two-year period. Mr Song has collaborated with Institute members on rural development consultancies for the World Bank and IFAD in Shandong province and for private clients in aquaculture and education.

Mr Joern Kristensen
Mr. Kristensen has 25 years experience in senior management of international development- and humanitarian programmes. He has established and coordinated multi-donor funded development cooperation and managed multi-disciplinary teams in the fields of integrated natural resources/river basin management, ethnic minority issues, regional narcotics control cooperation and refugee reception and integration. Mr Kristensen is former CEO of the Mekong River Commission, and was previously Representative of the United Nations Drug Control Program in Burma and Vietnam. Before joining the UN he was a Regional Director of a major Danish NGO. He has a strong background in institution building, program development, management and conflict prevention in the fields of transboundary cooperation, natural resources development and conservation. Mr Kristensen has in-depth knowledge of the political, cultural and social conditions in the Burma-Indochina region. He is based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Dr Marion Leiba - mleiba@iid.org
Dr Leiba is a disaster risk scientist with more than 20 years experience in geohazards research in Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Recent work includes landslide and earthquake risk assessments in various parts of Australia, working for Geoscience Australia (Australian Government), and private consulting firms. She is also actively involved with science communication, in which she has had over 20 years experience with organisations such as Emergency Management Australia, Geoscience Australia, Mt Stromlo Observatory, CSIRO, and the Australian Science Festival.

Associate Professor Robert Macadam
Professor Macadam has a background in agricultural extension and is a member of the faculty of Agriculture and Rural Development at the University of Western Sydney where he has taken a major role in the evolution of the Centre for Systemic Development. He has experience with the facilitation of participatory planning in Australia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, New Zealand and Sri Lanka.

Mr Bruce McKenzie
Mr McKenzie is a former President of the Australia Council of Social Services and a Board Member of the International Community Development Society. He has wide experience in community development in Australia and internationally.

Dr Merle R Menegay - mmenegay@iid.org
Dr Menegay is an agricultural marketing systems specialist with over 30 years experience within the Asian region. As a consultant, he has completed short and long term assignments with a wide range of consulting firms and international agencies, such as the World Bank, ADB, and USAID. He has also held academic research posts with Clark University (Associate Professor), Michigan State University, University of Tennessee, and Kasetsart University [Thailand] as well as established the Department of Agricultural Economics at the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center in Taiwan. His long term experiences were in the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and India [as a Peace Corps Volunteer]. The applications of participatory learning techniques within agribusiness/marketing projects, rapid marketing appraisal techniques, agricultural marketing information systems, and horticultural promotion strategies are his primary areas of professional interest. He is currently based in Adelaide, Australia.

Mr Daniel Miller
Mr Miller is a specialist in Rangeland Ecology related to large ruminants in the Himalayan and Mongolian uplands. He has published several works on yaks. He is now on the staff of USAID in Afghanistan.

Mr Eryl Pitt
Mr Eryl Pitt is broadly qualified and experienced in rural development in 24 developing countries over 30 years for public sector international development agencies, Asian and British based investment banks, and Philippine non-profit organisations. Over 40 years, small entrepreneur in wide ranging Australian and Asian businesses from veterinary services to ladies’ handbags.

Dr Ben Robinson
Dr Robinson is a specialist in horticultural crop production and plant nutrition with wide experience in Australia, South Asia, and China. More information can be found at www.srhs.com.au.

Dr Peter Scholefield
Dr Scholefield is a specialist horticulturist with wide experience in tropical and temperate areas of Australia and overseas. He has worked in research, extension and private consulting roles on a wide range of crops including grapes, avocados, nut crops, mangos and other tropical fruits. More Information can be found at www.srhs.com.au.

Dr Graham Shorten - gshorten@iid.org
Dr Shorten has worked for over 35 years in natural hazard risk assessment, climate change issues, geotechnical engineering and engineering geology in Australasia, Pacific Island Countries, Southeast Asia, and Europe. During that time he has been engaged as a private consultant as well as being employed in international, academic, and public organisations including the Commonwealth Secretariat, CSIRO, SOPAC, QUT, Mineral Resources Department of Fiji (MRD), and the Queensland Departments of Emergency Services and Mines. Graham has spent much of that time as a scientific-engineering adviser on both applied and research projects in natural hazard and risk, funded by the World Bank and the European Investment Bank, and by development-aid organisations including AusAID, USAID, UKDFID, NZAID, and EU. He has managed projects ranging in scope from community-based disaster risk management to modelling for national and regional catastrophe insurance. In the past five years he has been involved in the design and implementation of natural hazard risk management projects dealing with cyclone, flood, storm surge, earthquake, tsunami, landslide, bushfire, and coastal erosion in Bulgaria, Poland, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Vanuatu, Tonga and Tuvalu.

Mr Momir Vranes
Mr Momir Vranes has 25 years of professional experience in water resources management, environmental capacity building and institutional strengthening in 15 developing countries. In his career he held posts of Water Resources Development Engineer, Senior Engineer, Certified Engineer Designer, Team Leader, Chief Technical Advisor, Regional Team Leader, UN Project Director and UN Programme Officer / Manager. He managed to facilitate agreements on international water management in Central Asia and on sustainable development in three Eastern Indonesian provinces. He is experienced in capacity building in transitional economies, in fields related to the sustainable resources management, while throughout maintaining a close link to the on-farm development work - and work with farmers - in irrigation systems in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. He is based in Brisbane.

Dr Laurie Zivetz - lzivetz@iid.org
Dr Zivetz has managed, designed, consulted with and evaluated NGO programs and NGO offices in over two dozen countries over the last 27 years. She helped to found two local NGOs in Nepal, and has headed CARE International offices in Vietnam, the Philippines and the CIS. Particular areas of expertise include reproductive health, community development, gender issues, capacity building and sustainability for NGOs, and qualitative action research. Dr Zivetz is a dual Australian/US citizen, currently based in Washington, DC.