Jill Briggs

Jill Briggs has been a rural consultant and facilitator for over 10 years. She runs her own consultancy – Rural Training Initiatives. Jill works primarily with individuals, communities and rural industries in leadership training and capacity building. She facilitates leadership programs for the Wine, Sugar, Citrus, Seafood and Dairy industries as the principal or co-facilitator. She currently manages and facilitates two national people development projects for The Fisheries Research and Development Corporation – the highly successful National Seafood Industry Leadership Program, now in its tenth year, and the innovative 3 M’s project - Mentors, Mentorees and Mentoring.

Jill’s qualifications are based on a masters in leadership and post-graduate adult learning. Her academic background is science and geography. Her career background is teaching and lecturing in primary, post-primary and tertiary learning institutes. Her passion is to support rural people in the development of skills for the future.

Jill is a partner in a primary production business in Northeast Victoria, Australia. She lives in a small rural community west of Rutherglen – Norong - and is an active volunteer at various levels.

Jill's vision is to be part of a team that provides rural communities and industries with skills for the future.

Kate Brooks

Kate is a Social Scientist with extensive experience in rural community capacity building, and project and policy social assessments. She began her career in strategic marketing and corporate affairs in a range of industries; a career which is now complemented by an established profile in the area of social research and community sustainability. As a consultant, Kate works with a variety of industries in the NRM environment, and also part time manages the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation’s Social Sciences Research Coordination Program (SSRCP).

Kate’s PhD focussed on social capital and the social networks that create community sustainability and resilience to facilitate growth and development. She is also a Visiting Fellow of the School of Social Sciences, ANU, and an advisory scientific panel member for the Australian Centre for Excellence in Risk Assessment (ACERA).

Previous agencies that Kate worked for included the Bureau of Rural Sciences (DAFF), where she managed a variety of social research projects in the areas of forestry, fisheries and the viticulture industry. Since that time she has conducted a successful private consultancy in the rural industries field, with a strong client base in industry, State and Federal Government and Research and Development Corporations. She has also provided input to Environmentally Sustainable Development workshops, co-developed and presented community consultation workshops, and presented seminars on commonwealth government policy uses of social (impact) assessment methodologies, and the social aspects of Triple Bottom Line Assessments.

Kate has broad experience across a range of community types, and a skill set which incorporates community consultations, survey development, community profiling, social impact assessments, program and policy evaluation and social monitoring and evaluation. Her particular specialty area of social capital, incorporating community knowledge networks, provides a basis for understanding community interactions, needs and development options, and developing new frameworks and approaches in changing environments.

Rob Cawthorne
Managing director of the Carbon Reduction Institute

The managing director and co-founder of the Carbon Reduction Institute (CRI), Rob has been involved in the generation of various environmental management applications including the creation of the flood flow management for the Hunter River Salinity Trading Scheme.

This scheme is considered one of the first working models of an environmental trading scheme in the world.

Rob has created an organisation that has become one of Australia’s leading carbon management consultancies. The business services of CRI include carbon emissions audits, life cycle analyses; supplying carbon credits, and carbon neutral business certification. Through CRI, Rob continues to work tirelessly on finding a solution for our global climate crisis.

Rob Fish has been a fishing industry rep/consultant for over 15 Years. Prior to this and after completing a marine biology degree and post graduate Fisheries Management in Edinburgh, he spent three years working in Canberra with the Australian Fisheries Management Authority. Rob has been the chair of the Northern Territory Seafood Council for four years and has been involved directly with numerous fishing issues in the north including the Blue Mud Bay land rights decision, Territory and Federal Marine Park processes and most recently the implementation of compulsory CoOL in cooked seafood outlets. He is currently working with several large operators in developing the offshore snapper fisheries of northern Australia, including the implementation of two new management plans.

George Kailis

George Kailis is Professor of Management at the School of Business of the University of Notre Dame Australia. Professor Kailis holds qualifications in law and management and has had extensive industry, government and community experience. He was Managing Director of the M.G. Kailis Group one of Australia’s largest fishing and aquaculture businesses from 1992-1999.

Special interests are held in the areas of the environment, fisheries management and strategy. Professor Kailis has been a Director of both the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation and the Australian Fisheries Management Authority. Ongoing positions held by Professor Kailis include directorship of the M.G. Kailis Group, the Pearling Industry Advisory Committee, the Australian National Centre for Oceans and Resource Security and the Advisory Board of Yale University’s Centre for Environmental Law and Policy.

Tom Kime

November 2009 saw the launch of Tom Kime's Fifth book, "Fish Tales" published by Kyle Cathie Ltd. The collection of stories and recipes has been written by Tom Kime with Bart Van Olphen, in conjunction with the Marine Stewardship Council MSC, and tells the stories of wild fish and wild places that are being fished and managed sustainably around the world.

Tom appears frequently on Market Kitchen and Saturday Kitchen in the UK and he is one of the regular chefs on Ready Steady Cook in Australia. Tom will present a thirteen part series entitled Global flavours for the New Zealand Prime Time network. The new TV series will air in April 2010. Tom writes regular articles and recipes for Olive and BBC Good Food magazines. Tom's articles have also been published in The Sunday Times' style magazine, Food Illustrated, BBC Good Food, Food and Travel and Olive. He has written articles for the Guardian and the Independent on Sunday Travel supplement and Observer Food Monthly. Articles on Tom have also appeared in the Sun Herald- Sydney Morning Herald, Good Living, Wish magazine, Sydney magazine The Age, Sunday Telegraph in Australia. Tom wrote a regular monthly column for Australian Delicious magazine throughout 2008-2009.

Tom will address the conference on sustainable seafood based on his travels and experiences around the world researching his latest book.

Ralph Plarre
Co-owner, Ferguson Plarre Bakehouses Pty Ltd

Ralph Plarre is an enthusiastic 3rd generation baker in a family business that now spans 4 generations & two families working together. Following in his fathers footsteps, he studied bakery production & distribution, which has been his speciality. His two sons now run the day to day operations.

Over a 43 year baking career, Ralph helped grow the family business from 5 shops into a rapidly expanding 43 store franchise bakery chain in suburban Melbourne, Geelong & Ballarat.

Ralph has been involved with the governments Greenhouse Challenge program for many years, so consequently when the time came to build a new bakery four years ago, “sustainability” was made a priority in all aspects of planning.

Since completion of the new bakery two years ago, Ferguson Plarre Bakehouses has been recognized for environmental leadership by winning the Best Green Business award in the national 2008 My Business Awards, was a finalist in the 2008 Banksia Awards and the 2009 Premiers Sustainability Awards, & in July 2009, won the Gold Banksia award, the most prestigious environmental award in Australia.

Ralph has held a number of industry positions, most notably being that of President of the Baking Industry Association of Victoria (BIAV) & chairman of the National Baking body, during which time he instigated national food safety plans across the baking industry.

Having retired from daily bakery duties, he is now passionately working with his industry body to develop an environmental strategy for the baking industry as a whole. He currently spends a lot of time addressing business & community groups helping them to understand the necessity for environmental action & the great outcomes that can be achieved by adopting a positive, simple, systematic attitude to sustainability.

Jason Plato
General Manager, International Marketing Sealord Group Ltd

Sponsored by

Graduating from BMS Waikato University, Jason spent 3 years working in Japan for a Japanese regional bank before joining Sealord Group in 1994. Running the Sealord Japan office in Tokyo for a period of 6 years, Jason then moved to the US to manage Sealord's marketing operations for another 7 years. Jason is now the General Manager of International Marketing of Sealord, based in Auckland, New Zealand.

Sealord is a global seafood enterprise with a world-wide fishing, processing and marketing network. For information about the Sealord products available in your region plus recipes and regional contact details go to the drop down box at the bottom of the page and select your country.

Sealord's processing headquarters is in Nelson, New Zealand where it has fish, coated products and shellfish processing plants. Nelson is also the base for Sealord's Fleet Managers, Research & Development, Information Systems, Human Resources and Staff Development and other support services. Sealord is part-owner of a joint venture mussel processing plant in Tauranga.

The company is jointly owned by the Maori people of New Zealand and Japanese seafood company Nissui.

Katherine Sarneckis,
CEO Northern Territory Seafood Council

Katherine Sarneckis has been working in the seafood industry for five years through the Northern Territory Seafood Council and for the past two years as CEO of the Council. Prior to the seafood industry she held various roles within both the Territory and South Australian Government in the environmental field which utilised her academic training in the field of Environmental Toxicology. A National Seafood Industry Leadership graduate, Katherine is keen to see the industry develop and provide opportunities for it’s leaders to work more collaboratively.

Duncan Souter

Duncan Souter is Chief Executive Officer of MRAG Asia Pacific, a consulting company specialising in fisheries and marine resource management in the Asia/Pacific region. Prior to joining MRAG, Mr Souter was the Fisheries Adviser to the two previous Australian Government Ministers for Fisheries and contributed to the development and delivery of Australian Government fisheries-related policies and programmes, most notably those for Commonwealth fisheries. Before joining the Minister’s Office, Mr Souter was Chief Executive Officer of the Queensland Seafood Industry Association, the peak representative body for the $300m Queensland seafood industry.

Mr Souter has considerable practical experience with fisheries and aquatic resource management issues including fisheries policy, planning and research, marine protected areas and coastal zone management. Mr Souter is a past Director of the Cooperative Research Centre for the Great Barrier Reef and has served on numerous fisheries policy and science related advisory committees. He holds a B.Sc (Hons) in marine science from the University of Queensland.

Clare Winkel
BSc, MBA

Clare Winkel has worked in the food industry since 1987, has been HACCP training since 1995, in Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Clare is currently working in both Australia and the USA, in the areas of food safety and ethical auditing, NCS International (www.ncsi.com.au).

Clare has audited for Certification bodies since 2004 and in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, UK, Holland, China and USA. Since 1994 Clare has consulted and trained in the following areas: seafood harvesting, farming and processing, meat processing - including wild game harvest, food service, fresh cut, food packaging, storage and distribution.

Between 2006 & 2008, Clare was a researcher on the EU project STREPS no FP6- 518451 “Developing a Stakeholders Guide on the vulnerability of food and feed chains to dangerous agents and substances”, which included the development of a new risk assessment method to enable the farmed Atlantic Salmon supply chain to assess for vulnerabilities to food safety contaminants, including assessment of traceability, documentation and failure to detect contaminants.

In 2007 Clare completed a dissertation for her MBA (Seafood Management) on “A review of methods of management & marketing of the community and biological sustainability relevant to maximising the fishery potential“ using the Torres Strait (northern Australian indigenous managed) rock lobster and sea cucumber fisheries as case studies.

Clare has presented at the Pacific Fisheries Technologists Conference in Seattle (2010), San Francisco (2008) and in Reno (2002). And was involved in the organisation of the International Assoc Fish Inspectors conference in Dublin in 2007. From 2006 to 2008 Clare lived in a one street fishing village on the east coast of Ireland.