Conference Speakers

Tony Colman (RIPPR) (LIZ)

 ​The RI President’s Personal Representative (RIPPR) at this conference is PDG Tony Colman (Liz) from Salamanca RC in Tasmania. Tony has over 40 years of service in Rotary and, as well as extensive Club service, has held many District responsibilities, including District Governor, YEP Chair, a host for GSE Teams and is currently the District 9830 Chair of ARH.  Tony is a renowned antique and heritage furniture expert and has even restored 3 Hobart trams!  Liz has the family’s Rotary genes, is a passionate sewist and a retired teacher. 
​Click HERE for Tony's full bio.

Jason Sargent

Dr. Jason Sargent is Co-Director of the Information Systems for Social Impact Research Group in the Swinburne Business School and a visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Nathu Puri Institute (NPI) for Engineering and Enterprise, London South Bank University.
Since 2014 he has annually supervised a small group of Swinburne undergraduate IT and Business students who travel to India to work with remote tribal communities in the Satpuda Ranges of Maharashtra State to improve curriculum delivery for tribal schools & enable imagineering a passion for IT through the use of virtual reality and robotics. 

Lillie Giang

​Lillie is a passionate cook and food waste warrior. She credits her love of food and success to her father and maternal grandmother during her youth in Vietnam. Lillie runs a business called The Food Affectionist. Her other passion is to inspire people to reduce food food waste. ​Love-Food Hate-Waste aims to raise awareness of avoidable food waste from Victorian households. Each year Victorian households send over 250,000 tonnes of avoidable food waste to landfill, a huge financial loss for households and a negative impact on our environment.

Dr Rahul Chakrabarti

Rahul is a Consultant Ophthalmologist at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital - a specialist surgeon for the eye, brain, nerves, and muscles. He operates on adults and children who have misaligned eyes.
Rahul's passion is using virtual reality to train surgeons and in 2018, as Chief Registrar, Rahul was part of a team that developed a new virtual reality simulation education program at the Hospital. He is also involved with the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists with a particular focus on surgical assessment and feedback.

Jeremy Richardson

Jeremy is an Australian-trained plastic surgeon and is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (FRACS (Plast)).
 After graduating with honours in medicine and in  Surgery, he undertook three years of general surgery training, prior to commencing plastic surgical training. Jeremy was subsequently appointed Senior Plastic Surgical Clinical Fellow at the Oxford University Hospitals Trust in the UK.  He also undertook further aesthetic surgical training in England.
 Jeremy is passionate about teaching and has provided surgical care and training in Thailand, Yemen, Pakistan and Papua New Guinea.

Judy Campbell - Town Crier

Judy was recently crowned Australian Champion of Champions Town Crier - one of the few women criers in the world.  She will talk about the history of the Port of Echuca from its founding on the Murray River in 1853 and its importance to the trade and economic growth of the region.  Like many frontier towns in its time, breweries and brothels boomed; a combination of wealth along with the finest of fashions and bare-knuckle fights. Paddle Steamers were a feature of Echuca from the beginning and over time they would transport goods along the Murray and it became the largest inland port in Australia.   The town became the trading hub from as far as Queensland, utilising the Darling and Murrumbidgee Rivers to transport wares like wool and harvests of wheat. 

Gerard Waldron

​Gerard is a transport industry veteran and past managing director of the Australian Roads Research Board (ARRB), and recently concluded his second term as vice president of the Forum of European National Highway Research Laboratories. Automated Driving is a consuming passion for Gerard and he is a firm believer that informed participation in the conversation will guide government policy and regulation. His presentation will raise the profile of some of the less discussed, but arguably most important issues and opportunities of Australia’s introduction of this initiative.

Keith Bulfin

​Mexican drug cartels, money laundering; how I survived living with the cartels for 7 years!
Keith spent 23 years with the US Department of Justice, governments in Europe combating money laundering and criminal activity within the global banking industry. He worked undercover as a DEA agent with the Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. Later, Keith infiltrated Hezbollah and became their banker and worked undercover as an agent during the Arab Spring 2011-2015. 
Keith, currently completing a Master of Law, now heads a team based in Syria and Iraqi, fighting terrorism, human trafficking and money laundering within Australian Banks.

Nicole Hill

Nicole is a PhD candidate at Orygen the Centre for Youth Mental Health at the University of
Melbourne.  Her study aims to identify suicide risk factors and suicide clusters in young people in
Tasmania, which has experienced the largest increase in youth suicides in Australia. She has also worked as a research officer investigating suicide risk factors and hotspots in NSW and was a key researcher in a study involving the development of best practice guidelines for suicide response in the hospital emergency departments.  Results from her studies will be used within a community in Tasmania to support the development of a local suicide response initiative.

Edward Tudor

Edward is the founding Executive Director of the Melbourne Indigenous Transition School, where he has been responsible for the establishment, opening, management and strategic vision of MITS. Prior to MITS, Edward was a solicitor with law firm King & Wood Mallesons.​​ 
​In 2016 Edward was awarded the Jack Brockhoff Foundation Churchill Fellowship to study organisations supporting the transition of young Indigenous people into mainstream educational opportunities across New Zealand, Canada, the USA and Lapland.  In 2018 Edward won the Rotary Club of Melbourne Vocational Service Award and he is the recipient of the 2019 Harvard Club of Victoria Non-Profit Fellowship.

Ian Riseley

Ian has had a long and illustrious “career” in Rotary topped off by being President of Rotary International for the 2017/18 year.  He is married to Rotarian Juliet, PDG of District 9810 2011/12.  
Ian was born and raised in Melbourne and is a Chartered Accountant and still runs his own company advising small and medium businesses. He was a Charter member of the Rotary Club of Sandringham in 1978, and third President in 1981/82.
Ian will provide an update on the current situation with the Rotary International's Polio eradication program.

GALA DINNER

Saturday Night Gala Dinner Theme: Masquerade
Entertainment by "Retrospective" (Band of mature musicians playing classic 60s and 70s music)