Asia-Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society

We were very lucky to be able to hear from the following speakers at the ASES Australia Summit:

Jonathan Marshall: PLATARIS

Jonathan Marshall is the Managing Director of PLATARIS Systems a professional services organization providing training, consulting and resource solutions to the Australian Early Childhood Education (preschools) industry. PLATARIS is currently developing an owner/operator Preschool franchise system that will target the Indian and Asian markets. Subsequent to graduating from GE’s Commercial Leadership Program in 2002, Jonathan held a number of strategy and sales leadership roles with GE in Australia, US, UK, Germany and Ireland. Jonathan also was the Corporate Finance manager for a large Eastern European bank based in the Baltics during the late 90’s. He is undertaking a PhD in Educational Leadership at Macquarie University, and has an MBA from Arizona State University and an Economics Honours degree from the University of Sydney.

David Cunningham

Born in Ireland in 1976 - David initially started his career in JPMorgan London in 1999 and later in JPMorgan Asia until 2002. David pioneered into the emerging market of China where he founded the multi award winning real estate investment company "Shanghai Vision Ltd" in 2002. In just 11 months Shanghai Vision Ltd had sales offices in Ireland, UK and Australia. The headquarters in Shanghai, which included a mortgage broking division, facilitated the sale of over 600 residential apartments to individual non-Chinese investors.

In 2005 “Shanghai Vision Ltd” was sold in an MBO (Management Buy Out) for an undisclosed sum.

David then founded and continues to manage to this day a rental and property management company in Shanghai, "Shanghai Vision Asset Management Ltd", with over USD184 million AUM (Assets Under Management). 

Tim Pethick

Tim is best known as the founder of the hugely successful nudie brand(http://www.nudie.com.au/). Tim built nudie into a business turning over $20m a year and recognised as one of the top 10 most influential brands in the Asia Pacific region.

Prior to launching into the world of delicious fresh fruit beverages, Tim had more conventional roles such as Chief Executive Officer of BTLookSmart, a joint venture between British Telecom and LookSmart; Marketing Director of the Microsoft Network (msn) in Australia, Managing Director of Encyclopaedia Britannica, General Manager at Village Roadshow and general management and marketing roles with Lend Lease.

In the last few years Tim has helped launch Gecko, a mobile phone MVNO targeted at kids (www.geckoworld.com.au), an online superannuation brand – Max Super (www.maxsuper.com.au) , a female lifestyle brand (www.joyherbal.com.au), an a virtual p.a. and lifestyle management business (www.symmetrypa.com.au) . Tim is in high demand on the public speaking circuit and talks about branding, marketing and entrepreneurship. He is also a regular expert on the 7 Network small business TV show – Kochie’s Business Builders.

Tim has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of NSW, a Master of Economics from Macquarie University, an MBA from Deakin University and is a chartered accountant.

Dr. Peter Bryant

Peter Bryant is a Senior Lecturer in management at Macquarie Graduate School of Management where he specialises in entrepreneurship and strategy. He has over 15 years experience in a range of industries including management roles with Qantas Airways, St George Bank, Deloitte, a software start-up and early stage venture capital. During 2002-2006, Peter managed the commercialization of new technologies at The University of Sydney through the creation of entrepreneurial start-up companies. He graduated BA (Hons) with Medal from the University of Sydney and earned his PhD in Management from Macquarie University in 2006.

Valerie Khoo

Valerie Khoo is a journalist, author and entrepreneur. In 2005, she founded the Sydney Writers’ Centre - Australia’s leading centre for writing training. Since then, it has grown from a one-person operation to a thriving centre featuring 16 of Australia's leading writing trainers/journalists/authors. She is also an author of five books.

Valerie is a sought-after presenter and has worked with government departments, multinationals and universities. With a Bachelor of Economics (majoring in accounting) and a Graduate Diploma in Communication (journalism, public relations), Valerie began her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers before joining a national public relations firm. 

She is published regularly in The Sydney Morning Herald, and writes for a range of corporate and consumer publications. She is the journalist behind the Enterprise blog of smh.com.au and theage.com.au

In 2007, Valerie was appointed an ambassador of Australia Network and will feature on the channel which is available in 21 million homes in 41 countries across Asia, the Pacific, the Indian subcontinent and in more than 200,000 hotel rooms.

Tony Wheeler - Co-founder of Lonely Planet:

Tony Wheeler is the co-founder of Lonely Planet.  When Maureen (co-founder/wife) and Tony arrived in Sydney the day after Christmas 1972, after a six month Asia overland trip from Europe, they only had 27 cents left between them. In late 1973 they both started Lonely Planet Publications to publish Across Asia on the Cheap, the story of their trip from London to Australia. They spent the following year travelling around South-East Asia and in early 1975 published their second book, South-East Asia on a Shoestring.

From those early guidebooks Lonely Planet Publications has grown to become the world’s largest independent guidebook publisher with more than 500 titles in print, over 400 staff and offices in London and Oakland as well as the head office in Melbourne. Last year Tony and Maureen sold a majority interest in Lonely Planet to BBC-Worldwide, but are still closely involved with the company and regularly travel to check out the books and other travel products, investigate new travel possibilities or simply to experience something new. In early 2009 Tony hit the road with a film crew from Lonely Planet TV to film the Laos program for their forthcoming series The Roads Less Traveled.

John has had a long association with the international debt markets having led CBA’s debt funding team since 1992, and being a member of the team since its inception.  He worked on the Bank’s first ever bond issue in 1984. Since that first issue John has seen CBA’s bond issuance grow from around $400m to over $40bn each year through hundreds of transactions in markets all around the world. John holds a Masters degree in banking management.  He is a career CBA banker and is based in Sydney, Australia.