Paul Niardone

Paul was the Executive Director and founder of Professional Public Relations (WA), the largest PR and communications firm in the State.

With a degree in Politics and Industrial Relations, and after 5 years in government Paul was appointed inaugural Manager of the Peel Region Business Enterprise Centre. He was then appointed as the first Marketing Manager for the entire Enterprise Centre Network comprising 36 centres throughout WA.

He is recognised as a strategic planner, developing lateral solutions to business and management issues and advising many corporations. He has lectured at universities and conducts in-house corporate planning and marketing sessions. His career to date has provided him with a unique opportunity to gain experience, insights and contacts in a wide range of industries at the CEO and Board level.

Greg Riebe

Greg is an active member of technology innovation, emerging entrepreneurial businesses and early stage investor communities in Western Australia.

In 2000, Greg co-founded Entrepreneurs in Residence Pty Ltd (EiR) which today provides support to emerging technology-based businesses with services including investment readiness & capitalisation, breakthrough growth readiness & execution, governance & interim management and exit & succession planning. Between 2000 and 2008, EiR had the mandate to manage investment funds on behalf the Federal Government to invest in information technology startups.

In 2009, Greg co-founded the Perth Angels network (current chair) and ebusiness association eGroup WA (past Chair, current Deputy Chair).

Greg is a speaker, mentor and adviser at a number of entrepreneurial programs, is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Inaugural winner of the TechBoard 2015 Startup Community Award.

James Paulsen

James started his career with Corporation Builders and worked his way up to Executive Director. He also founded Enterprise Angels, one of the first business angel networks in Australia. In 2006 he founded Queensland Leaders, an initiative to work with Queensland’s leading private companies to assist them become national or international market leaders. James studied accounting at QUT and then completed an MBA from Bond University.

Dr Richard Charlesworth

Richard is a doctor of medicine, a former captain of the Australian Hockey Team, the State Hockey Team and the State Cricket Team. He was also in Federal parliament for 10 years then he retired to take up the position of National Coach of the Australian Women's Hockey Team from 1993 until Sydney 2000.

Ric has worked as a high performance consultant to the Fremantle Dockers, and as a mentor coach to 5 Australian Institute of Sport coaches.

Retired from full time coaching the Kookaburras in 2014 after winning the World Cup, Ric now works as a High Performance Consultant.

Rupen Kotecha

A founder of the CFO Centre Australia, Rupen was on the Board of British Airways Regional Cargo based in the UK. Over his career to-date, which has included exposure to global organisations, Rupen has acquired invaluable knowledge and experience of the problems and opportunities facing large and small businesses in sales, operational and financial areas.

Rupen was Managing Director of the CFO Centre Australia before starting WA Leaders in 2015.

Jonathan Huston

Jonathan Huston is the Managing Director of Training Course Experts. In 1983, after four years at Royal Military College,Duntroon he graduated as an Intelligence Officer.

A decade followed where he honed the his art including service in Northern Ireland and Berlin.

In 1996, he returned to Aquinas and proceeded to revolutionise Private School funding for Catholic education in Western Australia.

In 1999, hand picked by a founder to run Tintacar, Jonathan wrote him an $18m cheque within three months of starting in the business.
Jonathan went to sell Tintacar and then bought and sold Parkside Towbars, Croissant Express and Training Course Experts in 2015. An avid amateur adventurer,

Jonathan has ascended several mainstream summits and followed in the footsteps of escaped prisoners of war and Cretan Partisans.

Charlie Gunningham
Commercialisation Adviser
Department of Industry, Innovation and Science

As a Commercialisation Adviser on the Accelerating Commercialisation (Entrepreneur's Programme), Charlie provides commercial advice and matching grants of up to $1 million to innovative companies looking to commercialise their novel IP.

Originally an Economics teacher from the UK, via Singapore, Charlie Gunningham landed in Perth in 1997 to do an MBA at UWA. Graduating as top student in 1999 he set up aussiehome.com, an online real estate business, running it for 10 years before selling to REIWA, whereupon Charlie and his team ran reiwa.com. He then moved to Business News to lead their digital transformation as GM of Digital, then as CEO.

Charlie is an active speaker, mentor and adviser among Perth's tech startup community, and sits on the advisory boards of TEDxPerth, WAITTA, the Perth Symphony Orchestra, ECU School of Business & Law, the Chief Scientist's STEM Panel and the Royal Perth Hospital Medical Research Fund marketing committee.