Ian Kemish

Kemish's 25-year Government career included service as Head of the Australian Prime Minister's International Division, Australian Ambassador to Germany and Switzerland, and Australian High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea. He was also Head of the Southeast Asia and Consular Divisions at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He earlier served in several other embassies in the Indo Pacific and Europe. He was awarded membership of the Order of Australia for his leadership of Australia's emergency response to the 2002 Bali bombings.[3] From February 2010 to March 2013, Kemish was Australian High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby.[4][5]

Kemish joined the private sector in 2013, taking on different leadership roles in the internationally focused resource sector, located in Washington and then Melbourne. In March 2020 he retired from the position of Chief People and Sustainability Officer at Newcrest Mining Limited where he had global accountability for sustainability, government and community relations, communications and human resources across Newcrest's jurisdictions in Australia, the Asia Pacific and the Americas.[2]

Kemish is a co-founder and director of Forridel, a strategic advisory business which helps a range of private and public sector clients negotiate the international environment, with a particular focus on the Indo Pacific region. His business activities also involve working with the Washington-based Bower Group Asia as a senior adviser, and as an associate with the London-based Ambassador Partnership. He is also Vice President of the Australia-PNG Business Council.

Kemish is also actively engaged in the international development and not-for-profit sectors. He is a senior adviser to the Global Partnership for Education, where he supports GPE's partnerships with Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. He is Chairman of the Kokoda Track Foundation, which promotes health, livelihood, education and leadership in PNG, and is on the board of 3rd Space, which provides services to the homeless in his home city of Brisbane. In addition, the Forridel advisory business directs at least half its net revenue towards providing the disadvantaged with education opportunities that would otherwise be beyond their reach.

Kemish is also involved with a number of Australian universities and research institutes. He is an Adjunct Professor in History at the University of Queensland, where he also chairs UQ's ChangeMakers alumni engagement initiative. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute of International Affairs, an Honorary Fellow at Deakin University, and a Director of the Australia-Indonesia Centre at Monash University.