A-CSEAR Conference 2021

Associate Director - Sustainability

Corey Peterson has worked at the University of Tasmania since 2010 managing the Sustainability team and is charged with advancing a holistic organisational sustainability agenda, including in curriculum and community engagement. He served on the University of Tasmania governing Council from 2012-2020 and is the current President of Australasian Campuses Towards Sustainability (ACTS). He has also served on the Board of several community organisations, including Sustainable Living Tasmania for ten years (five as President), is a graduate of the Tasmanian Leaders Program and has joint Masters Degrees in Environmental Science and Public Administration. He also spent 16 years supporting science in Antarctica before immigrating to Tasmania.

Professor of Accounting

Craig is Professor of Accounting at the University of Tasmania. His research interests are in the area of social and environmental accountability and accounting, financial accounting, and financial accounting theory, and he is one of the most highly cited accounting researchers internationally with citations of over 25,000 (as per Google Scholar). He is also the author of three leading textbooks, namely Financial Accounting (9th edition 2020), An Introduction to Accounting: Accountability in Organisations and Society (Cengage Learning, 1st edition, 2019), and Financial Accounting Theory. He has also been the senior supervisor of over 20 PhD completions as well as being the recipient of several prestigious research and educational awards.

Academic Lead - Accreditation - College of Business and Economics

Emeritus Professor O'Donovan has been an academic for over 40 years. In 1980 he began his academic career at the Riverina College of Advanced Education in New South Wales. From 1982 to 2003 he was at Victoria University (VU) in Melbourne (formerly the Footscray Institute of Technology) and in 2001 became the Head of the School of Accounting and Finance at VU. Gary’s main research interests were in social and environmental accounting and corporate social responsibility and he completed his PhD on legitimacy theory as an explanation for social and environmental disclosures in 2000. In 2002 he was the organiser and co-convenor of the 1st Australasian CSEAR conference, held in Melbourne, Australia, which was co-hosted by VU and RMIT University. He left VU to join the University of Tasmania (UTAS) in 2003 where he was appointed Head of the School of Accounting and Corporate Governance. At UTAS, he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Business from 2005-2009, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Students & Education) from 2009-2010, Dean of the Tasmanian School of Business & Economics (TSBE) from 2011-2015 and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Global Engagement) in 2016. Gary was appointed as an Emeritus Professor and has worked on a part-time basis as Academic Lead – Accreditation for TSBE since the beginning of 2017.

Professor of Accounting

Charl De Villiers is Professor of Accounting at The University of Auckland, New Zealand, where his research and teaching interests include Sustainability Accounting, Integrated Reporting, and Management Accounting. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Cape Town, University of Pretoria, and University of the Western Cape, in South Africa; and Universiti Teknologi Mara, in Malaysia. Charl was President (New Zealand) of AFAANZ (Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand) from 2018 to 2020.

Chief Financial Officer

Rayne as a member of Forico’s Executive team, contributing oversight and strategic planning. Rayne has over 20 years’ experience as a Chartered Accountant, which has seen her lead teams, drive change and create value across a broad range of industries both in Australia and internationally including primary production, aquaculture, wine, property development, and more recently in forestry. Rayne has a strong interest in corporate sustainability and believes that integrated reporting will be an important tool to improve the transparency of an organisation’s environmental, social and financial impact. This year, Rayne inspired and led the multidisciplinary team to develop Forico’s inaugural Natural Capital Report – one of the first of its’ kind in the world.

Business Reform Leader

Karen McWilliams is the Business Reform Leader in the Advocacy and Professional Standing team at Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand. She is responsible for shaping and influencing business reform issues of relevance to Chartered Accountants, including insolvency, corporate governance, anti-money laundering, corporations law and sustainability matters.Karen represents CA ANZ on the Global Compact Network Australia Board, the ASX Corporate Governance Council, the Advisory Board of the Deakin Centre for Integrated Reporting and as chair of the financial committee of the Climate Measurement Standards Initiative. With over 20 years' experience in a variety of business and advisory roles, she started her career in the specialist field of audit and has held positions with Worley Parsons, Ernst and Young, and Deloitte in London. She is a Fellow Chartered Accountant with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, a member of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand and holds a Master of Arts in Mathematical Sciences from the University of Oxford.

Lecturer

Glenn has experience working as an auditor in the private sector in Fiji and a decade of experience teaching accounting at the University of the South Pacific based in Suva, Fiji. Glenn’s research focusses on accounting and its empowering and emancipatory potential for Indigenous peoples with the South Pacific being his context of interest. Glenn is also interested in the emergence of new technologies such as social media and blockchain and their unintended consequences in developing countries.

CEO/Director

Joss Fenton has a Bachelor of Commerce, CPA-qualified adviser/accountant, 25 years of experience, and has been working and volunteering with not-for-profits for over 20 years. In the last few years Joss has completed the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) Course which has further underpinned his understanding of best practice financial governance. Having been brought up in Tasmania, but lived and worked elsewhere for a number of years, Joss greatly appreciates Tasmania's rugged natural environment and accessibility. In recent years Joss has enjoyed the therapy of spending time in Tasmania's natural environment, particularly walking and riding on kunyani/Mt Wellington given it's close proximity. Joss wishes to ensure Tasmania's natural environment remains intact for his children, future generations, and the wider community in general.