Chris Owen is a partner of Norton Rose Fulbright, based in their Perth office. He’s a litigator and Chair of the firm’s commercial ESG group in Australia. He is also the partner in charge of the firm’s Responsible Business and Pro bono work in Australia.

Prior to relocating to Australia, Chris was a litigation partner and ESG lead at an international law firm in London.

Chris has 20 years’ experience advising clients on contentious and non-contentious ESG matters. As well as helping clients involved in disputes, he also advises clients in their ESG adaptation journey and dispute minimisation.

Chris is dual qualified in Australia and England and regularly advises on ESG matters with a cross-border element.

Dr Merriden Varrall is the Lead for Geopolitics at KPMG Australia. In this role she helps business understand and navigate the complex global geopolitical environment. Merriden provides business-relevant insights into global, regional and local geopolitical trends and works with clients to develop strategies and solutions to identify and mitigate risk, and maximise opportunities.

A former UN diplomat based in China, Merriden is a sought-after commentator on geopolitics, East Asia, China’s foreign policy, and Australia’s bilateral relationship with China.

From 2014-2018, Merriden was the Director of the Lowy Institute’s East Asia Program. She is currently a Non-Resident Fellow at Lowy. Before joining the Institute, Merriden was the Assistant Country Director and Senior Policy Advisor at United Nations Development Programme, China, where she worked on China’s role in the world, focusing on its international development cooperation policy. Prior to that she worked for the Australian Government Treasury and the Department of Family and Community Services.

Merriden spent almost eight years living and working in China, including lecturing in foreign policy at the China Foreign Affairs University and conducting fieldwork for her doctoral research.

Merriden has a PhD examining Chinese foreign policy from Macquarie University, Sydney, and the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. She has a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from the Australian National University, and completed her undergraduate studies in international studies at the University of Technology Sydney. Her analyses have appeared in academic journals, as well as publications such as The Quarterly, The New York Times, Nikkei Asian Review, Foreign Policy, The East Asia Forum, and the Lowy Interpreter, among others.

Cameron Mitchell joined ANZ in 2021 to set up and manage the bank’s geopolitical risk function. In this role he coordinates the production of tailored geopolitical risk assessments and advises management and clients. He supports portfolio and exposure reviews, stress tests, and crisis and response planning, as well as developing and employing tools to enhance ANZ strategic risk management.


He is also an invited member of the National Security College Futures Council within the Australian National University and lectures on the theory and application of geoeconomics.

Previously, Cameron worked for HSBC in Hong Kong and London, where he was Global Head of Geopolitical Risk.

Cameron is a former Australian public servant and Australian Defence Force reserve officer, where he worked on defence and security issues. He also served on operational deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan providing support to operational-level commanders and national-level agencies.

Cameron was born in Surrey, UK and grew up in Nigeria and Brunei before completing secondary school in Australia. He has completed a Master of Studies in International Relations at the University of Cambridge, a Master of Arts by research in Political Science from the University of New South Wales, and a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Political Science and History from the University of Sydney.

He is the author of articles and a book about the Russian defence industry, published through the UK International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Australian Strategic and Defence Studies Centre.

Dr Bryce Wakefield is the CEO of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. Previously, he was the associate responsible for Northeast Asia Programs at the Wilson Center in Washington DC and then a tenured academic of Asian Studies and International Relations at Leiden University. He has lived, worked and researched in the United States, Japan, Europe and New Zealand, and speaks Japanese and German fluently, with working competency in Dutch.

Ticky Fullerton joined the Chamber as Chief Executive in March 2023 to lead the team as we look forward to the huge opportunity for our partners: the Free Trade Agreement, developments with AUKUS on the defence and security front and the exciting business generation around energy transition.

Ticky is a highly skilled and motivated thought leader with board and governance experience, an extensive network across governments, the top floor of business and the media.

She has a long-standing reputation as a highly credible voice in business. She is a trusted advisor to government, working closely with both Australian and UK government networks.

Most recently, Ticky was Business Editor at Large at The Australian newspaper. She is an award-winning journalist and a household name in Australian business circles with over twenty years at News Corp and the ABC.

She was Business Editor of Sky News in Australia and presented Business Weekend, the channel’s flagship business program for the ABC and was an investigative journalist with Four Corners.

Prior to journalism, Ticky spent ten years with investment bank CS First Boston in Britain and Australia.

She is a past director of the Australian British Chamber of Commerce and of the CRC for Irrigation Futures.

Ticky has a law degree from Oxford where she was also Treasurer of the Oxford Union.