Speakers

The Royce Abbey Award is available to Rotary Clubs wishing to recognise Rotarians showing enthusiasm and commitment to the Ideals of Rotary. By doing so the club contributes AUD$1,000 to the Royce and Jean Abbey Endowed Fund within The Rotary Foundation Permanent Fund.

Mary Kouppas has been a member of the Rotary Club of Essendon since 2000.  She has served as Secretary, committee chair of Community Service, served on the Board (numerous times) and is currently chair of the Royce Abbey Award and a committee member of the Royce and Jean Abbey Vocational Scholarship committee.

Mary has also received a Paul Harris Fellow Recognition and is a Royce Abbey Awardee.

She works at Muscular Dystrophy Australia as Manager of Client Services.

Rana Ebrahimi is the community engagement manager at Cancer Council Victoria and the co-founder/director at Hueman Equity Consulting. She is a board member of the Australian Iranian Society of Victoria and Equal Employment Opportunity Network. Rana is the first Iranian woman to be Head of Office for the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Iran. Through 18+ years of working with UN agencies and international NGOs from various European and Asian countries, she has communicated and negotiated on positive peace and development with high-level government authorities and diplomats. In Australia since 2016, she has led several projects on human rights, multiculturalism, diversity and inclusion and multicultural community engagement.

Rana holds a Masters in International Law with a thesis focusing on Afghan refugees’ predicament in Iran.

Kate Jenkins is Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner and a member of the Australian Human Rights Commission. Her purpose is to advance gender equality, consistent with the Sex Discrimination Act and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

Kate is leading a number of projects, including the recently launched report Respect@Work: National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces and the Commission’s collaborative project on cultural reform with the Australian Defence Force. Kate is also Co-Chair of Play by the Rules, a joint project between human rights agencies and sports commissions to make grass roots sports safe, fair and inclusive.

Prior to joining the Commission, Kate spent three years as the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner, 20 years as lead equal opportunity partner with Herbert Smith Freehills and many years serving on the boards of Berry Street Victoria, Heide Museum of Modern Art and Carlton Football Club.

We are in the 5th year of United Nations Sustainability Development Goals 2030 (UN SDG 2030). We will discuss how far we have come and what does the next decade looks like for both Not-for-Profit and For-Profit organisations.

Suvam Ganguli is a member of Rotary Central Melbourne and has had a long career in Banking & Finance specialising in Institutional Funding and Capital Markets. Suvam is also the Co-Founder of Consult Urth, a data driven Software as a Service Platform that helps organisations plan, implement, monitor and report their sustainability journeys.

Suvam is passionate about helping organisations find their purpose and make sustainability practices central to the organisation’s strategy which with help build a resilient future for every organisation and the communities they serve.