While all attempts have been made to keep the list below current, to see the most up-to-date list see here.

Officers

Adam Ho General Manager P&G Growth

Adam Ho came from Cantone China. He graduated from Deakin University in 2011 with a double master’s degrees in Accounting and Finance. Adam has been working in corporate accounting roles across manufacturing, logistics and retail chains. His role in P&G is his most comprehensive to date, Adam finds himself enjoying working with one of the most devoted and hard working teams, making history together.

Alistair Frearson Head of Sales P&G Growth

Alistair is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, and has spent much of the last 15 years plying his trade, performing, touring, and teaching. In 2014, Alistair started a theatre company, Fear&Love Theatre Co. This was used as a platform to perform to, and run workshops alongside, some of Victoria’s most disadvantaged communities. His background in the creative arts along with his  keen interest in Social Justice,  has allowed him the chance to bring something new, to the daily operations of P.G.Paper Tubes. 

P&G Initiatives Directors

Doug Abdiel-Chairman and Non-Executive Director 

Doug is a Major in the US Marine Corps Reserves (18 years), and an Executive at Google Australia (7 years).  He holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, and an MA from the Australian National University in International Relations.  His deployments in the Marine Corps took him to places like Haiti, and Afghanistan where he worked to train individuals from impoverished backgrounds to be self-sufficient.  His work at Google is currently centered around creating small businesses which resell Google’s products across the Asia-Pacific region. 

Ryan Wherrett- Non Executive Director and Secretary

Ryan is an accounting and financial services professional specialising previously in childcare and currently in wealth management at Shadforth, a boutique high net worth firm. He holds a Bachelor of Business Leadership and Commerce (Fin) and is currently working towards his CFA accreditation. He has held previous volunteer positions at Scouts NSW and Ozharvest, assisting primarily in strategy development. 

Sandra Treadwell-Monk-Non Executive Director and Head of People Committee

Sandra has worked internationally as a leadership consultant for the last 20 years. She provides clients with professional advice and interventions that link their business imperatives with the behaviour and performance of their people. Sandra started her consulting career as a specialist in business strategy before joining Hay Group to focus on leadership and behaviour at work. She has held Practice Leadership roles in this area for Hay Group in India, the Pacific region and most recently in San Francisco, prior to returning to Melbourne in 2016 and setting up her own consulting/coaching practice.

John Frearson-Non Executive Director and Head of Safety

John’s career has been in the aviation industry as an airline pilot, manager, consultant, regulator, inspector and strategy/policy developer. His career has involved posts in a number of countries including many years in Korea and the Philippines. John’s undergraduate degree was in economics and he has an MBA from the University of Melbourne. John currently works as a Team leader with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. His passion in the community is the Scouting movement where is a Group Leader in his local Scout Group.

P&G Purpose Bios

Christina Gähl Non Executive Director and Board Secretary

Christina holds an MA of Communications, Marketing and German literature from the University of Essen. Having spent the last 13 years working at Google, she brings  experience in business strategy & operations, media and communications with her. She has worked with many large Australian businesses and has built strong relationships with stakeholders across the Asia Pacific region. Christina is also a qualified doula and has supported many expecting couples with their transition into parenthood.

Arpan Singh Non Executive Director, Outreach and Marketing

Arpan came to Australia as an International Student and studied a Master of Commerce in Marketing at Macquarie University in Sydney, NSW. He has a strong passion for marketing and has almost 7 years of experience in the same field. Other than his day job as an Inbound Marketer and a Digital Marketing Specialist, he has a strong passion for entrepreneurship, sustainability, mental health advocacy and women’s rights & safety. Organisations such as P&G encourage him to step forward and contribute to the underprivileged sections of the society who are still fighting for basic human rights. His dream is to build a society where people are identified beyond their gender preferences, social class, and economic status.         

Ross Kemp Non Executive Director, Finance

Ross is a proven Financial Manager with more than 30 years senior management experience in large public companies across a range if industries.He has extensive experience in Corporate Development, Management and Budget Reporting, Project evaluation and Expenditure, Treasury, Accounting, Tax and Company Secretarial. He also has over 20 years Board experience in not-for-profit enterprises, mainly in aged care, retirement living and affordable housing. Now retired, he supports the efforts of not-for-profit and social enterprises. 

Peter Flugge Non Executive Director, People

Peter has spent 35 years in the hospitality industry in varying capacities. From owning and operating a 5 star restaurant, cafes and a bar to nightclubs, resorts, wineries and cafes. This mixes with his own hospitality consulting business, being a hospitality teacher and being a part of different business associations and industry bodies. Now with the Brotherhood of St Laurence, Peter finds himself immersed in a world of community support for those most disadvantaged members of our society.

Advisors

Shehan Fernando Former CEO and Head of Operations P&G Growth

Shehan is currently overseeing production and floor operations at P&G. He takes pride to be involved in a team that is working towards providing opportunities to the underprivileged people. Shehan has been in the military as an aviator for 26 years and bring years of experience and skills to the table. He has also been involved in training in the past and is passionate about using his knowledge and skills to help people to learn new skills to enable them in life. 

Tom Mullins

Tom has broad experience in senior management roles in Manufacturing, IT, and Supply Chain over 35 years. He worked at Spicers Paper Industries for 17 years which included roles as Group Production Manager for 5 years converting a broad range of paper based products, including stationery, roll conversion, and packaging products across 5 plants. Subsequently he moved into the senior IT role within Spicers covering Australia, New Zealand and the west coast of the USA to transform the underlying technology of the group. In 1994 Tom and his Financial Controller made a successful bid to acquire the Office Products business unit of Spicers in a management buyout, and 2 years later on-sold the business to Boise Cascade, a US forestry products company that provided the funding for the next 13 years, to grow the business to $850million turnover AU/NZ.

After a period of semi-retirement in 2009 Tom was approached to manage the Group Supply Chain of Australian Pharmaceutical Industries, a $2.4 billion pharmaceutical wholesaler operating across 13 distribution centres covering a customer base of 5000 pharmacies and the 400 store Priceline retail franchise.

Tom formally retired at the end of 2012 and now runs a small hobby farm in country Victoria.

David Schmid

David is a results oriented leader with 25 years experience in the Recreation and Outdoor Industry specializing in the operational aspects of a direct service industry.  He has held leadership positions as well as instructor positions in public schools, private schools and not-for-profit businesses.  He sees his strengths as long-range program development and design, operational planning and logistics, curriculum development, and teaching and training with an attentive eye towards corporate mission, values, and culture.

Lyndon Frearson

Lyndon is a leader in the field of remote and regional infrastructure development and deployment, policy and financing. A chartered electrical engineer, Lyndon’s experience includes seven years in heavy industry and automotive manufacturing as a production manager, design engineer and project manager, and over a decade in the energy sector, with a focus on renewables. Lyndon has led advisory, engineering design and project delivery activities for clients including government agencies, regulatory bodies, utilities, regional development agencies, community organisations and commercial and private investment firms across Australia, South-Asia, the Pacific and in Africa. He has also provided critical input and leadership into some of the largest public and privately financed renewable energy projects and programs in Australia; provides technical and program development assistance to a range of public and private entities and has established knowledge partnerships with CSIRO, Google, NREL, the IEA, the UNDP, AEMO and others.

Rene Hyun

Rene is an experienced operations and technical manager with 9 years in the US Navy and Royal Australian Navy. He currently works as a marketing professional at a medical devices company based in California, USA and pursuing an MBA full-time at IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. Rene is passionate about work at the intersection of people, education, and technology. 

Jackson Thodey

With over 10 years experience working in fast moving retail and technology firms, Jackson has a proven track record identifying and operationalizing growth potential in emerging businesses. Having worked in a spectrum of roles, from FP&A to business development, across Asia, Australian and North America, Jackson is a change maker that can fluidly transition between analytical strategy planning to implementation and deal negotiation. Jackson is the former – Non Executive Director and Secretary of P&G Initiatives

Justin Goucher

Justin is a chartered accountant with 10 years professional services experience.  Justin has worked in various different accounting roles including Audit and Assurance (3.5 years), Insolvency and Restructuring (3.5 years) and more recently Corporate Finance / M&A (3 years).  Most of Justin’s experience has been with small to large private businesses operating across a broad spectrum of industries including manufacturing, retail, agriculture, IT, healthcare and mining. Justin is currently working full time in the M&A team of Deloitte, Brisbane.  Justin is a former Non Executive Director and Head of Finance Committee of P&G Initiatives. 

Rosemary Kennedy

Rosemary is a qualified accountant and registered tax agent with over 40 years’ experience in the accounting field.  Most of her working life has been in commercial arena. In the early 2000s she commenced her formal qualifications, which she completed in 2005.  She moved to the public accounting area, and in 2007 became a registered tax agent.  Having worked in both public & commercial accounting, she has excellent knowledge of the requirements for businesses small and large, and enjoys assisting where she can.  She undertakes small audits of not-for-profit agencies on a pro bono basis.  Currently she is undertaking a Master of Business Administration part-time through Deakin University and plans to complete the degree in 2019.

Alex Spurzem former director, P&G Purpose

Alex brings 15 years of experience in technology, advertising, and media throughout which he’s grown and managed both small direct and large cross-functional teams. Over the last few years, at Google, Alex has built deep expertise in product go-to-market strategy, operations, and commercialization across Asia Pacific. His background includes hands-on experience in developing solutions and delivering results for some of the largest local and regional marketers in agency-side roles, as a marketer, and in technology roles. Alex holds and MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management and a Bachelor in Business Information Systems.

Danielle Forsyth former director, P&G Purpose

Danielle has worked as a senior advisor to various cross-bench Members of Parliament for the last seven years, most recently coordinating Rebekha Sharkie’s successful re-election to the Federal seat of Mayo. She has a Bachelor of Journalism and Masters of Public Policy and is passionate about seeing good ideas make it through the political jungle and helping the NFP and NGO sector engage with the media and government sectors.

We are here to serve our team and society, to put them ahead of ourselves. Unfortunately, society will always overlook some people.  The people who are overlooked can and do change from widows/orphans to the stateless.  This calls us to critically evaluate who we are helping. Regardless of the group of people, we believe that we have a duty/positive obligation to reach out. We don’t want to undertake a fair fight to help either of them.  We want to invest in businesses that have a sustainable competitive advantage based on efficiency or barriers to entry, reference.  

 

Long term objectives:

• Society
  • Two-Generation threshold: We believe that what we create and how we create it will positively impact the lives of those sixty years hence.
  • Quality: We believe that we exist to serve our customers.  We want them to repeat-purchase at twice the industry benchmark rate.  
• Our People
  • The Overlooked: We want at least 50% of our people to be on their first job, and from overlooked communities with limited traditional Australian work experience such as veterans, trafficked women, and refugees.  We will take the extra time and money to train and mentor them.  
  • Positive-Churn: We believe that people should have the opportunity to grow. We want to ensure that  more than 50% of employees have the opportunity to be placed in a substantially-different role or at a different company within two years, if they wish. 
  • Remuneration: We believe that there is such a thing as enough money. Everyone should have a livable wage.  The pay differential within the company will not exceed three times. We believe that every employee should have every opportunity to share in the upside through performance bonuses or equity, and that every equity owner should contribute to the business. 

Incomplete list of benchmarks we will not use

• Capitalization: Initial public offerings, Market Capitalization, Dividend/Interest payments
• Size: Scale <> Good, and we will intentionally try to remain below 150 people.
• Novelty/Untested markets (for their own sakes)
• Prestigious Awards from any source, no matter how socially-minded.  We will be gracious when we receive them, but they will not be displayed or published in our reports.

 

How we get there

The only way to achieve our social mission is to have a very profitable enterprise.  Most investors are intelligent pack animals who calculate too much and think too little.  We plan to look in out-of-the-way places to find value others have overlooked.  We are industry agnostic, and search using business brokers, bankruptcy proceedings, and word-of-mouth.  

Planning for the next acquisition: Investment Framework

Access to the investment framework is limited to collaborators/co investors.  It is largely based on those with similarly-long horizons, like Dodd, Buffett, Munger.  If you read the books recommended by Buffet (for instance here), then nothing in this framework will be shocking. It is merely concealed because we do not want the value of a transaction to be captured by a seller, but rather captured by the people we are serving.  If we revealed exactly what our criteria was, then the seller may increase the price at the expense of the community, employees, investors, suppliers, or consumers.  This would hurt our mission. 

Growing this thinking

We welcome all who believe as we do in the core tenants above to join us, regardless of what other beliefs you hold or what background you have.  

Please see here