TCA Board

The Tenkile Conservation Alliance Board consists of the following members for both PNG and Australian entities.
They are:

Director: Mr Evan Nunn
Chair and Treasurer in PNG and Australia

An Executive and business leader with Corporate Governance qualifications and over 20 years of experience in leadership roles across Not for Profit, Commercial and Government enterprises including an organisational transformation role in Disability Services. A strategic leader whose financial qualifications, business acumen and conceptual skills together with an engaging collaborative style enables leaders and teams to feel empowered and comfortable to set ambitious goals and supported to achieve them.

Director: Mary Hikimet-Wellington
Secretary in PNG & Australia

Mary is community orientated through and through with a background in working at the Brisbane PNG Consulate-General and currently serving the PNG community in FNQ Cairns via Cairns Multicultural Community radio. She has a wealth of experience dealing with PNG Community issues in Australia and Policy development strengthening our relationship between Australia and PNG.

Director: David Mitchel MBE
Vice-chair in PNG

David is a citizen of PNG and has been living in Milne Bay for more than 30 years. He has worked with Conservation International (CI), the PNG Government and many other organisations. He currently leads the Alotau based Eco Custodians Advocates not for profit and consults regularly to the PNG Government.

Director: Ms Patricia Caswell
Vice Chair in Australia

Patricia Caswell is passionate about how we combine care for the planet, the survival of our natural ecosystems and species with the development of human rights and the well being of people and communities everywhere. She has been an active supporter of the Tenkile Conservation Alliance.

She has been a CEO and leader; working on issues of sustainability with communities, governments and companies  concentrating on the dimensions of the environment, community issues, economic, and good governance.

She has been a teacher, a trade union leader, CEO of the Australian Conservation Foundation, CEO of Plan Australia, an international aid and development organization. She established the Global Sustainability Institute at the RMIT University in Melbourne where she worked with non government organizations, government, business and communities, academics. She also worked with forestry industries in Australia and PNG developing sustainable policies and practices.

She has special experience combining the natural environment and community development in PNG, Australia and in developing countries with Plan International. She is one of the founding Board Directors of PNG Sustainable Development Program Limited completing her term October 2013.

During her term on the PNGSDP Board Ms Caswell visited many communities in PNG, many in very remote places all across the nation. She is committed to contributing to the development of the people of Papua New Guinea, especially creating opportunities for people to gain skills, have jobs, manage their natural environment, so their families are healthy, educated, in touch with their extraordinary history and places as part of a sustainable, 21st century Papua New Guinea.

Director: Dr. Graeme Gillespie
Member in Australia

Dr Graeme Gillespie is Director of the Terrestrial Biodiversity Section of the Northern Territory Department of Land Resource Management, based in Darwin. He has spent 35 years in the biodiversity field, working in both applied research and management with State and federal government agencies within Australia, and non-government organisations and universities, both within Australia and Southeast Asia. His main focus has been on working with land managers to conserve species and habitats through mitigating threatening processes.  In recent years Graeme has been overseeing a team and collaborating with a wide range of researchers andIndigenous land managers to develop management solutions to address widespread mammal declines across northern Australia.