Kate managed a vineyard in regional Victoria and saw firsthand the devastating impact of bushfire on friends who lost their homes, their businesses and the futures they had worked towards. Kate’s response was to bring experts together to help people through the complexity of re-building after the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires. She realised that co-ordinating expertise to help people before the disaster could prevent the avoidable suffering she witnessed.

Kate established the Bushfire Building Council of Australia in 2014 to communicate the science of resilient, sustainable buildings with a broader audience. She used her expertise and strong network of disaster resilience and sustainability experts to develop relationships and build collaboration across industry, government and NGOs to create the Resilient Building Council in 2022. Kate leads the development of innovative systems that break down systemic barriers to enable resilience knowledge, communication and investment, so that climate adaptation of the built environment can be achieved in Australia and globally.

Ian is a civil and structural engineer and lead author of the Resilient Building Council’s Bushfire Resilience Star Rating Methodology – Probability of House Loss Model. Ian was inducted to Engineers Australia Society of Fire Safety “hall of fame” in 2014. Ian has contributed over five decades of his career to building standards development, government advisory panels, fire testing, research and consulting.

Paul is a Senior Professor and founding director at the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre (SBRC) at the University of Wollongong. He has over four decades of research experience covering heat transfer and fluid dynamics and improving the performance of buildings with respect to sustainability and resilience to disasters.

Crystal is an experienced sustainability professional who is passionate about leveraging the private sector capital to create resilient infrastructure, assets, and communities. She developed and implemented the Investor Group on Climate Change’s physical risk and resilience stream of work and provided expertise to the NSW Government Climate Preparedness area of the Office of Energy and Climate Change, NSW Treasury.

Sharanjit is an internationally recognised climate change action champion, and an Actuary with nearly 30 years’ consulting experience in the UK and Australia. He co-leads Finity’s Climate & Sustainability Risk practice, advising insurers, banks, investors, asset owners and governments on climate risk assessment, management, strategy and reporting. He is passionate about adaption and resilience, home insurance affordability and socioeconomic equity in a changing climate.

Throughout Kylie’s 20-year career specialising in climate change, bushfire science and emergency management, she has been respected for her practical, innovative approach and ability to find best-practice solutions. Kylie is an experienced government agency board member and consultant for disaster and climate risk mitigation, working with households, communities, local governments and fire agencies.

Stephen is a leading global fire engineer. He has held senior engineering positions with private and public organisations including Warrington Fire Research and the Building Research Association of New Zealand, and was deputy to the Building Commissioner at the Building Control Commission in Victoria. He is a board member of the Australian Building Codes Board and a former member of Emergency Management Victoria’s Expert Panel.

David has over 20 years’ experience as a research engineer with the Cyclone Testing Station. He delivers seminars on disaster investigations and better building practices to designers, builders, manufacturers and insurers, conducts post-disaster surveys following severe wind events in cyclonic (WA, NT and North QLD) and non-cyclonic regions (NSW) as well as tornado damage investigations in Canada and earthquake damage assessments in NSW. David has been involved in cyclone retrofitting programs in QLD and is a member of Standards Australia committees.

Karla sees opportunity in sustainability, and thrives on strategic innovation. She draws on project experience in the built environment ranging between precinct masterplan, education, residential and commercial. She considers herself privileged to have been involved with many iconic projects in WA, and is proud to be playing a role in Australia’s collaborative evolution.

Craig is the former Victorian Emergency Services Commissioner and an expert on community-wide resilience, re-building and emergency planning. Craig has held senior operational fire-fighting positions.

John is an experienced risk, firefighting and emergency management specialist in fire operations, fire safety & protection, building and dangerous goods risk assessments and compliance, risk and fire engineering.

Vince is a Research Scientist and Director of Fire Science and Technology Australia, with 40 years’ experience in material flammability. He has participated in highly successful projects at the University of Sydney, CSIRO, VU, QUT, the Nanjing University of Science and Technology in China and is a member of several fire committees, including Standards Australia and ISO.

Loretta has led global communications and community engagement programs for not-for-profit, university and health service organisations. Working with scientific institutes, government agencies and local community organisations across Australia, the Pacific, Asia and Latin America, Loretta engages with diverse communities to deliver best-practice outcomes through community-led design and citizen science initiatives.

Jeff is a geomatic engineer with over three decades of experience in delivering complex civil, telecommunications and engineering works for commercial and private projects. He specialises in delivering rapid solutions for complex projects, providing leading edge technical skills, analysis and knowledge to scale up technology solutions through agile delivery methods.

Mark Steel is a registered builder and plumber with 30 years’ experience in residential and prefabricated steel-framed solutions for communities in Victoria and New South Wales, and delivering essential housing projects in Western Australia, Northern Territory and Queensland. He specialises in resilient building solutions and utilises his extensive network of trades and suppliers to find the latest, innovative and practical resilient construction and retrofitting solutions.

Eldon is a highly experienced and qualified rural firefighter and architect specialising in bushfire planning for residents and the development industry. Eldon is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, a member of the Australian Institute of Emergency Services, a Level 3 BPAD practitioner with the FPAA and an Associate Member of IFE, and a founding member of the Resilient Building Council Expert Panel.

Alan is a Research Fellow at the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre (SBRC), University of Wollongong. His research involves the development of experiments and mathematical models to investigate technical aspects of building physics, including bushfire sprinkler performance, building thermal efficiency, building ventilation, and moisture transfer processes.

Patrick is the Acting Director and Business Development Manager for the Cyclone Testing Station at James Cook University (JCU), managing the North Queensland Strata Title Inspection Program. Prior to joining the Cyclone Testing Station in 2020, he worked extensively in the delivery of digital business solutions, business analysis, and project management to a variety of businesses. Patrick is currently completing a masters degree in Urban Planning and Design and has a particular interest in improving the resilience of and repurposing existing buildings.

Tuan is the Director the Advanced Protective Technology of Engineering Structures (APTES) Group at the University of Melbourne and the Research Program Leader of the Building 4.0 CRC, a new $130m initiative to transform the building industry in Australia. He is one of the Australian pioneers researching modular prefab technologies for buildings and infrastructure. He has made a significant contribution to research in vulnerability modelling of critical infrastructure, particularly in the assessment of the impact of disasters. He is recognised as an expert in protective technologies for critical infrastructure.