Course facilitators

Tim Orton
Managing Director, The Nous Group

Tim works widely across the private and public sectors in Australia and Asia. His work combines a keen strategic brain, extensive knowledge about the effective interaction of people and information, and effective leadership skills. He is unusual in his keen understanding of public policy issues and private sector strategic imperatives.

Tim consults extensively to organisations on strategic issues, and regularly facilitates strategic thinking and planning sessions with clients. Tim is highly sought after for this work, due to his provocative, insightful and practical mind-set. Tim works with public sector Executives across Australia and New Zealand. He also facilitates the strategic thinking and planning of a number of Victorian government departments.

Tim is a Rhodes Scholar and McKinsey alumnus and has first class honours degrees: BA (Oxon.) and BE (Melb).

Mike Scrafton
Principal, The Nous Group

During a 20 year career in the public sector Mike gained extensive experience at senior levels of the State and Commonwealth public sectors. He has led major organisational restructures, and was Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to successive Ministers for Defence.

Mike has qualifcations in history, governance, philosophy and economics and studied leadership and management at Harvard and Oxford.

Kathy Laster
Executive Director, IPAA Victoria

Dr Kathy Laster has worked and published in key areas of public policy including multiculturalism, child welfare and law reform. A consultant to both state and federal ministers, Kathy’s last position was as Executive Director of the Victoria Law Foundation where she championed community access to justice. She has an MA, LLB from the University of Melbourne and LLM, JSD from Columbia University.

Ian Porter
Associate, The Nous Group

Ian spent eighteen years in the Victorian Government’s energy and environment portfolios, as a policy analyst, program leader and from 2000 as the executive director in charge of the climate and sustainability policy functions of the Victorian Government.

Key policies which Ian led the development and delivery of included:

The Victorian Greenhouse Strategy (2002, The Greenhouse Challenge for Energy (2004, The Victorian Greenhouse Strategy Action Plan Update (2005). Ian’s role in greenhouse and broader environmental policy saw him involved in the wider strategic and planning functions of the Department of Sustainability and Environment as an Executive Director. He also held board positions with Victoria’s Sustainable Energy Authority (from 2000 to 2002) and the CRC for Greenhouse Accounting (2003 to 2007).

Ian brings a strong, recent and practically focussed approach to policy, bridging the research, development and implementation fields. Ian’s experience crosses the energy and climate sectors and he is widely recognised as a leading strategic thinker in this field.

Jointly presented by
The Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA Victoria)
and The Nous Group