Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday named 10 outstanding young Australians as emerging leaders at a lunch at Parliament House in Canberra.
Mr Rudd spoke of the importance of leadership and presented awards to eight of the 10 winners, selected from 100 outstanding young Australians as part of The Weekend Australian Magazine's Next 100: Emerging Leaders project, supported by Microsoft Australia.
Microsoft Australia Managing Director Tracey Fellows described the winners as "inspirational in what they've been able to do ... at a time of some adversity."
The 10 winners have been profiled in the magazine over the past three months as part of the project, and designed to celebrate the next generation of national leaders. The following panel was formed to select the winners: Climate Change Minister Penny Wong; Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey; ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Chubb; former Olympics swimming champion, Lisa Forrest; Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Secretary Lisa Paul; demographer Bernard Salt; Australian Industry Group chief Heather Ridout; and cancer researcher and Australian of the Year, Professor Ian Frazer.
Photos of the event can be seen here. The winners are: Katrina Sedgwick, director of the Adelaide Film Festival; Joe Procter, an indigenous merchant banker and corporate adviser to Aboriginal traditional communities; Alissa Phillips, who has set up her own centre in Brisbane for disabled youth; Professor Tanya Monro , a physicist who heads a photonics centre at Adelaide University; Dr Paul Hodges, who heads a University of Queensland research centre into spinal pain, injury and health; Ralph Ashton, a former merchant banker who now runs the Terrrestrial Carbon Group in New York; Dannielle Miller, the co-founder of Enlighten Education which runs workshops for girls in western Sydney; Dr Roger Lumley, a CSIRO metallurgist researching the use of aluminium in car components; Jason Mifsud, the CEO of the AFL Foundation, who runs programs for young indigenous players; and Professor Julian Savulescu, a philosopher who heads Oxford university's Centre for Practical Ethics.