Board of Directors

Alistair Maclean
President

Alistair is General Manager (External Affairs) with PanAust Ltd, a Brisbane-based resources company with mineral assets in Laos and Thailand.

He is based in Vientiane, as a Director and General Manager of Phu Bia Mining Ltd in Laos and of Puthep Co. Ltd, a PanAust joint venture company, in Thailand.

Alistair is responsible for corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and relations with external stakeholders, focused on government, the non-government sector and affected communities.

Alistair was a Senior Adviser to former Prime Minister John Howard in 2007, covering international and domestic environment, energy and resources issues. He was Australian Ambassador to Laos from 2004 to 2007.

Alistair is married to Lucy O'Connor and they have three boys.

Alistair can be contacted at alistair.maclean@anzba.org

Bob Gordon
Vice President

Bob was born long ago and grew up in 'outback' NSW and first worked in the sciences with CSIRO on graduating and is now General Manager of ALS (Lao) Co Ltd. He has held roles as retail buyer, clothing factory operations manager and since joining ALS in 1988 has held senior roles with ALS in Brisbane, Townsville and Mt Hogan before embarking on a career of building and leading overseas businesses for ALS.

Bob established ALS in Laos in 1995, Mwanza, Tanzania in 1999, re-established Laos in 2005, Pakse in 2008 and is currently setting ALS up in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Bob is a keen but unskilled golfer and is married with two adopted daughters and Amala going to school in Vientiane.

With over ten years accumulated in Laos he has a reasonable understanding of the culture and ways' he is also very dedicated to the country, people and especially the team he works with.

Bob can be contacted at bob.gordon@anzba.org

Andrew Patterson
Executive Director

Andrew Patterson is the Manager Business Support Asia for MMG LXML in Vientiane. He has held senior management positions in Australia and overseas with major mining operations. He has also performed general management and project development roles in large scale agricultural and forestry enterprises, and in the Australian education and university sectors.

Andrew can be contacted at andrew.patterson@anzba.org

John Bowes
Treasurer

John is a UK Chartered Accountant and a partner at KPMG. He has advised multinational companies on their complex cross border tax affairs for many years. John trained in London and has worked in Africa and now SE Asia. Outside of work John enjoys windsurfing, tennis golf and travel.

John can be contacted at john.bowes@anzba.org

Katrina Dingley
Secretary

Katrina Dingley is the Finance & Administration Manager for DFDL Mekong Legal & Tax Advisers and has been living in Vientiane for 3 years. She was born and brought up in Kenya and before moving to Laos Katrina spent 7 years as the Incentives and Marketing Manager for Governors' Camps which is a family owned business comprising seven 5 Star lodges in Kenya. As part of this role Katrina arranged incentives for clients such as Ford, Sodexho, Porsche, Ricoh, Cannon etc and specialty trips for the BBC, members of royalty and TV personalities.

Katrina can be contacted at katrina.dingley@anzba.org

Flavia Usher
Activities Director

Flavia is a mother of two living in Vientiane for over 4 years. She spent time living in Australia, Philippines, Canada, the US and Tanzania with her husband and family. The first two years in Vientiane Flavia volunteered for a Swiss NGO and was responsible for the Marketing and Exports and trained national staff to take over this role. She also served for two years on the VIS school board and has been active in the organisation of various ANZBA events and the Ball since its inception in 2007.

Flavia can be contacted at flavia.usher@anzba.org

Carolyn McKeown
Membership and Sponsorship Director

Carolyn is the office manager for BACTEC Lao Limited and has been living in Vientiane for 2 and a half years. Before moving to Laos she was employed as the Direct Marketing Officer at Taronga Zoo in Sydney with responsibility for sponsorship and marketing promoting the ZooParent program and sourcing sponsorship for fundraising functions. Carolyn has been acting in the role of Membership and Sponsorship Director since August 2009 after Tilly Lewis resigned from the position.

Carolyn can be contacted at carolyn.mckeown@anzba.org

Denley Pike
Communications Director

Denley Pike a graduate of the University of Queensland and Assistant Principal Examiner for the CambridgeESOL IELTS examination, has been the Director of large training centres in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos for the last 22 years.

In Laos for 16 of those years he has built a successful private education, training and management business employing nearly 100 local and expat staff while contributing to the development of the country through his work on the Australian and New Zealand scholarship schemes, establishment and sponsorship of the LaoTESOL Conference, management of the VIDA and AYA volunteer schemes and the Endeavour Awards Program and cooperation with the government of Laos through various projects and advisory boards.

Denley can be contacted at denley.pike@anzba.org

Peter Evans
Director

Peter first came to Laos as the Country Manager for Telstra (1995-1998). He left Telstra shortly after his Lao assignment, having completed thirty years working with the company in a wide variety of jobs both in Australia and offshore. Notable was the work he did in Telstra at a corporate level on change management and productivity improvement.

Peter then moved on to an independent consulting career. The last decade has seen him continuing in the telecom industry, providing analysis and research on the Asian market for Australian-based company BuddeComm. In support of this role Peter returned to Laos and established an office in Vientiane; he also has an interest in local ISP Planet Online, as well as marketing and consulting company BlueGrass.

More recently, Peter has been involved in the export of wine from Australia to Laos. He currently spends more than half his time in Laos, regularly commuting between here and Australia.

Peter can be contacted at peter.evans@anzba.org

Mike McDonald
Director

Mike is a lawyer with over 25 years experience within the Australian resources sector, having been in-house counsel for the Bell Group and Delhi Petroleum prior to founding McDonald Steed McGrath Lawyers in Adelaide in 1988.

Mike has specialized in providing start-up and operations services to mining and infrastructure projects in Australia and elsewhere and has extensive experience in Native title matters. Mike has held executive and non-executive roles in a number of Australian companies. During this period Mike also developed a client base for the firm, successfully providing migration, mining and business legal services to resource companies in Australia and the Asian region. Mike has been coming to Laos since 2003 and is one of the partners in the Vientiane based office of McDonald Steed McGrath Lawyers.

Mike can be contacted at mike.mcdonald@anzba.org