The Executive Committee (the Board) is responsible for the general management of ADIESA, and for the high-level
policy direction and specific industry-related matters. The Committee consists of up to eleven, but not less
than seven, Industry Members. Committee Members are elected to office annually by a General Forum of ADIESA
Members, under conditions determined and published by the Executive Committee prior to the Election Meeting.
The Chair of ADIESA is elected annually by the General Forum of Members from one of the members elected to the
Executive Committee.
Board Members
BOARD CHAIR Mike Wagstaff is the General Manager Operations with Sigma Bravo Pty Ltd. He brings a broad range of Defence and commercial experience in Australia and overseas. Mike served as a rotary wing pilot and instructor for almost twenty years in command, staff and technical appointments in the Australian Army, and in the British military. He has fifteen years commercial experience, focusing on technology and risk, in the consulting, training and education, and medical sectors. Mike lived and worked in Vietnam and the Philippines for seven years. Mike is a graduate of the Australian Command and Staff College, and holds a Masters in Technology Management. He is also a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
EMERITUS CHAIR Kylah Limmer is Head of Defence, working for Fujitsu Kylah has proven experience in leading high performing sales and customer service teams to drive profitable growth and customer engagement. Kylah enjoys highly regarded relationships that span the breadth and depth the Australian Defence Organisation and the Defence Industry Ecosystem. Alongside Defence relationships, she is seen as a Defence Industry advocate holding several key leadership positions including Chair of ADIESA, the Industry Advisor for the ADF Cyber Skills Association, and is invited to speak at Defence conferences such as MilCIS, Defence Cyber Summit and the Space 2.0 Summit.
DEPUTY CHAIR Noel Borgas is a Business Development Analyst with Lockheed Martin Australia. Noel provides support to business development opportunities across the C4ISREW space and cyber spectrum. Noel has during the course of his career held many different roles with large and small defence industry companies, and within defence itself. These include senior roles within campaigns to capture multi-billion dollar opportunities, program management roles with profit and loss responsibility, systems engineering roles within ground based radar sustainment and upgrade programs, and research and development roles within Defence Science and Technology Group. Career highlights include a stint working in the United Kingdom for Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (then Defence Material Division) in the mid 1990s and a posting as Defence Industry Fellow at the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies in 2011. Noel holds a Mathematical Science degree and a Master of Business Administration, both from the University of Adelaide. He is married with two adult children and lives in Canberra, ACT.
TREASURER Gavin Petch is the Head of Growth for Raytheon Australia He has 40 years career with Defence and industry incorporating operations, technology, project management, personnel management, campaign and capture management. Gavin has worked in the Raytheon Australia Campaign and Capture Team for 19 years including Director Land, Director Business Development, Director Capture Management and current Space and Communications role. He has extensive experience associated with technologies, industry collaboration and Defence acquisition processes. Gavin has successfully led activities that include AFATDS, EPLRS, JP2008 Ph52 Tactical Satcom, AIR3024 Woomera Range Redevelopment and Land 17 Self Propelled Howitzer (cancelled). His current focus includes Land 200, JP9102 and Joint C3. Prior to Raytheon Australia, Gavin worked with Optus. He also led the Northern Territory Government Integrated Computing and Telecommunications outsourcing initiative. Gavin served as an officer in the Australian Army for 20 years. His last military appointment was at Headquarters Northern Command, where he was responsible for Joint C4ISR Operations. Gavin undertook operational service with the Force Communication Unit Cambodia in support of the United Nations Transitional Agreement Cambodia. He has held appointments in 3 Brigade, Commando Regiment, Defence Material Organisation and as a career adviser. Gavin i s a graduate of the Army Officer Cadet School, Army Command and Staff College, the United Kingdom Royal Military College of Science, and the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He holds a Masters of Management in Information Management, a Degree in Economics, a Graduate Diploma in Management Studies and a Graduate Diploma in Telecommunications Systems Management. Gavin resides in Canberra.
BOARD MEMBER Mr Colin Cooper is General Manager, of Bravo Zulu Professional. Colin has a unique breadth of experience in the Australian Defence and Defence Industry environment. His broad command, operational and staff experiences during a 25 year Naval career have been significantly augmented by senior executive roles in leadership positions in a number of large European, Japanese and US international Defence and ICT companies. Mr. Cooper has a strong track record of leadership in defence and industry relationships and project, program, and organisational transformation and change management. Mr. Cooper earned a BSc in Multidiscipline Physics, Computing and Electronics from Monash University, a Diploma of Applied Science in Maritime Studies from the University of NSW, and a Post Graduate Diploma in Satellite Communications from Melbourne University. He is also a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (MAICD).
SECRETARY Mike Johnson is a security cleared and seasoned aviation, communications and ISREW technical executive, having worked in technical and senior management roles across CMS, Telstra and Australian Aerospace Corporation over a near thirty (30) year period. During this time, Mike developed, managed or provided guidance to several key programs including:
Such projects have required Mike to be based at several international locations including Langley, Germany and New Zealand, which have provided a wealth of exposure to various cultures and unique insights into other country systems, processes and methodologies Mike resides in Canberra.
PUBLIC OFFICER Mr David Horton is Country Manager for the multi-national Command and Control (C2) software company, Systematic. His background spans uniformed (Army Officer) and non-uniformed public service (Defence and Parliament House), and Defence Industry: applications (Microsoft), networking (Cisco), telecommunications (SingTel), business consulting and Systems Integration (HP, Fujitsu, and NEC). Based in Canberra for 28 years working in the Defence and security domain, he also spent four years at Microsoft’s US headquarters as Program Manager Government Requirements, focusing on security across the company. Elected to the Board of ADIESA in 2018, David previously served on Industry and Defence boards, including RPDE (2014) and ADIESA (2011-2015), co-chairing the Enterprise Architecture Focus Group (EA-FG) during 2012-2016, and now Joint C2 (JC2-FG) in 2018. He has contributed articles to technical journals and spoken at conferences around the world.
BOARD MEMBER Grace Johnson is a Deployment Strategist at Palantir Technologies Australia, working across pre-sales through to project delivery within the defence team. Grace has worked in other Five Eyes nations’ and coalition partners’ intelligence communities where she was exposed to different perspectives, and has since leveraged any lessons learnt and adapted these to the Australian context. Grace continues to maintain a strong connection to Palantir’s UK and US Government businesses to help contribute to local industry knowledge. Grace believes the challenges posed by increasing environment and threat complexity within the defence sector means that industry collaboration and cohesive partnerships will be the critical driver of project success. She is excited by the opportunity to work closely with industry members to determine how it can better support the ADF. Grace holds a Bachelor of Commerce and a Master of Engineering (Software) from the University of Melbourne. Grace is looking forward to participating in the Defence and Industry Study Course next year, as part of her being awarded the 2021 National Australian Industry and Defence Network Young Achiever Award.
BOARD MEMBER Greg Reid is a Director of Clearbox Systems (Executive Director) and Quasar Satellite Technologies (Non-Executive Director). Greg served as an Officer in the Royal Australian Navy for 16 years and worked in a variety of operational and engineering roles in submarines and ships and ashore in project management, sustainment and engineering management roles. On leaving the RAN Greg spent nearly a decade in the terrestrial broadcast sector, during the transition to Digital Television and Radio, holding senior management positions for two SMEs, the second of which he was a Director and led the team delivering the first WGS Certified Ground Stations in Australia. He joined Clearbox Systems in February 2012 as a Director and COO, and then MD from 2016 through to March 2021. Greg has a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering (Electronics) and Masters degrees in Underwater Acoustics and Electrical Engineering from the US Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey California and an MBA from Deakin University. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers, member of the Australian Institute of Project Management and graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors Course. Greg is passionate about Australian SMEs and particularly those working in the Defence Sector. It is a challenging sector to be part of and he is keen to advocate for and assist to realise better outcomes for ADIESA Members and the ADF.
BOARD MEMBER Brett Biddington is the Founder and Principal of Biddington Research Pty Ltd (BRPL), which is a Canberra-based consultancy that specialises in space and cyber security matters from policy, advocacy and national capacity development perspectives, including in education. Brett has been a director of several organisations involved with the Australian space ecosystem including The Space Environment Cooperative Research Centre (SERC) which sought ways to mitigate space debris proliferation through the use of ground-based lasers (the CRC wound up on 31 March 2021). Most recently, Brett has been deeply involved with the Defence Space Domain Review that will lead to a new Defence Space Division standing-up in January 2022. This is a game-changer for the way in which Defence approaches space from operational, investment and organisational perspectives. Brett was responsible, on behalf of the Space Industry Association of Australia (SIAA), for organising the 68th International Astronautical Congress, one of the world’s largest annual space conference (4,500 delegates), which was held in Adelaide in September 2017. He is a past chair of two industry associations, the Australian Defence Information and Electronic Systems Association (ADIESA) and the SIAA and a former Director and Treasurer of the Institute for Regional Security (formerly the Kokoda Foundation). Presently, he sits on several advisory boards and committees concerned with the governance of Australia’s space and astronomy activities. Also, he is closely associated with the Victorian Space Science Education Centre (VSSEC) in Melbourne. See: www.vssec.vic.edu.au. Between 2002 and 2009 he was a member of Cisco Systems’ global space team and prior to that he served in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) for almost 23 years. He was the senior intelligence officer and later the Provost Marshal (head of policing and security) of the RAAF before moving into capability development. There he sponsored a two billion dollar portfolio of projects in the command and control, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and electronic warfare domains. This included the Jindalee Over-the-horizon Radar Network (JORN) project and classified and unclassified space initiatives. In 2019, Brett was awarded a PhD from the University of New South Wales. The title of his thesis is Space Security in the 21st Century: Roles, Responsibilities and Opportunities for Australia. He holds an Adjunct Professorial appointment in the Security Research Institute at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia. In June 2012 he was admitted as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to the Australian space sector.
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