Our Board

The ASRC Board is the governing arm of the ASRC Association. Its primary responsibilities are the governance and sustainability of the ASRC as well as strategic, fiduciary and monitoring functions that include:

Ensuring that the ASRC remains a viable and effective organisation, and to secure its long-term future.
Providing leadership in, and remaining focused upon, the development of the ASRC’s organisational purpose, strategic direction and priorities.
Monitoring and ensuring that the aims, goals and objectives as articulated in the Strategic Plan are aligned with the organisational purpose, strategic direction and priorities of the Centre and that they are met.
Monitoring performance in relation to operational management, and ensuring that it is effective and accountable in all aspects, including financial accountability, legal compliance, and industrial relations requirements.
Ensuring systems and processes in place to enable consultation and information exchange between asylum seekers, staff, and the board.
Approving and monitoring Board level policies.

You can contact the Board for governance and Association matters by emailing board@asrc.org.au.

Lucy Chen
Lucy Chen
Lucy is Co-CEO of Chen Foods, a family business that she has run and grown over the last eight years with her sister. Prior to Mr Chen’s, Lucy worked in products and marketing at NAB and Telstra. She has a Bachelor of Engineering and Commerce from the University of Melbourne and is a graduate of AICD. Lucy’s parents came to Australia as refugees and worked hard to build a business, life and family. This upbringing shaped her values in life, and she has always tried to give back by volunteering and helping those who are not as fortunate. She has previously volunteered at St Vincent’s Soup Van for several years and spent a year in Yunnan, China working with ethnic minorities. With a diverse set of entrepreneurial experience, skills and decision-making, Lucy joined the ASRC Board in 2023 and hopes to make an impact.
PROFILE
Rebekah Lautman
Rebekah Lautman
Rebekah has been a long-time and passionate supporter of the Centre over a number of years personally and professionally through her work at the R E Ross Trust and Australian Communities Foundation. She has worked as a Social Worker/Manager in Mental Health, managed Human Services portfolios for the State Government, worked in philanthropy for over a decade, and is now employed by headspace Youth Mental Health Foundation on national program development in early psychosis.

Rebekah first became involved with the Centre when it was originally located in Footscray through her children’s primary school, Footscray City. Rebekah also worked very closely with ASRC to build its philanthropic base initially as part of its collaboration with the Ross Trust. While at the Ross Trust, she assisted the ASRC to gain its first multi-year grant in August 2003 which has expanded to become a partnership with continued multi-year grants. Rebekah’s role also included raising profile of the ASRC’s work not only with other foundations but also with State Government and other not-for-profits. Rebekah joined the ASRC board in 2012.
PROFILE
Mike Sum
Mike Sum
Mike is a Partner at KPMG Australia with over 25 years of international business experience. He has spent the last 18 years as a management consultant, advising major corporates, investors and not-for-profit clients on mergers, acquisitions, growth and transformation. Prior to that, Mike worked in the oil & gas industry in numerous roles across the world. He has an MA in Mathematics from Oxford University and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Mike’s parents migrated from China to the UK in the 1950s. Over a long period of time, they were able to build a life for themselves and raise a family. This childhood background inspired Mike to join the ASRC.

Mike was elected to the ASRC Board in 2015, served as Treasurer in 2017-2018 and has held the Chair position since July 2018.
PROFILE
Guy Gilbert
Guy Gilbert
Guy Gilbert SC is a highly esteemed and respected Barrister, recently retired, with forty-five years of practice in the legal profession. Guy attained the distinction of being appointed as a Senior Counsel (SC) in 2017. As a barrister, Guy’s practice has spanned more than four decades, during which he has had countless litigation successes in public interest law cases. Guy’s legal expertise and practice has included immigration and refugee law, criminal and OHS law, coronial inquests, and international extradition matters. In addition, Guy has served as a member of both the Refugee Review Tribunal and the Mental Health Review Tribunal. Guy also worked for Community Aid Abroad (now Oxfam Australia), in Sudan in 1985, co-managing a refugee health program, and then spent some years co-working for CAA in Melbourne in the late 1980’s, in disaster relief, working predominantly with internally displaced in the Horn of Africa.

Guy’s legal experience, expertise and excellence has been recognised with multiple awards, including the prestigious John Gibson Award, the Law Council of Australia Outstanding Contribution to Immigration Law Award, and regular recognition in Australia’s Best Lawyers for Immigration and Occupational Health and Safety, and in Doyle’s Guide for Occupational Health and Safety

Guy is a member of CPA Australia, and brings with him a wealth of governance experience, having previously served on a number of Boards, including as Chair of both the Victorian Migration Bar Association, International Commission of Jurists (Victoria) Executive Committee; Co-Chair of the Sudd Foundation, an NGO which assists youth and single mothers of South Sudanese background who are struggling to adapt to Australian society; Board member of Home Ground Services, a housing and homeless services provider (which since merged with Hanover Welfare Services to become Launch Housing). He remains a trustee of Wellwishers Trust, a NFP organisation that raises funds for the construction of water wells and related hygiene education in Ethiopia, an extension of more than 40 years of his community development work in capacity building projects in Africa.

Guy is a friend of the ASRC, who has mentored and supported our own Human Rights Law Program.
PROFILE
John Pham
John Pham
John is an experienced business and technology leader with over 25 years of experience in ICT industries. His current role is Board Director and Chief Executive Officer for global SaaS business company Global IT Factory. Before that John held senior management roles at Ambulance Victoria, Fujitsu Australia, Datacraft Technologies.

John is also involved in social volunteering work consulting with World Economic Forum in translating AI Governance frameworks for Boards; and with FightMND - a NFP organisation with mission of finding effective treatments and ultimate cure for MND.

Academic qualifications:
- - Graduate of Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD),
- - Master of Business Administration (MBA),
- - Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE).
PROFILE
Katelyn Bonato
Katelyn Bonato
Katelyn is a Partner at PwC. Katelyn has extensive professional services experience in consulting, financial statement audit, technical accounting and sustainability for over 18 years in both Australia and Switzerland. Katelyn currently works predominantly on ASX 200 clients. She has significant experience working in both public and not-for-profit sectors, in addition to extensive work with UN agencies in and around the Geneva region of Switzerland.
PROFILE
Amy Auster
Amy Auster
Amy is a Partner at Scyne Advisory with more than 25 years of experience as economics and finance professional. Prior to joining Scyne, Amy served as CEO, Infrastructure and Project Financing Agency, Chief Adviser, Commonwealth Treasury and Deputy Secretary (Economic) in the Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance. Before joining the public service, Amy was Executive Director of the Monash Centre for Financial Studies and spent her early career working in banking and finance in New York and across the Asia Pacific region. She is currently a member of the Advisory Board to the APEC Study Centre at RMIT and a Research Fellow at the Monash Business School. Through Supporting Asylum Seekers Sydney, Amy began visiting people seeking asylum in detention in 2012, and became aware of the work of the ASRC as she supported several people upon release into the community. Her interest in joining the ASRC arises from her background as a third-generation migrant to the US, and a desire to support the communities that represent Australia’s future. She is a regular volunteer with Father Bob’s food van and the Sacred Heart Mission in St Kilda, and the proud mum of three beautiful children.
PROFILE
Sarah Nega
Sarah Nega
Sarah is a lawyer with deep expertise in legal and regulatory spaces. Her legal practice has a particular focus on financial services and facilitating investment transactions. Sarah holds a Bachelor of Commerce (majoring in Finance and Economics) and Juris Doctor of Laws from the University of Melbourne as well as a Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice from the Australia National University. She is also a member of the Institute of Community Directors Australia. Sarah’s parents came to Australia as refugees, so the work undertaken by the ASRC is very close to her heart. In Sarah’s personal and professional life, she has maintained a demonstrated commitment to social justice and supporting underrepresented communities and is keen to carry this forward into board governance. She previously worked pro bono with Refugee Legal, co-coordinated a program that provides students from underrepresented schools with exposure to corporate environments and contributed to various diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives including co-founding a diversity network at her law firm.
PROFILE
Jennifer Kanis
Jennifer Kanis
Jennifer Kanis is a Principal Lawyer and leads Maurice Blackburn’s dedicated Social Justice Project, a pro bono practice which aims to achieve social justice outcomes through litigation, advice and advocacy and is one of the largest private social justice practices in the country. Jennifer has spent nearly three decades working across local and state government, on Boards, in the education system and the legal profession. Her public service has included being a State Member of Parliament for Melbourne; Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Justice and Mental Health; Deputy Chair of the Victorian Parliament’s Accountability and Oversight Committee and a member of the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Committee. Jennifer was a past Councillor for the City of Melbourne; former Director of Advocacy and Campaigns at the ASRC and is an experienced secondary school teacher.

In her leadership role at Maurice Blackburn Lawyers Jennifer leads a team that fights for the rights of everyday people across a range of structural and systemic issues seeking to end entrenched disadvantage, including the fight for justice and equity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, of people seeking asylum and refugees, for women and LGBTIQ communities; challenges to corporate and government power; and protecting community, environmental and workers’ rights.

Jennifer brings with her a wealth of Board and governance experience, being the current Chair of the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre Trust and having held numerous previous directorships, including: Housing Choices Australia, Victorian Legal Aid, Melbourne Health and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Jen is a longtime friend of the ASRC, both as a past volunteer and staff member and also through her work at Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, which is a key partner of the ASRC.
PROFILE