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The Walkley Judging Board

The Walkley Judging Board plays a pivotal role in the work of the Walkley Foundation. Made up of senior members of the Australian media industry, the board members are appointed by the Directors of the Foundation and function as custodians of the Walkley Awards. They are responsible for judging the overall winners of the Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism after the first stage of judging. They also act as ambassadors for the Foundation.

Michael Brissenden

Chair

Michael Brissenden was a political journalist and foreign correspondent for the ABC for 35 years. He began his career covering Federal politics and has been a correspondent in Moscow, Brussels and Washington. He was the political editor for the 7.30 Report in Canberra from 2003 to 2009, the ABC's Defence and National Security Correspondent between 2013 and 2015 and the host of the AM national radio program. From 2017 to 2021 he was a reporter with the 4 Corners program. Michael is a two-time Walkley Award-winner. He has written for a number of newspapers and magazines and has published both fiction and nonfiction books.
Cameron Spencer

Cameron Stewart

Deputy Chair

Cameron Stewart is Chief International Correspondent of The Australian. He has worked in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the US where he covered the Donald Trump era from 2017 to early 2021 in Washington and was The Australian’s correspondent in New York in the late 1990s. Cameron combines investigative reporting on foreign affairs, defence and national security with feature writing for The Weekend Australian Magazine. He is a former winner of the Graham Perkin Award for Australian Journalist of the Year.

Sarah Abo

Sarah Abo has been a reporter with 60 Minutes on the Nine Network since 2019. Before joining the 60 Minutes team, she was a news reporter and presenter with SBS where she contributed to the broadcaster’s Dateline and Insight programs. She started her career as a reporter and presenter on Network Ten in Adelaide and Melbourne. Over her career, Sarah has covered major local and global events, including the US election, FIFA World Cup, the refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe and the conflict in Afghanistan. In 2014 Sarah completed a CNN Fellowship at the network’s headquarters in Atlanta.
Neil Breen

Neil Breen

Neil Breen is the host of 4BC Breakfast. He began his career at the Daily Sun in Brisbane in 1990 before holding positions ranging from sports editor of The Courier-Mail and The Australian to launch editor of Alpha magazine. In 2006 he was appointed editor of The Sunday Telegraph, a position he held for seven years. In 2013 he transitioned to broadcast journalism, holding several behind-the-scenes and on-air positions at the Nine Network including executive producer of the Today Show and Nine Sydney reporter, presenter and co-host of panel shows. In 2020 he succeeded Alan Jones as the host of 4BC Breakfast back in his hometown of Brisbane. Breen won the Walkley for best sports reporting in 2002. He has won multiple awards for journalism.

Suzanne Dredge

Suzanne Dredge is ABC’s Head of Indigenous News, an investigative journalist and former Supervising Producer for the current affairs program, 7.30. Prior to that, Dredge, a Wiradjuri woman, worked at Koori Radio in Sydney where she produced and presented the station’s flagship program, Black Chat. Suzanne’s work has taken her to the Middle East, reporting on the end of ISIS and investigating a group of Australians who travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight with al Qaeda-linked groups. In 2019, Suzanne produced the Walkley Award-winning film Orphans of ISIS and received a Kennedy Award for her work investigating international drug syndicates targeting romance scam victims. Suzanne has won three Walkley Awards for her work with Four Corners, 7.30 and ABC Investigations. Suzanne recently produced a ground-breaking investigation into Australia’s murdered and missing Indigenous women for Four Corners.

Anton Enus

Anton Enus is an award-winning broadcast journalist with more than 30 years of experience. His career spans television, radio and print coverage of international news and current affairs in both South Africa and Australia. Since 1999 he’s anchored SBS World News in the late edition and prime time slots. Anton began his broadcasting career at the South African national broadcaster, SABC. He was part of the team that covered South Africa’s historic return to democracy in 1994 and spent seven years as a correspondent for CNN World Report, where he won Best International Report and also won the prestigious Bokmakierie Award for radio current affairs. Before leaving South Africa, Anton presented the SABC’s major evening national news bulletin.

Rashell Habib

With over 15 years’ experience Rashell Habib has held several senior positions at 10 News, including News Editor, Social and Digital Editor, and now Head of Digital News and Strategy. Rashell began her career as a cadet for a local newspaper and held senior positions at News Corp for over 10 years, including the first social media editor for NewsLocal and leading social media for news.com.au.

Gabrielle Jackson

Gabrielle Jackson has been an editor at Guardian Australia since 2014. She is currently associate editor, audio and visual and was an associate editor for news and opinion editor before that. She is the author of Pain and Prejudice: How the Medical System Ignores Women and What We Can Do About It, which has been published in Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Ireland, United States and Canada. She won the 2016 National Medicinewise Award for her reporting on endometriosis. She started her career at the Village Voice in New York and has lived in the US, UK and Spain.

Kate Kyriacou

Kate Kyriacou is an award-winning journalist, author, podcaster and The Courier-Mail’s crime and courts editor. She has been a print journalist for 20 years, working for newspapers in South Australia, Victoria and Queensland. Kate is a former Queensland journalist of the year and has covered some of Queensland’s most high profile crimes. Her book, The Sting, was the inspiration for the feature film The Stranger. Kate particularly enjoys mentoring young journalists.
Dean Lewins

Dean Lewins

Dean Lewins has worked as a photojournalist for the past 32 years. He joined the Australian Associated Press (AAP) in November 1999, in the lead up to the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Since then Dean has covered six Olympic Games, four Commonwealth Games, the Ashes, Football World Cup and the Rugby World Cup. His passion for sport is only equalled by his passion for news. Dean has covered bushfire and drought, unrest in East Timor and the Solomon Islands, and he had a brief stint with Australian troops in Iraq. Dean regards an assignment to Antarctica for the 100th anniversary of Mawson’s landing as a career highlight. Dean was named the Nikon Walkley Press Photographer of the Year in 2018.

Hamish Macdonald

Hamish Macdonald co-hosts The Project on Network Ten. He is also a regular presenter of Radio National Breakfast. He comes from Jindabyne in country NSW. He began his media career in regional radio and television before embarking on an international broadcasting career, first with UK's Channel 4 News, then Al-Jazeera English, before joining America’s ABC. He has won a Walkley Award for current affairs journalism and was named Young Journalist of the Year by Britain's Royal Television Society in 2008. In 2016 he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. He now sits on the Walkley Judging Board. Hamish has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Ukraine, the nuclear disaster in Japan, uprisings in Hong Kong and Egypt, the London bombings and the rise of ISIS.

Karen Middleton

Karen Middleton is Chief Political Correspondent for Schwartz Media’s The Saturday Paper and has worked in print and broadcast media for more than 30 years. Karen is a regular contributor to ABC radio, ABC TV’s Insiders and The Drum, Network Ten’s The Project, Radio New Zealand, Monocle24 Radio London and Turkey’s TRT World. Other contributions include to the BBC and The New York Times. Karen is the author of two books, ‘An Unwinnable War – Australia in Afghanistan’ (2011) and ‘Albanese – Telling it Straight’ (2016). A former federal Press Gallery president, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Canberra in 2020.

Donna Page

Donna Page is an investigative reporter for The Newcastle Herald, where she previously worked as Chief-of-Staff and Day Editor. She ran a mentoring program at The Newcastle Herald for several years and regularly works on investigations with other staff as part of the paper’s training program. Donna has worked for The South China Morning Post and Portuguese news agency Lusa, covering news and business. She also spent several years as an investigative reporter for a Chinese/English current affairs magazine Macau Closer. Donna has won Walkley Awards for Coverage of Community and Regional Affairs in 2016, 2019 and 2020 and was a finalist in 2013. She was also part of a Newcastle Herald team that won a United Nations Association of Australia award for environment reporting in 2015. The mother of two has taught journalism at the University of Newcastle since 2016.

Mark Riley

Mark Riley has been the Seven Network’s Political Editor since 2004, appearing on Seven News, Sunrise and Weekend Sunrise. He also writes a weekly column on politics for The West Australian newspaper. Before joining Seven, Mark was a Chief Political Correspondent and New York Correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald. He led the masthead’s coverage of the September 11 attacks. Mark began his journalistic career with the Newcastle Herald as a cadet in 1979. He has won Walkeys for foreign reporting and best columnist and was the first television journalist to win the National Press Club’s Paul Lyneham Award for Press Gallery Excellence.

Sarah-Jane Tasker

Sarah-Jane Tasker has worked in the media industry for 25 years, having started her career at The Sunday Times in Perth, before moving to London to cover financial services. She spent more than a decade working as a senior business writer at The Australian. Sarah-Jane has been Business Editor at The West Australian for almost three years and is a keen mentor of younger staff.

Kathryn Wicks

Kathryn Wicks is a 36-year veteran of The Sydney Morning Herald and is currently Associate Editor (major projects). After six months as a copygirl straight out of high school, Wicks began as a first-year cadet in 1987. She has previously served the masthead as a news and sports reporter, a news and sports chief subeditor, as state editor/COS and as the masthead’s digital editor. She regularly steps in for the Herald’s news director and occasionally the sports editor and is responsible for the masthead's journalism training and trainee program.
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