The Walkley Directors are the members and directors of the company Walkley Foundation Limited, which is registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profit Commission.
Adele Ferguson is a multi-award winning journalist and columnist for The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review. She is a regular guest reporter on ABC's Four Corners and 7.30. She is the author of Banking Bad: Whistleblowers, corporate cover-ups and one journalist’s fight for the truth, and the best-selling unauthorised biography Gina Rinehart: The untold story of the richest person in Australian history.
Adele Ferguson started her career in journalism at The Advertiser in Adelaide. She has been deputy editor and chief business commentator at BRW magazine and a senior columnist at The Australian. Ms Ferguson has a Bachelor of Economics and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Adelaide University. Her journalism honours include eight Walkleys including the Gold Walkley, a series of Quill awards including two Gold Quill Awards, a series of Kennedy Awards including two Gold Kennedy Awards, a Logie, National Press Club awards including Journalist of the Year, and the Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year award from the Melbourne Press Club. In 2019 Adele Ferguson was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).
Karen Percy’s career began with the ABC in Adelaide more than three decades ago, and has also taken her to Alice Springs, Darwin, Sydney, Bangkok and Moscow. She has also worked for Channel 10 and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. From 2006-2009 she was the ABC’s Southeast Asia correspondent, based in Bangkok. In 2010 she went to Moscow and freelanced for a number of agencies including CBC, SBS, Radio France International, Deutsche Welle, Orf in Austria and Radio New Zealand. Karen is the Federal President of the Media section of MEAA. She is Chair of the Dart Centre Asia-Pacific which focuses on trauma and journalism. Karen is now freelancing and doing some teaching after leaving the ABC in 2020.
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.
Erin Delahunty is a Victorian-based freelance journalist. After completing a print journalism cadetship, Delahunty spent close to 20 years as a news, sports and features writer and editor for major media groups in Australia and in the UK, before going freelance. She has established herself as one of Australia’s pre-eminent netball writers and pundits, regularly filing for Guardian Australia, which publishes her highly regarded Super Netball column, and for other leading outlets. She is currently co-writing a book about netball for a UK publisher.
Victoria Laurie is a former senior reporter and feature writer for The Australian newspaper. She worked in current affairs for ABC TV and radio and freelanced for The Bulletin, The Monthly, HQ, Australian Geographic and The Weekend Australian Magazine. Victoria is founder and national co-patron of Women in Media, a not-for-profit initiative to support women working in the sector. She is the author of natural history books The Kimberley: Australia's Last Great Wilderness and The Southwest: Australia's Biodiversity Hotspot (UWAP). She has been a three-time Walkley feature finalist.
Leigh Tonkin has worked in national and regional newsrooms for 15 years and is the editor of features and context for ABC News. Previously, she was comment editor at the Sydney Morning Herald, where she worked in various roles for six years, online editor at the Newcastle Herald and a sub-editor at the Cairns Post. She has been a house committee and national media section activist with the Media, Entertainment and Arts’ Alliance for nearly a decade and represents Asia-Pacific on the International Federation of Journalists’ gender steering committee. Her priorities include workplace fairness for women, diverse and young journalists and building a union culture that helps journalists thrive.