Keynote Speakers

Arsenio M. Balisacan
Secretary, National Economic and Development Authority, The Philippines

Dr Arsenio M. Balisacan is widely recognized as a leading economist and thinker on Asian development. His research interests include poverty, inequality, food security, rural development, globalization, and the political economy of policy reform.

Secretary Balisacan has served in the Cabinets of five presidents. He was previously Professor and Dean of the School of Economics at the University of the Philippines.




Masood Ahmed
President Emeritus, Center For Global Development

Outgoing Center for Global Development (CGD) President Masood Ahmed will deliver the Mitchell Oration at the 2024 Australasian AID conference on the topic of ‘Development cooperation in a contested world’.

Masood Ahmed has been president of CGD for the last seven years, and before that held senior positions with the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the UK’s Department for International Development.





Roslyn Morauta
Board Chair, The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Lady Roslyn Morauta has a long association with the Global Fund before taking up her current position as Chair of the Board, having served as Vice-Chair, alternate Board Member for the Western Pacific Region, and Chair of the PNG Country Coordinating Mechanism. From her time as first lady, she has continued to champion health, HIV programs and gender equality in PNG.

In addition to her work on the Global Fund board, Lady Roslyn Morauta serves on the boards of Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance and Pacific Friends of Global Health, and as a member of The Fred Hollows Foundation NZ board of trustees.



Elly Toimbo
Manager, Goroka Case Management Centre, Femili PNG

This year we shine a light on the growing response to family and sexual violence in Papua New Guinea at the Australasian AID Conference dinner.

Femili PNG is a local NGO established in 2014 to help survivors of family and sexual violence in PNG access the support and services they need. Elly Toimbo (pictured left) is the organisation’s Goroka Case Management Centre manager.

The stories of resilience, growth and change are ones we should all hear.

Miranda Forsyth
Co-Founder, DragonFly Thinking

One of the award-winning developers of DragonFly Thinking, Professor Miranda Forsyth from the Australian National University, will showcase how technology can help development practitioners engage with complexity and how new structured analytic techniques and novel frameworks, powered by AI, can help them consider different perspectives, generate dynamic analysis, and enable better foresight and decision-making.

The presentation will be delivered in conjunction with DragonFly Thinking’s partner in this work, the Development Intelligence Lab.