Sally Lees

Sally Lees has over 20 years of experience as a business leader in the  global technology sector. She has lived and worked across Australia and Asia, including senior regional leadership roles across Asia. Known for her cross-cultural leadership, values driven approach and strategic mindset, she has led diverse teams, driven significant revenue growth, and built high-impact partnerships across international markets.

Alongside her corporate career, Sally is deeply committed to advancing equality for women and expanding access to education. She has actively worked alongside several charities across Australia and Asia, collaborating on their strategic roadmaps, mentoring, and fundraising initiatives. She is particularly passionate about championing education as a transformative pathway to empowerment and positive lasting societal change. 

In 2019, Sally made a purposeful career shift to integrate her studies in Complementary and Alternative Medicine into meaningful, real-world impact. She founded a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to supporting individuals and groups as they navigate challenging periods in both their personal and professional lives. Certified in a range of evidence-informed techniques and wellbeing frameworks, Sally’s work centres on fostering resilience, supporting trauma recovery, and empowering individuals to reconnect with their inner strength. Through this deeply human approach, she helps people cultivate lasting personal growth, emotional wellbeing, and authentic self-leadership.

Marisa Morris

Marisa is a Chartered Accountant with more than 20 years’ experience and is a Senior Manager at RBW Chartered Accountants, where she specialises in taxation and business services. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Macquarie University. Throughout her career, she has provided strategic financial guidance, compliance support, and business advisory services to a broad range of clients, bringing strong governance and commercial expertise to the organisations she serves.

Outside of her professional and board roles, Marisa is married with two children. She enjoys cooking and dining out, and spending quality time with her family and their much-loved Bernedoodle.

Marisa is excited to be part of U-GO and firmly believes that educating women creates far-reaching and transformative change for families, communities, and future generations.

Noelene Palmer

Noelene lives in Sydney with her husband, Dion, and their three children. 

For the past 20 years Noelene has worked in financial services in COO and Chief of Staff roles. She is motivated by working with teams who support people to achieve their potential personally and professionally. This motivation has also seen her involved in setting up a social enterprise in Sri Lanka to provide vocational training to youths, women and local entrepreneurs, as well as mentoring social entrepreneurs in Cambodia (both through the Bookbridge Foundation). She also led the fundraising to establish a school library in Cambodia, through Room to Read. 

Noelene loves to travel and learn about different cultures, and has been lucky enough to have this opportunity both personally and throughout her career. This included living in Hong Kong for four years, where she co-founded a networking group, Kaleidoscope, for professional women to share insights for personal development. 

Noelene is passionate about all things food and wine. She loves cooking and gardening, especially growing fresh produce in her backyard.

Michael Zimmerman

Michael Zimmerman is a Founding Partner of Main Sequence, a deep tech venture capital firm backing companies to solve the planet’s greatest challenges in food, healthcare, climate, space, security and heavy industries.  Main Sequence was started in partnership with the Australian Government and National Science Agency, and manages just over $1B AUM with 60+ portfolio companies. 

Prior to Main Sequence, Mike spent more than 20 years as a founder, executive and investor in technology companies in Australia and the US.  Earlier in his career he worked with Bain & Company and Goldman Sachs. 

Mike is also a Director of the Australian Investment Council, a Board Member of Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business Business School Fund, and Co-Chair of U-GO University’s Australian Board.

He holds an MBA from Stanford University and a BA with honors from Amherst College.

Mark Phibbs

Mark is Australian and lives in Sydney with his wife Nikki and daughters Frederika and Coco.

Mark Phibbs has had a stellar career in the technology space over the past 35 years, holding senior executive roles across the globe. His most recent role was Vice President of Global campaign marketing for Cisco. Prior to this Mark held senior roles with Adobe, Microsoft and IBM in Marketing, Sales and General Management.

Mark has a Bachelor of Business Degree from the University of Technology, Sydney and has successfully completed Business Management courses at the prestigious Kellogg School of Management, Wharton Business School and the Haas School of Business Berkeley in the United States. Mark is also a Fellow of the Marketing Academy.

Mark has also held board positions at Greenpeace Pacific and The National Trust of NSW.

During the next phase of his career, Mark is passionate about giving back to causes such as U-GO.