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.

Dion Tucker

Originally from NZ, Dion now lives in Sydney with his wife Noelene and their three children. 

After a 25 year career in sales, marketing, operations and relationship management across multiple B2B-focused industries, he became a founding partner of enablesGROUP in 2016. enablesGROUP is a Philippines-based organization with a team of over 400 providing a broad range of outsourced and operations functions to clients across the globe. In his role as Chief Client Success Officer, Dion works with existing clients to ensure that enablesGROUP supports their continued growth.

Dion is an avid sports fan, actively supporting Tottenham Hotspur, the All Blacks, the NSW Waratahs and the Sydney Swans. He also loves all things culinary – including cooking, eating out and enjoying great wine.

Anna Baillie-Karas

Anna currently serves as Chair of the Adelaide Festival Foundation. She has spent the last decade in philanthropic roles and previously served on the Australian board of Room to Read and the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation. 

She worked for 10 years as a lawyer and teacher and is passionate about education. Anna is also an avid reader and hosts the Books On The Go podcast.

Anna and Jason are based in Adelaide and Hong Kong.

Jennie Orchard

Jennie Orchard has been involved with the world of books and publishing for more than four decades, initially in London, later in Australia and Asia (Japan and Hong Kong). Since 2002, she has been actively involved in the non-profit sector, with a particular focus on Room to Read and more recently U-GO. She led the team which established Room to Read’s very successful fundraising presence in Australia (launched in 2009) and later developed the local writer ambassador program which eventually became the organization’s global Author Advocate initiative. In 2023 Jennie became an inaugural member of U-GO’s Australian board. 

Jennie has also curated two anthologies, The Gifts of Reading (released by W + N in 2020) and The Gifts of Reading for the Next Generation (Scribe, 2025) both inspired by Robert Macfarlane, with essays contributed by many literary luminaries including William Boyd, Roddy Doyle, Colum McCann, Jan Morris, Michael Ondaatje, Madeleine Thien and Markus Zusak. All of the contributing authors have generously agreed to donate their royalties to Room to Read and U-GO.