Get to know the author

He is a sought after international speaker, has received many international awards and is regularly quoted in the media on various subjects, including business, global peacefulness, terrorism and social development. More than 20 years ago, he established The Charitable Foundation, now one of the larger private overseas aid organisations based in Australia providing life-changing programs to some of the poorest communities in the world including, emergency and famine relief, environment rehabilitation, and rehabilitating former child soldiers.

Steve’s deep commitment to peace has earned him two Nobel Peace Prize nominations. He is the founder of the independent think tank IEP and the Global Peace Index, the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness. IEP is a highly impactful non-profit and non-partisan research institute known for innovative analysis on the relationship between business, peace and economic development, used by many international organisations including the United Nations and the World Bank.

In 2013, a coalition of Australian Foundations recognised his funding of IEP as one of the 50 most impactful philanthropic gifts in Australia’s history. In the same year, the Action on Armed Violence group, recognised Steve as one of the 100 most influential people in the world on reducing armed violence. Steve serves on the President’s Circle for Club de Madrid, the largest forum of former world leaders working to strengthen democracy. He is also trustee and treasurer for Religion for Peace, the world’s largest organisation working on inter-religious challenges.

As an entrepreneur in the high technology industry, Steve founded and built one of Australia’s leading publicly listed IT companies. Integrated Research has a 30-year heritage providing its PROGNOSIS performance monitoring software for business-critical computing and IP telephony environments. Through Steve’s direction as CEO and then chairperson, IR has an impressive world class customer base and its software is used by many of the world’s top organisations in more than 50 countries.

Steve served as a board member of the Australian Information Industry Association for eight years and sat on a number of private company and government boards including the Australian Chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBAB) and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). In 2001, Steve founded Smarter Capital, a venture capital company that specialises in investing in unique technologies with global applicability.