Nic Frances

For all of us who lead large organisations, we know the importance of our staff. That they are growing, professional, well educated and committed directly impacts our bottom line. Our staff, therefore, need to believe that we care about their professional development, their personal growth and the quality of the whole of their life, not just their work life. On Nic's journey he has been a stripper, priest, atheist, one of the youngest people in Great Britain to receive and MBE for services to charity and received a Century Medal from John Howard. He is dyslexic and required no qualifications from his education, and recently acquired a non-fiction award in Australia for his book, the End of Charity. As an entrepreneur, he is one of the world's leaders in the domestic energy efficiency and carbon credit industry. As a social entrepreneur, he is recognised by the world economic forum as one of the world's leaders. He's been a stockbroker and an award winning TV presenter. As a motivational speaker, his ability to draw audiences in to their own potential and opportunity is renowned.

At a time when Europe is on the brink of breaking up, when financial markets have been unable to recover in the last three years, when industries are coming to terms with a carbon constrained economy, when nationalism if on the rise but the need for global partnership is ever greater, the future is uncertain. For organisations and industries that engage honestly with these changes suspend their beliefs and prejudices for long enough to consider a new world, who stand back and look at their people and their purpose, these times may prove to be the environment for heroic success and leadership. Nic's uncompromising and impassioned call to us become the creators of our future creates the opportunity for those involved to step forward in new and different ways.

Nic is recognised by the World Economic Forum as one of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. He is an award-winning author in the area of the role of markets as a tool for social and environmental change where he developed the concept of value-centered market economics which specifically looks at the role of government in driving national values into our industry and commerce. Nic has worked internationally and nationally in industry, with government and in the not-for-profit sector and powerfully articulates the opportunity that these sectors face in creating a more value-based society.

As a Social Entrepreneur over the last decade, Nic has founded and led a for-profit-organisation, Cool NRG. Cool NRG has now undertaken globally several of the world's largest energy efficiency campaigns. He is responsible for creating the first domestic energy efficiency carbon credits under the United Nations Clean Development mechanism. Cool NRG is recognised globally as a company at the cutting of developing the methodologies and systems to support the expansion of domestic energy efficiency worldwide. This is particularly important, as it is only domestic energy that as well as creating a reduction in Carbon emissions and energy efficiency nationally, also uniquely reduces energy poverty for the population. As Australia faces an economy where carbon constraints have a financial impact, Nic is one of our most qualified practitioners to open up the strategic pitfalls and opportunities of this direction.