Samantha Read

Samantha is CEO of Chemistry Australia, the peak body representing Australia’s $48B chemistry industry. Her career spans more than 30 years across the chemicals, plastics, renewable fuels, automotive and steel industries. Previously, Samantha was CEO of the Biofuels Association of Australia and an Executive Director of GM Holden Ltd and General Motors Australia. Samantha's executive experience is diverse – including SMEs, large ASX listed and multi-national corporations – as CEO and across a range of business functions, from research and manufacturing operations management, to planning, technical, procurement, communication and advocacy roles. Her non-executive and external advisory roles have included universities, scientific, government, regulatory, governance, health and skills organisations. She is currently Deputy Chair of Jobsbank, an independent, Victorian based not-for-profit, which makes inclusive employment and social procurement work for business. Samantha is also a Mentor with the Creative Destruction Lab program, hosted in Australia by the Monash Business School, which employs an objectives-based mentoring process to enhance the performance of technical founders who learn from the insights of experienced entrepreneurs, with the goal of maximising equity-value creation. Samantha was most recently a member of the Federal Government’s Circular Economy Ministerial Advisory Group and CSIRO's Ending Plastic Waste Mission Advisory Group. Samantha has worked across Australia and the Asia Pacific and collaborated internationally. As a CEO, non-executive director and engineer, she has expertise in strategy development and implementation, policy and government, technology and innovation, business transformation, commercial negotiations and mergers, and has built partnerships with government, industry, research/university and community organisations. Her sound governance capability has been developed across CEO, ED and NED roles at Jobsbank, Cobaw Community Health (now Sunbury and Cobaw Community Health), Chemistry Australia, the Biofuels Association of Australia, Manufacturing Skills Australia, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, General Motors Australia and GM Holden, and in her early career at BHP. As a former Chair of an independent Federal Government Grant Assessment Committee, she is highly attuned to proper process and probity. Samantha is committed to the next generation of Australian industry leaders, having established the Emerging Leaders program for aspiring leaders in the Australian chemistry industry, and the Chemistry Australia and CEW Woman Leader in STEM Scholarship. Samantha holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Hons), is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and member of Women on Boards, and the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD). In 2015, she was honoured to receive Monash University’s Distinguished Alumni Award for the Faculty of Engineering and was a finalist in the 2014 Telstra Business Womens Awards (Victoria).