Our Board of Directors


Stuart Rechner LLB BSc GAICD MAIG

Stuart has served on the ACGB Board since 2014, including as Company Secretary (2015-2018) and, since November 2018, Chairperson. He holds degrees in both science and law, is member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Australian Institute of Geoscientists. Stuart also sits on the boards of two listed mining companies. For over ten years Stuart was an Australian diplomat with postings to Beijing and Jakarta before working as a senior adviser in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

His work for the federal government included responding to disasters and tragedies. He was the federal government representative at the Queensland Reconstruction Authority, the body established to plan and coordinate the reconstruction of Queensland following the 2010-11 floods. He was also deployed to several major consular crises including the 2009 Jakarta bombings and the 2007 Garuda airlines crash. Stuart's special interests at the ACGB include financial management, government relations and national expansion. General Directors. 

General Directors


Partha Nag MAICD, CPA

Partha Nag is an experienced non-executive director and Chair with more than eight years board level experience.As a board member and Chair of the Audit Committee on several not for profit board as well as in his executive role at Strategic Business Alliance Ltd, he continues to demonstrate a proven ability to work independently as well as part of a board. As a senior board member he has extensive experience in financial reporting, business leadership, corporate governance and risk management. Partha is a qualified CPA and a member of the AICD.

Dr Lauren Breen BSc (Hons), GradCertEd, PhD, MAPS 
Dr. Breen has been a Member of the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement since 2008 and on the Board since 2014. She is an Associate Professor of psychology at Curtin University and a Registered Psychologist. Her award-winning, applied research centres on end-of-life care and grief and loss issues, and includes research on chronic disease management, communicating the diagnosis of a serious/terminal illness, preparations for bereavement, the impact of caregiving on bereavement, psychotherapies for prolonged grief disorder/complicated grief, road trauma, understanding grieving children and families, building the community’s capacity to support grieving people, social and cultural norms of grief, and the interface between evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence.

Most notably, she was successful in the inaugural round of the prestigious Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Awards for her project exploring family caregiving and bereavement in palliative care. She has been a chief investigator on $2million of grants and has authored over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. She is a member of the International Work Group on Death, Dying and Bereavement; a Board Member of the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement; an Associate Editor of Death Studies; and a Fellow in Thanatology: Death, Dying and Bereavement. 

Vicki Kyritsis BA, BSW, GradDipPublicRelations, CertIVTAA

Vicki is a passionate and highly skilled communications professional with a background in strategy, programming, stakeholder engagement and development. She has worked in complex environments solving problems with entrepreneurial thinking that has supported long term change.Vicki has a wealth of experience, and has had the privilege of working alongside extraordinary leaders in the not for profit, education, government, media, mental health and indigenous health sectors.

Vicki currently serves as a Non-Executive Director and Secretary of the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavemnet (2011- present) and as a non-Executive Director of Australian Friends of Asha Slums in India (2015 – present).

Vicki holds a Bachelor of Arts (Social Sciences) from La Trobe University, a Bachelor of Social Work from Monash University, and post graduate qualifications in Public Relations (PR) from RMIT University and Management from Melbourne Business School. Vicki is also a qualified trainer who has taught public relations to vocational education students at RMIT University and Swinburne University of Technology.
 

Professor Michael Ashby MBBS (Lond), MD (Adel), MRCP (UK), FRCR, FRACP, FAChPM, FFPMANZCA

Michael Ashby is Professor and Clinical Director, Cancer, Chronic Disease & Sub-Acute Care Stream, in the Tasmania Health Service based at the Royal Hobart Hospital, and School of Medicine, UTAS. After graduation in London, and training in clinical oncology in the UK and France, he held clinical, academic, management and leadership positions in Adelaide and Melbourne prior to moving to Hobart in 2007.

He is a member of the International Working Group on Death Dying and Bereavement (IWG),and former Vice-President and currently a director and board member of the AustralianCentre for Grief and Bereavement (ACGB).

He sat on the Governing Council of THO South in 2014-5, and is an associate member of Group Relations Australia, as well as community and board chairing activities at a Steiner school.
He has research interests in law, ethics and the humanities as they apply to palliative care and decision-making at the end of life, and is currently working on the interface between psychodynamics and death and dying, grief and loss. He is Joint Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Bioethical Enquiry, an editor of the Journal of Palliative Care, and Mortality, and a reviewer for a number of international journals.

Dr Philip Bachelor OAM, BAppSc, MBA, PhD, FIML, FAICD

Philip is a social-behaviourist and business administrator specialising in bereavement-care and cemetery practice. CEO of Melbourne’s revitalised Box Hill Cemetery, he’s also a director of Paramedics Australasia, a mentor with the Institute of Managers & Leaders, an adjunct lecturer and a youth-justice volunteer.
Having previously served on the ACGB board from 2002–2005, Philip was reappointed in 2018.

His national quantitative Cemetery Visitation Study and qualitative Bereavement Response Study established an evidence-based foundation for professional cemetery services. Publications include ‘Life after Death: Understanding bereavement and working through grief’ (2002 Hill of Content, Melbourne) and ‘Sorrow & Solace: The social world of the cemetery’ (2004 Baywood, New York). 

Robert Law

Robert brings extensive experience across advisory services and government. He currently holds an executive role at Asialink Business (based at the University of Melbourne), advising companies and government on Asia growth opportunities. Prior to this, he was a strategy consultant with Monitor Deloitte, working with leading Australian companies across the retail, consumer products, technology and telecommunications industries on growth strategy, digital strategy and organisational transformation.

He started his professional career with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, serving as a diplomat at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. He later held a range of Federal Government roles in Canberra, including working on a number of crisis response efforts. He holds graduate and post-graduate degrees in history, diplomacy and international security.