26 January, 2017 | 2017

2017 Australia Day Honours

2017 Australia Day Honors for Mr David Thodey (AO) and Mr David Barbagallo (AM)

Mr David Thodey (AO), former CEO of both IBM Australia and Telstra, and current Chairman of the CSIRO, was recognised in the 2017 Australia Day Awards with the Order of Australia (AO). The Pearcey Foundation is delighted that David Thodey's leadership in the ICT sector and across Australian industry generally, has been honoured in this most appropriate manner.

Mr David Barbagallo (AM), the inaugural 2003 Queensland Pearcey Award winner, was made a Member of the Order of Australia in the General Division (AM) in the 2017 Australia Day Honours List "for significant service to the information technology industry, to higher education, to business, and to people with disabilities."

At the time David Barbagello was recognised by the Pearcey Foundation in Queensland, he had recently retired as CEO of one of Australia's most successful Cooperative Research Centres, the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC). The then Chairman of the DSTC board Ian Reinecke said Barbagallo "breathed new life" into DSTC with his intelligence, worldly experience and "strong and inspiring" leadership. His "sheer force of personality" was attractive to DSTC participants which included Mincom, Boeing, Fujitsu, Telstra, Microsoft, SAP and IBM.

David is modest about his achievements: "I am not an original thinker but I do recognise good ideas."

Under his tutelage, DSTC developed an international reputation as one of the most effective and influential IT research organisations in Australia, with its security spin-off, Wedgetail Communications, recognised internationally for its Java-based security technology for large server applications and wireless devices.

After a couple of years as CTO at Mincom, David joined the Endeavour Foundation as CEO in 2009. At the time he left the company in 2015 Endeavour's annual revenues were around $AUD250M with some 4100 employees including 2100 with a disability. For over 60 years Endeavour has provided a diverse range of services within the disability sector.

David is currently an Adjunct Professor at QUT and manages a private consulting business based in Brisbane.