Toby Kent

Co-founder, EllisKent Consulting

Aligning cross-sector and departmental resources to align collective identity, promote place brand and build community resilience. 

Abstract:

At the heart of any place brand is a strong, well defined sense of collective identity. Likewise, at the heart of any community’s resilience is a sense of the collective and the resulting social cohesion that comes with that. Today, with many communities facing unparalleled challenges, there has never been a more pressing need for economic development and resilience teams, in all levels of Government, to collaborate.

From community-led housing and place development, through to how places can attract the jobs of the future, in this session, resilience expert Toby Kent will examine the cross over between the world of resilience and place brand.

Biography:

Toby Kent has worked internationally to help major corporate, government, and non-government organisations achieve their commercial and operational objectives.
He was Australia’s first Chief Resilience Officer (CRO), appointed under the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation’ Global Resilient Cities initiative. As CRO, Toby created and delivered Australia’s first urban resilience strategy, Resilient Melbourne, a collaboration across Melbourne’s 32 councils, State, private and not-for-profit organisations.

Toby moved to Melbourne as ANZ Bank’s Global Head of Sustainable Development. He then worked with MMG mining corporation to help establish its Sustainable Development team and deliver a targeted community development program for its operations in Lao PDR. Toby was head of PwC’s Sustainability and Climate Change team in Hong Kong and led PwC UK’s sustainability work with global retail and consumer goods companies.

Toby is a Board member of the Business Council for Sustainable Development Australia and an Associate of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne. He has a Masters degree in Housing and Urbanisation from the London School of Economics.