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Ross Monaghan is a business communication and issues management specialist with more than 17 years communications experience in public relations, general management and journalism.

A former Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, and Chairman of the Mobile Carriers Forum, Ross has advised and represented some of Australia’s largest organisations such as BHP, Telstra and Optus. He has a unique combination of communications theory and practical experience.

Ross began his career as a journalist working for a regional daily newspaper and spent several years involved in general news reporting before completing his BA (Management Communication) at Deakin University.

Through the Deakin internship program, Ross was offered a public affairs position by BHP. He spent eight years working at BHP sites around Australia and North America. During that time he was involved in a range of internal and external communication management issues such as editing employee journals, developing community relations strategies and managing the public affairs and media response to issues such as industrial accidents and raids by environmental groups such as Greenpeace.

In 1996 Ross was appointed Community Relations Manager for Optus. During the next six years in the telecommunications industry Ross was involved in a range of public affairs, regulatory and community issues such as cable roll-outs, mobile base station deployment, mobile phone theft, and an Australian Senate Inquiry into the health effects of mobile phones. He helped establish, and was the first chair of, the Mobile Carriers Forum. He chaired other groups such as the Australasian Crime Commissioners Taskforce on mobile phone theft, and dealt with issues at all three tiers of Government.

During his time in the telecommunications industry Ross gained general management experience as the CEO of the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association. A key responsibility of that role was to represent the industry in all levels of the media, from daily newspapers to television news and current affairs programs.

Ross continues to maintain strong links with industry. He chaired the 2005 Public Relations and Corporate Communications Summit in Sydney, and will chair the 2006 Summit in May.