Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame inducts five new members

The 2024 inductees span self-made celebrity hairdresser and entrepreneur Stefan Ackerie AM, corporate, Indigenous and reconciliation leader Shelley Reys AO, Australia’s largest pineapple growers Piñata Farms, information and communications technology company Data#3, and tourism, property and boating entrepreneurs the Longhurst Family.

The Business Leaders Hall of Fame was established in 2009 and is a partnership between QUT and the State Library of Queensland.

It recognises outstanding Queensland business leaders for their public contribution to the state’s reputation, and economic and social development.

This year saw the 99th member inducted at a black-tie dinner event at the Brisbane Convention Centre and Exhibition Centre attended by more than 700 people.

The 2024 inductees are:

Stefan Ackerie AM

He is best known simply as Stefan.

A self-made businessman and entrepreneur, Stefan Ackerie, the man behind Stefan hairdressing salons, says he was “born to be a hairdresser”.

In 2024, Stefan Ackerie celebrates 60 years in business and is recognised by the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame for his sustained entrepreneurship in developing an iconic Queensland business.

Stefan started learning the ropes as a hairdresser as a young child, winding perms, mixing tint and colour, and standing on a box at age six in his father’s hair salon so he could reach customers’ hair.

In 1957, aged 15, he immigrated to Adelaide, in South Australia, with his family from his birthplace of Lebanon.

He worked with his father until he was 17 when he opened his own salon, even though he was not old enough to run a shop because he was still an apprentice and so had to hire a senior person to be his boss.

He remembers arriving in Brisbane for the first time, driving his sky-blue MGA convertible car with the hood down, driving slowly, waving to people, and said it was “love at first sight”.

Stefan began working for major salons in 1963 before taking over a salon in Longreach in 1964 and then opening his first self-named salon in Maryborough. He launched his first Brisbane salon in Adelaide Street in the CBD in 1967.

He later became the largest private employer in Queensland of apprentices and the longest running hairdressing company in Australia, and a household name with his “Discover Yourself” television show and his salons’ signature rainbow logo.

Stefan branched into hospitality with the long-lasting success of Jo Jo’s restaurant and bar, formerly located upstairs on the corner of Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall and Albert Street, that became one of the city’s best-known eateries.

He was also the owner of an iconic pink racing speed boat and won six Australian Offshore Power Boat Racing Championships.

His commitment to educating young people has seen thousands of Queenslanders employed “under the Stefan rainbow” – from hairdressing, cheffing, shop fitting and marine mechanics.

His partner Rose King is general manager, and their daughter Jessica-Rose is CEO.

He supports multiple not-for-profit organisations including Disability Sports Queensland, The Mother Theresa Foundation and the foundations of the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and Queensland Children’s Hospital, and in 2020, he was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia for his significant service to business and support for charitable organisations.

“I can’t tell you how proud and privileged and blessed I am. I have an incredible team of people around me,” Stefan said.

“Sixty years feels like a month, it’s so vivid. A journey has puddles, has hills, has flat tyres, broken windscreens, running out of petrol.

“One of the hardest things in the world is to make a name for yourself but the actual hardest thing in the world is to keep that name going.

“You don’t reach the summit by accident. The tip I have for young people is don’t let go.”

Shelley Reys AO

With a vision to create a culturally competent Australia “one workplace at a time”, Shelley Reys has established herself as a leader in the corporate, First Nations and reconciliation spaces.

For 30 years, Shelley, a Djirribul woman from far north Queensland in the Atherton Tablelands, has led Arrilla Indigenous Consulting, specialising in raising people’s cultural capability across the Australian workforce, as well as helping them to work in the First Nations space with greater skill and confidence.

Shelley is also a partner of KPMG Australia, a board member for the Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (Brisbane 2032), and chair of the Council for the Order of Australia. She was also vice chair of the National Australia Day Council, vice chair of The Fred Hollows Foundation, Chair of the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence and the first chair of Reconciliation Australia.

She has been named one of Australia’s 100 Women of Influence by the Australian Financial Review, and, in 2012, was awarded the Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in honour of her life’s work.

Shelley’s pro bono work has seen her leading large conversations of national importance, with her aspiration “to leave no Australian behind”. This work has included Parliament’s apology to The Stolen Generations, Australia Day, The Australian of the Year Awards, and the broader reconciliation movement.

She is recognised as an inductee in the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame in recognition of groundbreaking contributions to the Indigenous space and reconciliation and as an influential business leader and change maker.

“I find it hard to talk about myself. The work that I do is incredibly important, but I am not important,” Shelley said.

“I’ve never called myself a leader, never saw myself as a leader, that’s not something that drives me or something that I think about.

“But I do acknowledge that the kind of work that I’ve done over the years has created a footpath for a range of people and I very much hope that it’s been a positive influence on people.”

Arrilla was founded in Sydney by Shelley’s cousin Darren Auyeung. Shelley took over as CEO 30 years ago when Darren tragically passed away.

Driven to give Darren’s legacy a greater impact, she moved away from Arrilla’s main game of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander recruitment, to better equip non-Indigenous Australians to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples or on the projects that affect them.

Shelley describes a big part of Arrilla’s work as “removing the eggshells” when it came to dealing with First Nations topics.

“We give people skills and confidence to work in the space better in order to change the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, but also, in order to change the way in which business deals with this topic,” she said.

“I’m proud that I’ve been able to help organisations make sense of a space that is eternally confusing and complex to them.  I make things clearer so that everyone can play their part with confidence.”

Arrilla clients include Facebook, Google, Microsoft, KPMG, Airbnb, LinkedIn and government agencies. In 2016, Arrilla’s growth and impact attracted KPMG to take a minority shareholding and enter a joint venture.

“For me, success in business transcends ‘the bottom line’ of profit and financial growth,” Shelley said.

“It’s about the positive impact we have when we make meaningful investments in communities, foster inclusivity, and prioritise social good. By doing so, we build better businesses, and everyone thrives in the abundance of a more just and equitable society.

“I’m living proof that it’s possible.  After 30 years, I can attest to the fact that you can build a successful and profitable business - and still contribute to those who are vulnerable.  Profit and kindness can co-exist.”

Longhurst Family 

Brothers Tony and Rodney Longhurst were taught from a young age that “if you believe in yourself, you can do anything”.

Their father, the late John Longhurst, who died in 2022, was an Australian business pioneer, visionary and tourism legend and is remembered as a “man who had big dreams and the unique ability to realise them”.

John Longhurst had an impressive business career, beginning with his first business Pace Mowers that he sold to lawn mower giant Victa.

He worked as a truck driver, mechanic, builder and boat manufacturer before buying 85 hectares of land in “the middle of nowhere” beside the Pacific Motorway at Coomera, on the Gold Coast, with the dream of building a theme park founded on similar design concepts as Disneyland.

In 1981, Dreamworld opened with instant success and eight years on, the park was welcoming more than one million visitors a year.

In 1987, he purchased Green Island and Fitzroy Island on the Great Barrier Reef and a port in Cairns and launched Great Adventures, to ferry tourists to the outer reef.

Not long after selling Dreamworld and Great Adventures in 1989, he bought Logan Hyperdome shopping centre with the foresight the area would become an important corridor of growth.

John’s entrepreneurial spirit lives on through his sons Tony and Rodney who are also successful business owners.

Tony is a former racing car driver and a two-time winner of the Bathurst 1000, and former Australian champion water skier, who, with his siblings, owns and is CEO of The Boat Works at Coomera, a boatyard, superyacht yard and marina services precinct.

Next door, Rodney owns and operates Riviera Australia, a state-of-the-art facility that is the largest luxury yacht building facility in the southern hemisphere.

Together, Tony and Rodney own almost 40 hectares of prime riverfront land along the Coomera River, not far from Dreamworld, and are responsible for a team of more than 1000 people directly, and another 2000 people indirectly.

Rodney described his dad as “a builder, a creator and a doer”.

“He would always get stuff done. He was a super hard worker,” he said.

“His father was a perfectionist upholsterer, and his father taught him that if you believe in yourself, you can do anything. It can be done, you’ve just got to believe. That’s what he drummed into us relentlessly.

“He was a manufacturer, an operator, a marketer but his greatest love was looking at anything and thinking, ‘I can make that better; I can take that to the next level’.

“Everything was about how you give people or your customer a better experience. He had that absolute belief that it could be done.”

Tony said his father was never short of inspiration.

“Dad’s attitude and our family’s attitude was, ‘Yep, we’re doing this, let’s get stuck in’, he said.

“To be self-made, to build boats, to build lawn mowers, to be successful at that and then get into Dreamworld and over a decade turn it from nothing into a $160 million business…it was really amazing to be a part of that.

“He was certainly a remarkable man.”

The Longhurst Family is inducted by the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame in recognition of over 50 years of visionary and sustained entrepreneurship across the tourism, property and boating industries nationally. 

Piñata Farms Pty Ltd

Starting as a small family farm at Wamuran, northwest of Caboolture, in the City of Moreton Bay, Piñata Farms has grown to Australia’s largest pineapple growers.

The fourth-generation business employs more than 400 staff and operates farms from the Northern Territory to Tasmania, suppling pineapples, as well as mangoes, strawberries and raspberries. It supplies produce to every Coles and Woolworths store nationally.

It is recognised by the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame in recognition of outstanding leadership and innovation in Australia’s food production industry for over 60 years. 

Managing director Gavin Scurr said his grandfather, who was a builder, moved to Wamuran from Brisbane in 1964 as a reprieve from a “credit squeeze” in the city in the early 1960s.

“He thought he would come farming for a couple of years until building improved and 60 years later we’re still here,” Gavin said.

Gavin and his brother and sister grew up on the farm that supplied pineapple, along with about 900 growers, for food processing company Golden Circle, in what was a processing-based industry.

When Gavin left school at the end of 1983, it was just him, his mum and dad on the farm. A couple of years later his brother Steve joined. A long-term employee, John, has also worked for the business since the beginning.

In the mid-1980s, Gavin and Steve expanded their pineapple operation and saw fresh pineapple as a point of difference.

“We planted extra specifically for the fresh industry and that industry has grown from 15,000 tonne to about 50,000 tonne in the past 30-35 years,” Gavin said.

In the late 90s, fresh pineapple was allowed to be imported into Australia for the first time and the business diversified into other crops such as strawberries, and more recently with mangoes and raspberries.

There have been significant setbacks for the business along the way including flooding in Rockhampton in 2011 when its mango farm on the Fitzroy River was underwater for two weeks and killed every tree on the farm.

“We had to totally rebuild that farm. It takes eight years to get a fully mature mango tree so it was eight years to get it back to what it was. That was a significant setback for us as a business,” Gavin said.

“It hasn’t all been smooth sailing, it never is.”

Gavin said the business now had four crops in seven locations from Darwin to Hobart.

“We started very small,” Gavin said.

“My grandfather used to say, if you don’t have time to do it properly, make sure you’ve got enough time to do it twice. Quality has been a pillar we’ve built our business on right from the beginning of doing the job well, but consistently well.

“We still take pride in not only growing volume but something that tastes delicious. We’d rather be known as the leaders of the industry, rather than the biggest.”

Family values also remain an important part of the business, that now has a fourth generation on its books. Gavin’s eldest daughter Rebecca Scurr is the sales and marketing manager, and Steve’s four children work in north Queensland and the Northern Territory on various farms.

And the fifth generation could also be coming up the ranks.

“We’re a family business and it’s important for us we maintain those values, that authenticity of being family,” Gavin said.

“Steve and I have both got grandkids, but they are only little tackers yet, so we’ll see what happens.”

Data#3 Limited 

Founded in 1977 from humble beginnings, Queensland company Data#3 Limited has evolved into a major Australian Securities Exchange 200 (ASX200) listed technology company employing 1400 staff.

With nine offices, including its head office in Brisbane, and three integration centres, Data#3 is a leading IT services and solutions provider that has worked with a diverse client list from federal, state and local governments, large corporations, to schools, hospitals, universities and stadiums.

Data#3 is inducted into the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame in recognition of continuing excellence and outstanding innovation in the provision of technology solutions and services throughout Australia.  

The company began when co-founders Terry Powell and Graham Clark, who worked together at IT powerhouse IBM for 10 years, struck out with their own business called Powell, Clark and Associates, setting up shop out of Graham’s home garage in Jindalee, in Brisbane’s southwest.

“IBM had just announced a range of very small standalone computers and there was a lack of software,” Terry said.

“Today, there is an app for everything but in those days, there wasn’t any software around and Graham was probably one of the leading experts in Australia in building software.

“We had a variety of clients and then it emerged that there was a similarity - despite whether it was a law firm or a hospital or a manufacturer - about how the systems could be delivered and that’s where Graham came into his own because he was very good at cloning something we’d already done for another business.

“We then developed specialities in various industries, one of which was in the healthcare field servicing hospitals, and we went from there.”

In 1984, Powell, Clark and Associates merged with Allbrand Typewriters & Office Machines to become Data#3. In 1997, the company was listed on the ASX.

Co-founder John Grant said the company “rode the technology wave” and were “fast followers” of emerging technology.

“The PC just surged. And when that happened, we just went with it,” John said.

“It moved from being a software organisation that provided solutions we hand carved for customers, through to being a reseller of world’s best technology and a provider of services that supported customers using that technology.

“That led to an opportunity for Data#3 and the huge growth that it went through from a revenue point of view as well.”

Tash Macknish, Chief People Officer, said the company’s core values of honesty, excellence, agility, respect and teamwork (HEART) were ingrained in business dealings every day.

The company also gives back to the community through commitments with charities including Lifeline, the Starlight Foundation and its national charity partner, SolarBuddy.

Brad Colledge, CEO and Managing Director, said the company’s evolution from its beginnings in a suburban Brisbane garage to having 14 locations across Australia and Fiji, had been a “fantastic journey”, while Graham Clark said he was proud of the heights the business had reached.

“When we think about some of the issues we went through in the early days and how we fought through all those years, I’m most proud of where the business has got to,” Graham said.

“The marketplace we were operating on changed continually, so there was a need for flexibility, changing attitudes, reworking skills and just continuing on.”

Main image: (Back row L-R) Rodney Longhurst, Tony Longhurst, Stefan Ackerie, Stephen Scurr. (Front row L-R) Brad Colledge, Shelley Reys, Gavin Scurr.

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