Meet the Judges

The Judging Panel for the Radio Today 30 Under 30 Awards is due to complete their deliberations by midnight tonight.

We will publish the names of the 30 winners on Tuesday morning on Radio Today.

Note: The judges were specifically chosen by the publishers of Radio Today as not being currently employed by any of the major broadcasting networks so as to avoid any conflict of interest whether real or perceived.

Further, all judges are required to score entries via a dedicated online platform called Award Force where they are encouraged to use the “recuse” button to prevent them from judging an individual, or a whole category, if a conflict exists of which Radio Today is unaware.

Peter Saxon

Managing Editor

Guy Dobson

Guy “Dobbo” Dobson has spent over 20 years in radio – most of it in content during the halcyon days at SCA where he rose to C-Suite level, finishing up as Chief Creative Officer. Today, he has his fingers in a number of media pies including Asian Radio Concepts and Great Southern Land Media.

Rick Lenarcic

Canberra based Rick Lenarcic worked at SCA for 25 years, mostly as head of Regional Media before being snapped up by Grant Broadcasters as Chief Operating Officer. When ARN acquired Grant’s they added “Regional” to Rick’s title. More recently, Rick took on the role of Director of Media and Communications with Fortem – a non-profit that supports first responders and their families in mental health and wellbeing.

Jo Dick

Jo’s been Chief Commercial Officer at Commercial Radio Australia for almost two years. Prior to that, she was Head of Outdoor, Cinema and Radio at one of the world’s biggest ad agencies, OMD.

Natalie Pozdeev

Natalie leads the radio and podcasting team at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS). For many years before her current role, she was the Head Teacher of Media | Radio | Journalism at NSW Tafe. Natalie also has five years’ experience as Station Manager at 2RRR 88.5FM.

Wade Kingsley

Founder of The Ideas Business, Wade worked as Ideas Director for Nova Entertainment when it was still DMG and later founded The Studio at SCA. He’s a #Creative #Coach #Speaker #Facilitator and Australian Ambassador for World #Creativity & #Innovation Week. #Founder of one of the Top 100 fastest growing #startups in #Australia (AFR)

Steve Ahern OAM

Former head of the Radio School at AFTRS and radioinfo’s founder, Steve has been busy setting up radio stations around the world. More recently he’s been Director of Training at the Asian Broadcasting Union (ABU) and is currently filling in as ABC Sydney Manager.

Jaime Chaux

As Head of Digital at CRA, Jaime oversees industry strategy, policy & partnerships related to the digital elements of the radio business. This covers streaming, podcasts, smart speakers, the connected car, apps and DAB+ radio.

Sarah Patterson

Sarah is one of Melbourne’s best known news presenters having worked on Eddie McGuire’s Hot Breakfast on Triple M as well as Fox FM, smooth FM, Nova, Gold 104.3, KIIS, SEN and RSN 927.

  Today, she is News Director at Air News, Reporter at Radio Today and host of the Food Bytes podcast, now heard across the ACE Radio Network.

Peter Saxon

This year celebrating 50 years in radio, Peter started on-air at 2XL Cooma, went on to 2KA Katoomba before being hired as retail Sales Manager at 2WS when it launched in 1978 and then went on to become the station’s first Marketing Manager. He was co-founder of the multi-RAWARD/ACRA Award winning syndication company, Radiowise and has been Managing Editor of radioinfo since 2002 and now fulfils that role for Radio Today, radioinfo.asia and radioinfo.africa as well.

Brian Carlton

Perhaps best known as Triple M’s Spoonman for his shit-stirring political commentary, Brian has been the Morning Talk presenter for Grant Broadcasters’ Tasmanian network. He has also worked as a Producer, Talk Presenter and Program Director at 2GB.

The Radio Today 30 Under 30 Awards are proudly supported by…