- Andrew Forrest
Chairman, Fortescue Metals Group
Business Circle
Mr Forrest is Fortescue’s Founder and Chairman and has led the company to the position as the world’s fourth-largest seaborne iron ore producer. Under his leadership, Fortescue has made significant investments in the Australian resources sector of more than US$20 billion.
In 2001, Mr Forrest co-founded the Minderoo Foundation with his wife Nicola, which has supported over 280 initiatives across Australia and internationally in pursuit of a range of causes. These causes include spearheading a return to flourishing oceans, driving collaboration and change in global cancer, ending modern slavery, creating parity for Indigenous Australians, striving to give every Australian child the chance to reach their full potential, nurturing new talents in the arts, generating world-changing research and innovation in Western Australia, and innovative community development and environmental conservation initiatives.
He is Co-Chairman of the Senior Business Leaders' Forum, the leading dialogue for China and Australia's most senior business leaders. He is Global Patron of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and Vice-Patron of the SAS Resources Fund. He is also a Councilor of the Global Citizen Commission, which made a series of human rights recommendations to update the Universal Declaration of Human Rights presented to the United Nations Secretary General in April 2016. One of Mr Forrest's proudest achievements is facilitating proclamations against modern slavery between the world's major faith and spiritual leaders, first at in the Vatican in December 2014, and then in India, Australia, Indonesia, Argentina, Colombia and New Zealand. In 2018, Mr. Forrest was inducted into the Australian Prospectors & Miners' Hall of Fame and honored with the EY Entrepreneur of The Year Alumni Social Impact Award for the “lasting and exceptional legacy” of his philanthropic work.
