First involvement with SMU

Well, I had a phone call one morning. My secretary said that there is a Janice Bellace on the phone. I happened to know Janice from my international professional body—at that stage it was called International Industrial Relations Research Association and I was the president. In fact, we held a conference in Sydney in 1992. Janice was part of that, she was on the International Executive and she and I got to know one another through that. Then when SMU was being set up, I guess someone asked her for the names of people who might be brought onto the board, and I guess that’s how my name came through. It was cleared the normal way I guess, and then Janice made the phone call and I said, “Well, give me a day or two to think about it,” but I didn’t need very long. I knew I was finishing up with UNSW, it hadn’t been announced at that point, but I was beginning to think what will the bridge be. I certainly wanted to maintain involvement with Asia. And SMU was the first of my Asian involvements that started then. There’s another set that arose in Hong Kong that have run parallel with SMU.