Celebrating our 10th year with the Pearcey Foundation

On Friday night, we announced cardiologist, academic leader and health technology entrepreneur Professor Girish Dwivedi as the recipient of the 2026 Western Australian Pearcey Entrepreneur of the Year Award. This is the first of Pearcey Foundation‘s state-based awards for 2026, and marked our 10th year providing pro bono support to what we believe is Australia’s most important organisation championing the local ICT sector and technology entrepreneurship and innovation.

The great thing about Pearcey is the commitment of a small but dedicated group of volunteers who put so much heart and passion into the cause; generally without any personal recognition, ensuring the focus is on the incredible technology leaders, visionaries and pioneers who Pearcey calls out and celebrates.

Over the years, we’ve seen so many of our Pearcey award recipients go on to bigger and better things – Canva’s Melanie Perkins and Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar to name a few – to more recent awardees who are potentially following a similar trajectory – like Fleet Space Technologies co-founder Flavia Tata Nardini or Q-CTRL’s Michael J. Biercuk. Importantly Pearcey isn’t just looking for commercial potential or success. There are also so many instances Pearcey recognises people, technology and innovation advancing healthcare (Professor Dwivedi as a good example!), their social or community impact, contribution to academia and research, or environmental benefits.

The Pearcey Foundation has been forging ahead with its mandate to raise the profile of Australia’s ICT industry and profession on the ‘smell of an oily rag’ and the goodwill of a cohort of volunteers for almost 30 years. It’s just a shame that so much of Australia’s tech media is looking offshore for news, when we could be telling so many more stories about innovation taking place at home.

Announcing an award isn’t the story – when we send out a press release like our first one for 2026 celebrating Professor Girish Dwivedi’s achievements, we don’t expect reams of coverage. Instead, the aim for the Pearcey Foundation is to point out someone (and the innovations, organisations or causes they are involved in) to build awareness, start conversations and help promote the great work they are doing to the wider world.

We’re so glad we took that call from Len Rust 10 years ago when he asked us to work with the Pearcey Foundation. We’ve been on hand and behind the scenes to find out about and follow some amazing individuals and organisations who are making a real difference – an impact that is not just felt in the ICT industry, but on a much broader scale.

We’d love it if a local publication put its hand up to give more support to the Pearcey Foundation, and feature more stories about the individuals and organisations we have recognised over the years. In the lead up to this year’s awards, we followed up with three of last year’s recipients, Tim Stollznow, Rory San Miguel and Sam Kroonenburg – these are people who are not standing still, and there is so much more they have done since receiving their awards in 2025.

If you have the time, take a look at all of Pearcey’s award recipients here. There’s an incredibly rich vein of stories and news you can tap into there!

* Pictured above: Professor Girish Dwivedi, recipient of the 2026 Western Australian Pearcey Entrepreneur of the Year Award