Melbourne IT chair Gail Pemberton receives order of Australia

Melbourne IT chairwoman Gail Pemberton has been awarded the Order of Australia title in this year's Australia Day honours list.

Pemberton was listed among this year's Officer of the Order (AO) honour roll in the general division, for "distinguished service to the finance and banking industry, to business through a range of roles, as an advocate for technology, and as a mentor to women", according to the office of the Governor General.

The honour roll highlighted Pemberton's service as the chief information officer and chief operating officer at Macquarie Bank between 1989 and 2003, as chief executive and chief operating officer positions at inteinternationalking group BNP Paribas between 2003 and 2007, and as chair of OneVue since 2007, among others.

Prior to assuming the chair role at Melbourne IT, Pemberton was a non-executive director of the company between May 2016 and January 2017. She has served in non-executive directorial roles at IT services company UXC, investment firm QIC, PayPal Australia and vehicle fleet leasing and management company Eclipx Group.

Pemberton received Banking and Finance Magazine's chief information officer of the decade award in 2000, after winning the CIO of the year award from the same publication a year prior. Pemberton was also awarded the Centenary Medal in 2003.

The Order of Australia is the country's highest award of recognition for outstanding achievements and service. There are two division of the Order of Australia, the Civil or General Divison and the Military Division. The general division has four levels, Companion of the Order (AC), Officer of the Order (AO), Member of the Order (AM) and Medal of the Order (OAM).

The top honour of Australian of the year was awarded to professor Michelle Simmons for her pioneering work in quantum computing.

Simmons leads Australia's first quantum computing company Silicon Quantum Computing, located in the University of New South Wales. The company has received backing from the federal government, Commonwealth Bank, New South Wales government and Telstra.

Another IT name honoured this year was Victorian Jeffrey Whittle, for "distinguished service to the information technology sector and the mining industry, particularly through the development of industry standard computer programs for strategic mine planning and optimisation".

Whittle was the founder and director of Whittle Programming between 1984 and 2001 and is the founder and current technical director of Whittle Consulting.

University of Technology Sydney professor of strategic management and technology Stephen William was also honoured, for "significant service to information technology and telecommunications, to education, to the visual arts, and to Australia-Asia cultural relations". 

Melbourne IT enjoyed $168.4 million revenue in 2016 following a string of acquisitions including Netregistry in 2014, Uber Global in 2015, Outware Systems in 2015 and InfoReady in 2016. In May last year, the company revealed it would acquire digital marketing firm WME Group for $39 million.