Building bonds: UNIBA Partners’ Brian Salisbury retires from Austbrokers SPT

UNIBA Partners has been going strong for well over 35 years. One of the common denominators is the fact that once you’re in, you’re usually here to stay. With so many long-standing Partners in the network, there are sure to be many memories, professional highlights and personal anecdotes to be shared.  With this monthly article-series we will highlight our Partners’ milestones, from anniversaries to retirements, and take a trip down memory lane.

This month we catch up with Brian Salisbury from Austbrokers SPT who will soon retire from his company.

For those who don’t know you, can you please introduce yourself and your company?

My name is Brian Salisbury, former director of Austbrokers SPT, based in Sydney, Australia. We've been around for awhile, in fact we’re going to be celebrating our 50th anniversary soon.  We’ve been with UNIBA Partners since 2002 and have been heavily involved ever since. For me personally, this included a 6-year stint on the board and more than 10 years on the Conference Committee.

What impact did UNIBA’s membership have on you and your company?

Because I embraced UNIBA, and what it stood for, virtually from the start of our connection, I like to think of it as a labor of love;  any effort I’ve put into it I’ve always loved. On the business level we’ve developed some very good clients through our UNIBA-connections, outgoing and incoming, outbound/inbound to Australia. We've created some wonderful relationships with other UNIBA Partners through those processes and picked up local accounts in Australia along the way.

Over the last 20 years we've also seen quite a bit of the world through the connection with UNIBA. A very nice side benefit to membership!

You’ve already mentioned your involvement in the Board and Conference Committee. Can you tell us a bit more about this?

On the board I was responsible for Asia Pacific. The division of the membership has gone quite well. There’s still much to do, there is so much potential in the region. I hope it’s the first few steps of a lot of steps within the region. Economically its going to be the powerhouse of the world, so we have to be in the right place to take full advantage of it. Additional, on the board level, I enjoyed seeing new initiatives grow. Think of the Center of Excellences, the marketing efforts, the physical regional meetings. 

Through my involvement in the Conference Committee, where my friends Sanjay and Con are serving right now, I’ve seen the Conferences getting better and better. The speakers, the topics, the involvement from our sponsors. They see value and it locks them in. Everyone had a win out of that and that’s been good to see.