One of the country's most successful private equity executives and Australia's departing ambassador to the US have joined the board of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue as it ramps up its efforts to -advance science, technology, engineering and mathematics education in both countries. 
Ben Gray, TPG Capital's managing partner Asia, and departing US ambassador Kim Beazley are two of five new appointments to the board of the Dialogue, a bipartisan annual initiative between Australia and the US.
Its board already includes a former US ambassador to Australia, Jeffrey Bleich, and AALD founder and former Australian Consul-General to New York, Phil Scanlan.
The other new appointees are: Major-General Rick Burr - Deputy Chief of Army and former deputy commanding general, US Army, Pacific; Chris Hancock - chief executive of AARNet; and Professor Sandra Harding - vice-chancellor and president of James Cook Uni-versity.
The new appointments come ahead of the 10th annual West Coast Leadership Dialogue, to be staged in Silicon Valley next month, where the delegates visit corporations including Tesla, Linkedin and Udacity.
"The Leadership Dialogue has always brought together the keenest minds and thought leaders from a broad range of dis-ciplines, and with these appointments we further strengthen our board as the AALD continues to evolve into its second quarter-century," said AALD chairman Martin Adams.
Mr Gray, who earlier this year announced plans to set up his own private equity fund, recently agreed to be a guest lecturer for a new master of entrepreneurship degree at Melbourne University being backed by the likes of Credit Suisse and Australia Post.
It comes as Malcolm Turnbull looks to ramp up STEM education in Australia following the release earlier this month of the government's innovation blueprint.
The AALD is supporting the Day of STEM education program being run by a US-based company called LifeJourney that links mentors from industry directly with students in an online environment, allowing them to get a real-life appreciation of what happens in the business world.
LifeJourney's technology allows a single mentor to guide 10,000 or more students on its cloud-based platform, and the group has ambitions to target 2.5 million students across the country.
The program is being backed by the likes of Telstra, Westpac, Cisco, Deloitte and other top companies.
It flows from the 2015 Australian American Leadership Dialogue in   August, which had an agenda incorporating cyber security, education, STEM and -innovation and was attended by the Prime Minister and Lockheed Martin chief executive -Marillyn Hewson.In   November, Mr Beazley was also named as president of the Australian Institute of International Affairs.