Title Director Company Rural Economies Centre of Excellence Bio Ben Lyons is the newly appointed Director at the Rural Economies Centre of Excellence based at USQ in Toowoomba. Ben has worked extensively in Asia for the past 20 years, specifically in the agribusiness, textiles, research and education management sectors for The Financial Times (UK), The Woolmark Company, and the University of Queensland (UQ). In 2015 Ben returned to Australia as the CEO at TSBE - a leading, membership-based regional economic development agency, and during his tenure saw the region achieve a weekly freight route to Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific, Australia’s first Ag Tech and investment forum – 400M, and the first international passenger flight from a regional airport to Shanghai, China.  Ben is fluent in Mandarin and has a PhD in agricultural economics and first class honours in Chinese literature, all from UQ.