Josh Riley

Josh Riley is Australia’s Consul-General and Trade and Investment Commissioner in Canada. In this capacity he leads Australia’s trade promotion and investment attraction priorities in Canada, while overseeing the Australian Consulate-General in Toronto and Consulate in Vancouver. He is also the sector lead for Resources and New Energy for the United States of America and Canada. 

Josh is a proud descendant of the Wiradjuri people with family ties to the Negros Island in the Philippines. He is the first Indigenous Australian appointed as Consul General to a Commonwealth country and brings a depth of corporate, not-for-profit and policy experience gained across Australia and Canada. 

In 2021, Josh joined Austrade’s strategy team as Director, Trade Expansion. Prior to this he was Director, Corporate Citizenship at the Business Council of Australia. In this capacity he led the launch of Raising the Bar in collaboration with Supply Nation, through which 17 of Australia’s largest companies committed to spend over $3 billion with Indigenous suppliers. 

From 2015 to 2018, Josh lived in Toronto, Canada where he was Director, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, where he was instrumental in the Canadian Government’s commitment to implement a target to award five percent of federal contracts to Indigenous businesses. Before this he spent over ten years in the banking industry across ANZ and the Commonwealth Bank. 

Josh drove the creation of the Australia-Canada Indigenous Economic Partnership which launched in 2020. He previously chaired the Indigenous Technology, Trade, and Investment Workstream of the Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum, and was Deputy Chair of NAISDA, Australia’s premier Indigenous dance training institute.