Biography
As a social entrepreneur, Jon Dee has combined his philanthropic and campaigning activities with his role as an advocate for the small to medium business sectors.
As a business advocate, Jon is the anchor host of Smart Money, a live prime time weekly TV program on the Sky News Money and Sky News Business channels. The program shows businesses how to save money by being smarter with energy and other resources. In addition to anchoring the show, Jon is also the writer and Executive Producer of the program.
He has also written two highly successful business guidebooks with a combined distribution of 130,000 copies – Sustainable Growth (2010) and Energy Cut (2015).
Within Australia and overseas, Jon regularly gives keynote speeches and consults to companies on efficiency, sustainability and change management. Since 2010, he has given more than 270 speeches on these issues.
As a philanthropist he co-founded the Planet Ark and DoSomething charities. He also founded the international charity Rock Aid Armenia. During the 15 years that he headed up Planet Ark he turned the organisation into a household name and a force for positive change.
Together with Olivia Newton-John he also founded National Tree Day and the international One Tree Per Child initiative. During the time that Olivia and Jon fronted Tree Day, the event planted over 10 million trees. Their One Tree Per Child campaign is currently running in 5 countries and is supported by people such as Kevin McCloud, Lord Stern and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Jon is the Global Director of the initiative.
Jon has also been the founder of National Op Shop Week, National Recycling Week, National Leftovers Day and DoSomething Day.
As a campaigner in Australia he has successfully campaigned for the banning of plastic bags, plastic microbeads and phosphates in laundry detergents.
Jon also initiated and ran the lobbying campaign that led to Australia’s 3-year phase out of incandescent light globes. Jon’s key role in the phase-out was publicly acknowledged by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in a speech on January 24, 2010. The ban saved Australians hundreds of millions of dollars and it became an international role model that went on to be copied by many other countries.
In Australia, Jon also started the highly successful RecyclingNearYou.com.au, FoodWise.com.au and DoSomethingNearYou.com.au websites.
In 1989, Jon’s Rock Aid Armenia project released an all-star version of Smoke on the Water. Organised by Jon, it was a top 40 UK hit. In 1990 he also organised The Earthquake Album – it was a certified gold album, selling 100,000 copies in 10 days. For this project Jon recruited the support of bands such as Pink Floyd, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Yes, Iron Maiden, Rush, Bon Jovi and others.
Together with Ara Tadevosyan, Jon also initiated the building of a music school for 220 children in the Armenian earthquake zone. This was opened in 2013 by the President of Armenia.
During the Rock Aid Armenia project, Jon organised the McEnroe and Cash fundraising record that featured John McEnroe, The Who’s Roger Daltrey and former Wimbledon champion Pat Cash. Since then Jon and Pat have worked very closely together on many charity initiatives. In June 1991, they co-founded Planet Ark and in 2008 they co-founded DoSomething in partnership with Tina Jackson.
Since 1992 Jon has produced and directed more than 300 TV adverts and videos featuring people such as Tom Cruise, Kylie Minogue, Kevin McCloud, Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman, Sir Richard Branson, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Olivia Newton-John, Costa Georgiadis, Sandra Sully, Jeff Goldblum and many others.
Many of these videos aired in the Save the Planet series that Jon co-produced with Australia’s Channel 7 TV network. With two series that lasted 3 years, these Save the Planet education videos aired in prime time at 8.30pm and 10.30 pm every night 7 days a week. Channel 7 donated tens of millions of dollars worth of airtime to the initiative. To this day, it remains by far the biggest environmental education campaign ever carried out in Australia. Every script for the two series was written by Jon and he also directed the majority of the TV spots.
In 2007, Jon was the media frontperson for the Australian release of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth DVD. He also organised for the DVD to be distributed free of charge to Australia’s schools and for ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ leaflet to be distributed to 5 million Australian homes. In the same year, he also presented the Tipping Point TV series on The Weather Channel. This was aired on the hour 24 hours a day for a whole year.
Jon was Australian of the Year for 2010 in NSW and in 2009 was the recipient of Armenia’s highest award, The Order of Honor, for his long-term work in Armenia. He lives in the Blue Mountains with his wife Leanne and their two daughters.
Further information or bookings
To contact Jon about speeches, MC and consultancy work, please call Wendy Sawkins on +61 410 556 116 or email her via JonDee.com/contact-jon/
For more information please visit:
DoSomethingNearYou.com.au
Twitter.com/JonDeeOz