President elect

The Kyoto Convention Center became a venue for much excitement when Marlene Kanga of Australia was elected the second lady president of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO). The apex body for national institutions of engineers around the world functions under the auspices of UNESCO, reports her husband Rustom who was present as an observer.
Winning a landslide win against her competitor, Marlene got "overwhelming support” from a majority of the nearly 100 countries with only the US, Brazil and the Arab countries (other than Bahrain who broke ranks with them) voting against her.
In his detailed report Rustom wrote, "The 15 or so countries from Africa virtually broke into a visually exuberant celebration as the results were announced and I thought they might do a victory dance. India immediately claimed that this was actually a win for them. And while I knew that the Asian and Pacific countries supported her, I was delighted to see how all of Europe and Africa, and most of the Americas came in behind her as a bloc.

"Kuwait and other Arab countries had lobbied hard against her, claiming that one could not expect men to work for a woman. I was surprised that the US implicitly accepted their argument… fortunately I think this worked against them as several countries in particular Canada, Singapore, Puerto Rico, China and Japan made the strong case that gender should not be part of the equation and that the best person should win.”
Marlene will formally take over as president in the Organization’s 50th year for a two-year term commencing December 2017, according to their website that gives the president elect credit for having "served WFEO for many years. She has been a member of the executive council and special advisor to the WFEO president for the Asia Pacific Region, chair of a sub-committee for capacity building for natural disaster risk management and deputy chair of the Committee for Disaster Risk Management. She is also chair of the World Engineers Convention (WEC 2019) to be held in Melbourne.”
Included among the top 100 engineers in Australia in 2013, 2014 and 2015, Marlene is a chemical engineer and a past president of Engineers Australia. She is a board member of Sydney Water Corporation and Director of iOmniscient Pty Ltd which has developed patented software technology for intelligent video analytics systems (see "Eminent engineer,” Parsiana, August 7, 2014).