Our Team
CEO & International Director of Marketing
Charles Kovess
After 20 years of high-level legal and business experience, Charles Kovess turned his back on the law in 1993 to share success strategies as a professional speaker, educator, facilitator and coach.
Charles is known as Australasia’s Passion Provocateur. He graduated from Melbourne University with an Honours Degree in
Law in 1974, followed by earning his Master of Laws Degree from Monash University in 1980.
He is deeply passionate about the power and value of passion, and helps organisations and individuals to achieve outstanding results
by harnessing their own passion and genius!
He became the CEO of the TCI in October 2015 following the untimely death of Adrian Clarke. Prior to that, Charles was the
International Marketing Director of TCI in a consulting role from October 2012. He now has almost 10 years’ extensive experience
in the field of industrial hemp and most matters related thereto.
He is the Founder of Kovess International (founded in 1993), President of the Australia-Hungary Chamber of Commerce & Industry (since 1991), Trustee of the Global Energy Network Institute (“GENI”), National Secretary of the Australian Industrial Hemp Alliance (the peak national body), Secretary and member of the executive board of Federation of International Hemp Organisations, Past National President of the National Speakers’ Association of Australia, Past President of the Lorne Surf Life Saving Club, and a Certified Speaking Professional.
Charles has authored two inspirational books, ‘Passionate People Produce’, and ‘Passionate Performance’, and is the co-author of ‘The 7 Heavenly Virtues of Leadership’.
Charles is also passionate about entrepreneurship, innovation and sport! He is currently competing in his 37th consecutive year in triathlons; he qualified as an international water polo referee, played A Grade Amateur Football with University Blacks, and has completed nine marathons. He is the father of five children, aged from 41 years down to 12 years.
- [email protected]
- +61 412 317 404
- http://www.kovess.com/
- https://charleskovess.com/
Former Executive Chairman
Consultant
Anthony L. Clarke JP KSJ EW Dip C.T.
Anthony Lowen Clarke is the Founder and CEO of Anthony L Clarke Migration Services, and for the past 30 years he has been successfully providing outstanding advice about migration to Australia and New Zealand. He is qualified as an Australian Migration Agent.
He was a director of TCI since its founding, and has worked with, and supported TCI’s founder, the late Adrian Clarke, his older brother. Anthony resigned as a director but remains a significant shareholder in TCI. His extensive knowledge of hemp and the D8 Decorticator is available to TCI and its connections.
Anthony has a wide range of business experience gained over the past 45 years with his brother Adrian. He built one of the first dome houses in Victoria, and it attracted tourists for a number of years. Dome houses are inspired by the work of Dr R. Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the geodesic dome, and a man who was awarded 47 honorary doctorates in his extraordinary life.
See Tony’s videos at and Subscribe at each site:
- His Travel and Music videos now at TravelAndMusicVideos at
Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/fdwlBfXBccK6/ - The YouTube site is:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/ UCPHHHiM4u0aoO6ZnybQoRgg
The site has hundreds of hours of video I took of Melbourne bands and of train videos.
Consultant
Daniel Weinstock
Daniel Weinstock began his career with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia in 1971 as an Urban Geographer, publishing research in the field of property price movements.
Moving Into the commercial world with Computer Sciences of Australia, he was involved in the operational design and development of large-scale commercial and scientific mainframe computer applications for clients in the mining and finance sectors.
Daniel co-founded Abacus Data Services, then founded and managed National Computer Services for fifteen years. These firms marketed computer and peripheral equipment and developed and customised commercial software applications.
Daniel then expanded his technology business into international commodity trading via the Video Technology group of companies, of which he was Chairman and CEO.
Applying his breadth of industry knowledge, Daniel moved into the areas of medical device development, government grant funding and capital raising, building the Melbourne-based practice of Connectiv Group, and now concentrating on growing enterprise value applying his accreditation under the Aragon Capital Australian Financial Services License where applicable. Daniel is committed to involvement with the emerging agricultural crops of sesame seed as Chairman of the Australian Sesame Industry Development Association Ltd ASIDA; vanilla, and direct involvement with industrial hemp industry with this company.
In the medical cannabis context, Daniel Weinstock has acted as consultant to the group of WEED Inc companies internationally.
Carbon Credit transaction creation and trading is becoming a current focus under extension of the AFSL accreditation and its creation of carbon credits as Australian government ACCU’s and voluntary programs internationally.
Under Daniel’s accreditation, application of industrial hemp cropping with hemp’s ability to be ‘locked away’ into building materials and construction projects will become an additional focus of TCI.
- [email protected]
- +61 419 319 718
International Technical Director
Frank Urban
Frank Urban was born in 1944. He studied Mechanical Engineering at Footscray Institute, which is now called Victoria University.
After graduating as a Mechanical Engineer, Frank worked in the mining industry designing crusher plants, large head frames for drilling and complex conveyor systems. He also spent several years contracting for various large companies including the Ford motor company where he spent a year redesigned all of their safety guards around huge hydraulic presses.
In 1975 Frank qualified as a Naturopath, Osteopath and Chiropractor, a profession he still practices today.
In 2000 Frank met Adrian Clarke and after numerous discussions, decided to join Adrian Clarke in commercialising TCI’s new technology and establishing hemp as the fibre of choice.
(Photo L to R: Charles Kovess & Frank Urban)
To contact Frank: [email protected]
Founder and former Chairman and Managing Director
Adrian Francis K. Clarke (deceased)
Adrian Clarke was born in Melbourne in 1947 and was the third of a large family of 10 sons. He was married to Lindy and they have two sons, one daughter and two granddaughters. Adrian was educated at Xavier Jesuit primary and secondary schools and studied at Melbourne University in science, biochemistry and graduated English Literature and Language with honours.
After graduating, in 1976 Adrian moved to London where he was employed as a consultant marketer in the new field of computers where he specialised in mainframe computer software packaging and sales. In 1980 he was in California consulting to software marketing companies to teach them how to tele-market their computing systems. On his return to Australia, Adrian broadened his interests by becoming involved with Biodynamic farming and Rudolph Steiner education philosophies and practice. It was during his involvement in this work that he came across Industrial Hemp and its chequered history.
Adrian studied the processing methods used to extract products from hemp throughout History. He made some discoveries in the mid 1990’s and devised a new system for extracting the fibre from the hemp stem.
He found that his method was the only suitable method for use in Australia, as it required no retting of the stem. The decortication could be done during harvesting. It was discovered that the total method would produce hemp fibre that could be spun on cotton systems and that this new fibre could be produced at similar costs to the costs of producing cotton. Another extra benefit was that it opened all the world’s farmland from the tip of New Zealand in the south to Finland in the north, to the possibility of producing a textile fibre, which could be spun in the latest hi-tech cotton spinning systems. Hemp is produced without the farm chemicals required to produce cotton.
In 2006 trials of a new machine were conducted in New South Wales, which attracted the attention of Chinese entrepreneurs. In 2007 Adrian was taken to China where he built 2 new machines. They were demonstrated successfully on both green ‘fresh’ hemp and on dried unretted hemp. The fibre was then used in textiles and also in composite materials. The pure unretted hurd was also used in composite products as a filler within the matrix of the fibre.
In 2008 and 2009 the challenge was to make a travelling platform capable of deploying the D8 decorticator efficiently. This has now been achieved.
Adrian’s history demonstrates his passion to fill the burgeoning demand gap between the demand for cotton and the supply of cotton with a new source of grown cellulose fibre. Hemp can now also be used to replace fibreglass with a renewable, natural, ecologically sound, recyclable, strong light weight fibre. Adrian was driven by his belief that the future for the agricultural sector will be a bright one through his innovations and insights that are now being taken forward into global markets by TCI and its associates.
Adrian died on 15 October 2015, after sharing his knowledge, connections and insights with both Anthony Clarke, his brother, and Charles Kovess, TCI’s Managing Director. Adrian’s knowledge is being used every day by the TCI team.
Vale Adrian Clarke, a true innovative thinker!