James Paterson

• Tourism & Hospitality
• Government Services
• General Commercial
• Sports Administration
• Major Events
• General Business Services – Marketing & Communications

When it comes to tourism, maximising visitation and creating actionable product and concept development there is no one more experienced in Australia than James Paterson. James is particularly focused on providing evidence based strategy to ensure fully informed management decision making.​

James has more than 25 years experience across tourism, sport and major events. He has just finished as Principal of leading global management consulting firm, MI Associates, where he headed up the tourism, major event and research division of the firm.​
Based in Sydney, James has an extensive understanding of the unique NSW tourism landscape having worked both inside as well as consulting to governments at both the State and local level. James is a trusted advisor and consulted to almost all of the Government run tourism and events organisations across Australia and New Zealand over the past nine years. ​

He has undertaken numerous tourism and event strategies for clients as well as comprehensive feasibility studies, economic modelling, cost benefit analyses, consumer research and testing, key stakeholder consultation and business cases for tourism products, experiences and infrastructure projects. ​

​In his time at Destination NSW, James was instrumental in establishing the first NSW Master Events Calendar, creating legacy events like Vivid Sydney and securing a multitude of major events across NSW. James was also responsible for creating and delivering best practice due diligence, assessment and post event research and evaluation, the strategy planning function as well as legal affairs including all contractual negotiations on behalf of the organisation.​

Principal, MI Associates ​
Director, Government Tourism & Events – Nielsen​
Head of Strategy, Insights & Legal – Events NSW now Destination NSW​
Numerous other roles across: Sponsorship, Consumer and Market, Research, Evaluation, Valuation, Policy, International Relations, Commercial and Licensing for:​

-Sponsorship Information Services ​
-NSW Rugby Union​
-Major League Baseball​
-Sport Australia​

Bachelor of Commerce (Majoring in Finance & Economics) – ANU​
Bachelor of Laws (Hons) – ANU​
Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice – ANU​
Master of Science (Sport Management) – University of Massachusetts​
Awarded a full tuition scholarship – University of Massachusetts​
Awarded the Sir John Crawford Scholarship – Australian / American Association ​