The District Commissioner
Addendum 58: Sir Charles Lepani KBE CBE OBE
Additional information for Chapter 32 – A time of social and political change, 1945-1975
Sir Charles Lepani was born in the Trobriand Islands, Milne Bay Province. His father, Lepani Kaiuwekalu Watson, had worked for the Australian colonial administration and was appointed premier of Milne Bay Province in 1983. His grandfather was a Chief.
The Princeton University Innovations for successful societies website article of a March, 2010 interview by Matthew Devlin at successfulsocieties.princeton.edu/interviews/charles-lepani states that :
“Charles Lepani was Papua New Guinea's High Commissioner to Australia” (2005 to 2017). Previously, he worked as an economic and public policy consultant. He was a member of the Aid Review team for the governments of Papua New Guinea and Australia. As director of the PNG National Planning Office from 1975 to 1980, he was involved in the formulation of PNG’s post-independence macroeconomic policy and public sector planning system, including aid coordination.
The photo below of Sir Charles Lepani was sourced online from https://successfulsocieties.princeton.edu/interviews/charles-lepani
Lepani has also worked as an advisor and consultant to the PNG government, the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Centre for Transnational Corporations, and the Asian Development Bank, on a range of financial and policy issues.
He was Director-General of APEC Papua New Guinea 2018, in which he oversaw the meeting of APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) which was held in Port Moresby in November 2018.
On 27 July 2020 Lepani joined the board of Geopacific Resources Ltd, a company involved in gold mining on Woodlark Island in Milne Bay Province.
Lepani was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 2017. Earlier, he had been made an Officer of the same Order (OBE) and a Commander (CBE).
His grandson, Thierry, is a journalist with the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier.
After his divorce from Barbara Lepani, Lepani married Katherine, a U.S. national. Among their children are the
former footballers Nathaniel Lepani and Andrew Lepani.
Lepani died from intestinal cancer in Port Moresby on 10 January 2025, at the age of 77.
The photo below of Sir Charles Lepani was sourced from the 22 October, 2018 Business Advantage PNG article by Kevin McQuillan “Five Questions to Sir Charles Lepani, Director General of 2018” article at www.businessadvantagepng.com/five-questions-to-sir-charles-lepani-director-general-of-apec-2018/
