Merry Christmas from the Nexus APAC Team

As 2025 comes to a close, the Nexus APAC team wishes you and your family a merry Christmas and a wonderful holiday season!

We look forward to bringing you more insights, analysis and strategy in 2026.

In this edition of the Nexus Christmas EDM, we’ve asked our team some questions about their Christmas traditions, recommendations and their aspirations for 2026.

Nick Campbell – CEO and Chair

Cherished Christmas Family Tradition: A peaceful and reflective time, especially this year, looking forward to hosting a traditional lunch with extended family at our home. And also watching mushie Christmas Specials on Netflix with my family (tragic but lots of Christmas Cheer and spirit).

Recommendation (Book, Podcast, Recipe or Board Game): ‘Earthquake: The Election that Shook Australia’ (by Niki Savva) and ‘Trustmakers’ (Edelman Podcast) – both worth some Christmas vacation time.

Aspirations for 2026: Looking forward to 2026, many interesting projects and some overseas travel with family to Sri Lanka, plus Greece and the USA.

Cathy Duncan – Director of Operations

Cherished Christmas Family Tradition: Having finally set up everything for Christmas Day, sitting down and watching the Melbourne Carols on TV with a Bailey’s. It’s the only day of the year I have one, I have no idea why, but it has become a tradition.

Recommendation (Book, Podcast, Recipe or Board Game): It’s not a new book but my book of the year for 2025 was ‘The Nightingale’ by Kristen Hannah – highly recommend.

Aspirations for 2026: Addison reminded me recently that a resolution of mine a few years back was to finally set up my LinkedIn account profile and find a few followers. For this year I’ll reinstate getting onto LinkedIn as an aspiration – no promises!

Addison Ridge – Director – Federal Government and Policy

Cherished Christmas Family Tradition: Throughout the week, our family immerses ourselves in completing a 2000+ piece puzzle in-between presents, cooking, eating, sipping wine, and catching up with each other.

Recommendation (Book, Podcast, Recipe or Board Game): ‘Abundance and Chokepoints’ (thank you, Shane, for the recommendation).

Aspirations for 2026: To spend more time with family and friends, especially with our young nieces and nephews who are growing up way too fast.

Justin Fazzolari – Director

Cherished Christmas Family Tradition: Breakfast at mum’s place with coffee and cannoli.

Recommendation (Book, Podcast, Recipe or Board Game): ‘The Rest is Politics’ podcast with Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell.

Aspirations for 2026: Continue improving my Italian language skills.

Shane Martin – Director

Cherished Christmas Family Tradition: Two that I can think of.

I always run on Christmas Day. The feeling in the morning of getting out and about while there are no cars on the road is incredible.
We normally just do a big family presents event where we have the presents in the middle and its someone’s job to pass the presents to the person and have them open it with everyone watching.

Recommendation (Book, Podcast, Recipe or Board Game): Play the social game ‘Secret Hitler’ with your family. Very fun.

Aspirations for 2026: I’d like to dedicate more time to read more books. Particularly relevant Australian policy books. I try and do audio books but I find I can miss many of the finer details. As a runner I would really like to run a marathon in under 3 hours. My best time this year was 3 hr 7 min so I have a bit to go.

Jessica Brownette – Consultant

Cherished Christmas Family Tradition: There’s never a shortage of ham at Christmas—Dad wins them like it’s a sport. He’s already won two this past week, so our tradition after a swim at Clareville Beach is making the perfect ham sandwiches.

Recommendation (Book, Podcast, Recipe or Board Game): My book of 2025 is ‘The Shape of Dust’ by Lamisse Hamouda. It’s a raw and deeply human account of her fight to free her father after his wrongful arrest in Egypt, revealing the harsh realities of the prison system, the obstacles of international diplomacy, and the unbreakable strength of family across borders.

Aspirations for 2026: After buying our first home this year, 2026 will be all about renovations. I’m also hoping to learn some Spanish before my trip to Mexico in March!

Jesse Park – Analyst

Cherished Christmas Family Tradition: Taking up space in the kitchen and chatting while everyone else cooks an amazing Christmas dinner.

Recommendation (Book, Podcast, Recipe or Board Game): ‘Articulate’ is probably the most fun I’ve had playing a board game in 2025.

Aspirations for 2026: Continue my Korean language studies and get around to coordinating an overseas trip with friends (it’s like herding cats).

Peter Willis – Analyst

Cherished Christmas Family Tradition: My family’s only Christmas tradition apart from seafood and wine is that on Christmas Eve, my father reads ‘Twas the Night before Christmas’ to the whole family before we go to bed. We started doing it 15 years ago as kids and haven’t stopped since.

Recommendation (Book, Podcast, Recipe or Board Game): My go-to family board game and recommendation for everyone is ‘Catan’.

Aspirations for 2026: My goals for next year are to develop a better out-of-work schedule and to stop delaying errands and tasks that need to be done.

Darcy Oates – Researcher

Cherished Christmas Family Tradition: Having a traditional FNQ seafood feast for lunch, and a pavlova with lots of strawberries and cream.

Recommendation (Book, Podcast, Recipe or Board Game): Highly recommend ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’ by Yuval Noah Harari. It gives a great overview on how we’ve developed to become the dominant species on Earth, and the early evolutionary development of Homo Sapiens was fascinating.

Aspirations for 2026: Really hope to get more into my sport- I’ve been tempted to train for the 2026 Canberra Half-marathon and take up martial arts again.

Alex Campbell – Marketing Coordinator

Cherished Christmas Family Tradition: A cherished family tradition of mine is watching Carols in the Domain either with the family on TV or going in person and watching with friends!

Recommendation (Book, Podcast, Recipe or Board Game): My recommendation for people over the Christmas holidays if you are trying to have some quiet and chill time is to play Solitaire. Trust me it’s a lot more fun than it sounds.

Aspirations for 2026: For Nexus, to continue building and growing our LinkedIn page (if you’re not already following here is the link!), and personally, to travel more in 2026 and make my fitness even more of a priority.