The newly-minted Franchise Council of Australia board has elected Marcel Lal, of ERA, as chair, and Concept Eight’s Callum Mackay as deputy chair.

Lal is the global group chief development officer at ERA, and has been in the industry for 18 years. Most recently he was global chief operating officer at InXpress and prior to that spent five years as CEO for Asia Pacific and a year heading up Australia/New Zealand as GM.

He has featured twice in the Top 30 Franchise Executives report, in 2019 and 2023.

Callum Mackay is GM innovation and virtual brands at Concept Eight; before this he was with Sushi Sushi, spent six years at Retail Zoo and four years at 7-Eleven.

Both Mackay and Lal have served two years on the FCA board, and have a one-year term ahead.

Lal told Inside Retail‘s sister title Franchise Executives the board’s priority is building on the hard work of the past two years.

“We’ve just come through a phase of stability, and making sure there was strong governance, for the council and wider franchising community. Now we will be using the foundations in place to build awareness and education in the sector,” he said.

Lal said he was particularly pleased to see three women elected to the new board, which also includes two franchisee positions.

Mackay said developing on FCA franchisee representation is important.

“Getting them to events is the next stage, starting with state events, and that will flow on to NFC. It’s a membership driver for us,” he said.

“We’ve spent the last two years rebuilding trust among the membership base, and getting constitutional change was a line in the sand moment.”

• This story was originally published on Franchise Executives.