Dr van Leeuwen is a Wardandi man of the Noongar Nation with strong links to Country in the Busselton and Margaret River areas of south west Western Australia. Dr van Leeuwen is committed to engage collegially in relationships with Traditional Owners and other land managers to deliver innovate and enduring outcomes for biodiversity management on Country that also deliver significant and enduring benefits to community.

Dr van Leeuwen in a botanical ecologist by trade and has worked across a diverse range of research disciplines in his 40 year career. These disciplines include, rare flora surveys across Western Australia, fire ecology of rare plants and mulga communities, ethnobotanical surveys in the Pilbara, plant genomic and provenance studies, and biological surveys across Western Australia. Dr van Leeuwen also has a strong pedigree in providing advice to regulatory agencies on environmental impact assessments, has been involved in the design of the National Reserve System in the Western Australian Rangelands, and for the past 15 years has held senior managerial positions overseeing the delivery of offset programs associated with Matters of National Environmental Significance and the delivery of rigours applied science to inform biodiversity management and nature conservation across terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems in Western Australia.