Global Speakers

Peter has spent his career working at the intersection between business and technology. He has worked in Asia, Australia, Europe and the US, lived in Silicon Valley through boom and bust, and held leadership roles in global organizations as well as start-ups and research and development labs. These days he works as a consultant and advisor on the business and technology sides of the fence.

Dr Bronwyn Evans is CEO of Standards Australia and has previously held positions as Deputy Chair of The Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering and member of the Centre’s Finance and Risk Committee, Chair of the Medical Technology Association of Australia Board and Chair of the National Board of the Centre for Engineering Leadership and Management. In 2014 she was awarded the Engineers Australia President’s Award. In 2014 and 2015 was recognized as one of Australia’s 100 most influential engineers in 2014, and in 2015 was acknowledged as one of Australia’s Knowledge Nation 100. Currently, Dr. Evans is leading Standards Australia in developing the first international Blockchain standards.

Peter Robinson is a former Senior Engineering Manager at RSA where he focuses on innovation. He has managed teams which have delivered many complex security products and components; the most recent of which provides the underlying security behind RSA’s Via Access. Peter has been working in the software industry for more than 25 years and he holds 14 granted patents and has 8 active patent applications in areas of cryptography, distributed computing security, Android security, and graphical password design. Currently, his research interests are Blockchain and Smart Contract security.

Dr. Rhys Bollen has been practising in the area of consumer protection, corporate and financial services law for 17 years, both in private practice and with the government. He has written widely in the field, focusing in recent years in consumer protection regulation (particularly in the financial services industry). He is currently Executive Director, Regulatory Policy – Better Regulation with NSW Department Finance and Services. Previously he was Assistant Commissioner Policy & Strategy, NSW Fair Trading and prior to this, Senior Manager, Consumer Policy with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. Rhys teaches Company Law and Banking Law at Sydney and Monash Law Schools. He has a PhD in financial services regulation, and masters degrees in law and business.

Dee has worked with major banks, insurance companies and regulators throughout Asia Pacific over the course of her career in financial services. She has led business strategy and operating model transformation and merger integration, as well as guided the development and management of very significant global client relationships.

Dee joined IBM from Visa where she was the Vice President & Head of Client Relationship Management.  Dee has a deep financial services background with expertise in operational re-engineering, business process and technology transformation, strategy and business management.

Prior to Visa, Dee was the Vice President of the Financial Services Industry at HP Enterprise Services.  Her responsibilities included management of all financial services clients in business operations, technology, transformation and system integration with subject matter expertise in financial services, mortgage processing and unsecured lending, cards and payment system transformation and Integration. .

Dee held senior management positions at National Australia Bank including leading the consumer & commercial cards business.

Dee is a member of the advisory board for Women in Payments.

Alec is a partner in the Digital Law (including Data Privacy) team at EY with over 26 years’ experience. He has a diverse cross-border Asia Pacific practice with an emphasis on solutions in the areas of data privacy/cyber security, information (including Big Data analytics and IoT), e-health, e-commerce (including online marketing), Blockchain, smart contracts and distributed ledgers, Cloud computing, sourcing, open source software and commercial IT and IP.

Alec is described by Chambers Global – The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business Guide as ‘superb…. a genuine regional expert’; by Asia Pacific Legal 500 as ‘probably one of the best lawyers in his field’ and ‘a Cloud computing and data privacy expert’ and ’is brilliant on software licensing … has a wide knowledge of IT/IP issues both in Australia and globally’; and by Leading Lawyers as ‘a sought after IT lawyer in Australia, he’s a highly pragmatic professional who assisted us in getting a very commercial result’. The Australasian Legal Business Guide to Technology, Media & Telecommunications notes Alec as ‘the primary partner mentioned for IT work, and… highly regarded’.

Since 2013 Alec has been selected as one of the Leading Information Technology lawyers in Australia (and the world) by Who’s Who Legal and described as a ‘distinguished practitioner… lauded by clients for his excellent advisory work in… privacy’. Alec was also recently recognized by BestLawyers Australia as one of the best outsourcing lawyers in Australia.

Alec has been appointed to the editorial board of and is one of only three Australian experts for and to Data Guidance’s online ‘Global platform for data protection and privacy compliance’ and the only Australian on the editorial board of the global journal e Health Law & Policy published by Cecile Park Publishing. Alec has also been appointed by Bloomberg BNA as its country expert/editor for Australia for its new online global data privacy and security offering.

Nick Giurietto is an experienced B2B Product and Marketing leader who has lived and worked in six different countries around the world.

As Head of Marketing at the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation he worked with Australian exporters seeking finance to fund growth and investment in overseas markets.  The complexities of existing trade finance and asset finance models were often a baffling obstacle for entrepreneurial exporters to overcome.

As Head of Product at Experian Credit Services, Nick worked to design a new format consumer credit report that makes it easier for Australians to access and understand their credit records. He also led the design and build of a cloud solution for major banking clients to manage their complex data reporting obligations for credit records.

Philip is a Director and the Banking and Capital Markets Practice Leader at Capgemini. Phil works with the senior executive of our banking clients to assist drive technology enabled strategic change. He is deeply familiar with today’s digital transformation agenda. Together with his core banking transformation skills, Phil has globally recognized expertise in payment and payment related systems, and has worked for leading IT professional services organisations including IBM and PwC, where he consulted across multiple Tier 1 Australian Banks and local and international FS organisations. He has held senior technology business engagement roles for both NAB and Australia Post. Today Phil focuses on the Fintech sector and new and emerging disruptive technologies.

Jonathan is a nominee for the 2016 Innovation NZ Awards, for work on strategic thinking for large scale power network diversification towards blockchain mining operations, time shift mining and side chain processing – a multi million dollar national savings initiative to put New Zealand on the global cryptocurrency map.

With 18 years ICT experience, he has focused on enterprise solutions, information design, technical analysis and knowledge management and has worked for major brands throughout wider Asia, Australia, the Middle East & Europe. A solid backstory for a fintech solutions specialist.

As an early Bitcoin miner and investor, he understands the complexities and technical aspects of disintermediation and the truly decentralized opportunity that abounds within the Bitcoin protocol. He has a deep knowledge of data systems, disintermediation rationale, smart contract technology and future enterprise applications using the blockchain.

George is Entrepreneur in Residence for Blockchain at Tyro Fintech Hub and Startupbootcamp. George is a blockchain advisor and consultant to global financial institutions and startups. He also writes a blog on blockchain technology and use cases at sammantics.com. George also co-founded BTC.sx, now magnr, a bitcoin trading . He is also a former Wall Street Senior Portfolio Manager and Market Strategist as well as a technical analyst. George holds the Chartered Market Technician (CMT) designation.

Tessa has had more than 30 years’ UK and Australian financial services sector experience. She is head of the Norton Rose Fulbright Australian Debt Capital Markets group and is a member of its global Blockchain and Distributed Ledger and Regulatory and Investigations teams.

She is listed a leading or recommended lawyer in Chambers Global, IFLR 1000, APL500 and 2016 Experts Guide (Women in Business Law). In 2014, Tessa was named Euromoney’s Australasian Woman Banking Lawyer of the Year. Tessa has written on legal, regulatory and governance issues in structured finance, trade and blockchain sectors. She is actively involved in the developing regulation of blockchain technology, being on ADCA’s Legal Committee and co-chairing its regulatory sub-committee.

Nick Addison is currently CTO of Finhaus Labs who are focused on delivering commercial solutions using Blockchain technology. Nick specialises in designing and building IT solutions for Financial Services with experience in securities markets, funds management, banking and payments. Nick is an active member in the Blockchain community running events, training and contributing to open source projects.

Hugo is the co-founder and Head of Innovation of Bit Trade Australia, the nation’s leading fixed-price bitcoin exchange. Hugo currently works as a developer at Bit Trade Labs, a blockchain product incubator, and enjoys solving problems and making things.

Danielle Henderson is a financial services professional with over 15 years experience in global markets post trade. In addition to senior leadership roles providing market infrastructure, Danielle has worked on client side in Prime Brokerage, Clearing, Settlement and Securities Services driving service delivery, strategy and innovation. She has worked in and covered Asian, European and Australian markets.

In her recent role as General Manager Clearing Services at ASX she was responsible for Customer Forum engagement and spearheading industry change to a T+2 Settlement cycle. She has a deep understanding of Australian Capital Markets and strong industry relationships.

With a background that also spans working with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas Danielle has expertise in regulated, market and volume driven businesses and understands the necessity to manage capital and risk. These businesses are also technology platform dependent requiring scalable and cost effective operating structures, which informs Danielle’s commercial perspective on the management of infrastructure businesses.

With this understanding of front to back securities processes she is currently exploring the impact of distributed ledger technology and blockchain in capital markets post trade.

Tom is also the Founding Director of the first Blockchain Academy established in Australia to run dedicated courses teaching software developers and non technical people about the Blockchain technologies.

It is The Academy’s vision to create a talent pool of local blockchain software developers who can work on exploratory blockchain projects with local, national and international clients from public sector markets, industry, academia and support the start up community.

As a freelance programmer, entrepreneur and online educator, Tom has been organizing and teaching at the Brisbane Ethereum Blockchain Meetups for almost 2 years, and helping people from all walks of life understand what blockchain actually means and how the technology can be applied to solve real world problems.

It is Tom’s mission to teach people new skills for the 21st century to work on solving 21st century problems through a new type of reliable Information Technology made possible with the latest Digital Governance Systems and at the same time awaken the human spirit we all have inside.

Gary is an Entrepreneur, Consultant, Speaker, and deep subject matter expert on the nexus between digital innovation, leading edge technologies, and core business value, and who is captivated by the power of ideas to change individuals, organizations, & communities.

With broad business & client consulting experience leading & managing diversified electronic payments and digital innovation projects for high-growth and developing markets he has deep subject matter expertise in mobile, payments, platforms, & technology, connecting enterprise transactional business & digital innovation.

His broad background and experience equips him to do what he truly enjoys, and that is working with like-minded teams & organizations to uncover and discover the top-flight ideas & strategies spanning digital, mobile, & innovative technology, in new, high-growth and developing markets.

Frustrated by a corporate career in finance, working with such names as GE Capital, HSBC, and Lloyds Bank, Tim took the entrepreneurial leap of faith and plunged deep into Web 1.0 in February 1995, setting up an internet cafe-bar & restaurant and a web design house, which he sold in 2001, prior to calling Australia his home.

Here, he followed his passion for screenwriting, culminating in him writing, directing and co-producing an internationally award-winning feature film, 54 Days in 2014. When Tim came across the Blockchain for the first time in August last year he had that light bulb moment when he realized there was the chance to finally do something about film piracy and theft,  and he set up Veredictum.io.

Tim is a regular speaker, writer and trainer on the strategic application of Blockchain.