Global Speakers

Antoine spent the last 13 years with the St George and Westpac Contact Centres where he led them to 4 Gold Medals at the World Customer Contact Centre Awards.  He previously held similar Contact Centre Executive roles at AMP and Optus.

Prior to the Contact Centre journey, Antoine spent 14 years with an International Management Consulting firm and was involved with over 115 projects right around in North America, Australia and the Asia Pacific region.

Currently the Director of Workforce Planning at the National Bank of Canada, Antoine also extends his time and expertise to various start-ups such as ‘Life in Flight’, the ‘Word Learning Group’ and the Contact Centre Strategy Forum (CCSF).

Antoine has an Industrial Psychology Bachelor’s degree from the University of Montreal and a Masters in Education from the California State University, Sacramento.

Peter Buckmaster is a digital specialist in strategy and service design, delivering sustainable customer experiences across retail, telecommunications, finance industries and education.

He is currently the Director Digital, managing the Digital Services team, Department of Education (DoE) within the Communications and Engagement Directorate. The role includes delivering the “re-platforming and redevelop” of DoE websites onto a newly supported website publishing platform. This has also included delivery of a strategy, call the Global Experience Framework (Language), to achieve the velocity and speed needed to meet the short timeframes of website redevelopment. The DoE digital platform (website, intranet and portal) supports 2.75 million visits per month.

Most recently, Peter has held roles as User Experience Manager at Woolworths Limited and Production Director at The White Agency. Peter has also worked on digital initiatives for enterprise brands such as Commonwealth Bank, Bluescope Steel, Lion, Lexus and Toyota.

A proven leader and innovator with extensive digital platform, marketing, ecommerce and sales expertise covering all areas of digital marketing, technology and process design, and platform integration both B2B and B2C, Jethro is a digital leader who has delivered success for some of the world’s leading brands across a wide variety of sectors including financial services, software as a service (SaaS), IT, and manufacturing and technology across channel execution, platform integration and successful strategic execution both in the APAC region, in the UK, and for global strategic execution.

Jethro has delivered strategic digital marketing including go to market and business strategy and business transformation, and is skilled at building credibility and relationships across business lines to achieve objectives.  He enjoys developing and leading high performing, motivated cross functional teams.  A mentor and an advocate of driving direct online sales activation and engagement, he is passionate about the integration of people, process, and technology required to truly achieve great digital experience, and deliver transformation for organizations and customers.

Jon Cumming was appointed in August 2015 as the ACT’s inaugural Chief Digital Officer.  Jon’s mission is to drive the digital agenda and lead the whole of government digital strategic direction to ensure that the ACT Public Service is digitally innovative, dynamic and capable in its service to the community.

Prior to his return to Canberra, Jon held the position of Chief Information Officer for the New Zealand Department of Corrections and transformed the Department’s approach to IT with the creation and implementation of a new digital Technology Strategy.

Jon has a rich background in Information Technology with experience gained in Sydney, Canberra, the UK and New Zealand.  His roles have included consulting, IT investment management, transformation program leadership and Solution Centre Management – in industries ranging from telecommunications through to the Health Sector.

A Senior Digital strategist with over 15 years in Fortune 500 companies including Manufacturing, FMCG, Technology and Software, Joe is tasked with researching the latest digital technologies for 3M. He has developed expertise in identifying new trends in a wide range of digital media from gaming to social media and the rise of mobile. Joe is now exploring the Augmented & Virtual reality technology potential and how it will merge the digital and physical worlds to transform customer experience.

Joanne has recently moved into the Customer Experience realm after 15 years in Marketing where she has held roles across a variety of industries including professional services, financial services, travel and IT. In addition to CX responsibilities at Hudson, she also manages the Project Management Office which oversees large projects that enhance the quality of all interactions, human and digital, along the customer journey.

Gavin Merriman is currently the Head of Digital – Global at Nude by Nature. He oversees the expanding role of digital to encourage customer advocacy & organic brand growth whilst rolling out global eCommerce in new international markets.

He has previously worked as Director/Head of eCommerce/Digital roles at Shop Direct Group (the UK’s 2nd largest online retailer), BWS (Woolworths), Metcash, Universal Music, and Guardian Media Group.

Gerard Smith is Senior Manager – eBusiness and Contact Centre at Teachers Mutual Bank and is responsible for the organization’s banking and communication channels:  website, internet, mobile and telephone banking; contact center, and the company intranet. He provides strategic thought leadership on sourcing and implementing technology and strategies to develop new, or optimize existing business processes and procedures that deliver cost savings, improve member satisfaction, and increase productive capacity and quality.

Gerard has recently overseen the upgrade of Teachers Mutual Bank’s website, managed the brand transition of the Unibank, and led the bank’s Contact Center team to state and national success at the 2014 Auscontact Awards.

Danielle Cerin has over 15 years of experience leading digital strategy, digital campaigns, web development, and social media for a range of organizations.

She is currently the Multi-Channel Manager for Janssen Pharmaceuticals, leading the development of enterprise-level digital capabilities and initiatives to improve the quality and number of channels through which customers can interact with Janssen services and content; embedding digital awareness and skill internally; and providing digital support for Janssen’s therapy brands and broader healthcare solutions.

With over 15 years’ digital industry experience that spans digital strategy development, software and system development, business process improvement and digital marketing, David is uniquely qualified to turn any business into a digitally enabled leader. He has advised and consulted hundreds of Australian businesses as well as their executive teams and lead policy-makers, third-party vendors, and business professionals through new digital initiatives along with the required change management process.

Robert is a digital transformation consultant, assisted major organizations, primarily within the banking and telecommunication sectors, to maximize the value that they deliver through their digital channels and platforms. He is a veteran in the digital space with a significant amount of experience across a wide range of customer touch-points, platforms and technologies. He assisted  large organizations like UBank/Nab, Vodafone, Optus and Hema to break down silos, ensure that all interactions, including offline interactions, are captured and relevant data is included in customer decisioning. He then ensures that personalized, cross-channel digital experiences can be created in real-time based on this insight.

Through sixty customer and digital transformation programs across seventeen industries, in private and public sectors, Graeme has helped senior executive teams move from “product centricity” to “customer centricity”, create great customer experience and deliver measurable financial returns. His engaging presentation skills, powerful case histories and pragmatic approach has inspired senior executives to plan and implement business outcome focused, self-funding initiatives; the only true hallmark of successful digital and customer transformations.

Sergey is a digital transformation leader and architect with over 15 years of experience in Asia-Pacific and the U.S. He led disruptive digital transformation initiatives for companies in financial, insurance and telecommunications industries. Sergey is currently helping AMP to shape a number of growth initiatives in wealth management space. Prior to AMP Sergey led architecture streams of retail digital channels transformation programs at Commonwealth Bank. Sergey is a passionate advocate and practitioner of Design Thinking and Lean Enterprise.

Dori Miller is the Business Design Manager in Telstra’s Design Practice, a team of talented individuals who are passionate about elevating the quality of design and customer experience. She has 21 years experience in design and design research. In her current position she is exploring how design thinking can make a difference in large organisations by re-imagining the way we innovate and solve complex problems. She is leading the Design Thinking movement and is rolling out an education program to turn everyone at Telstra into a Design Thinker.

Before coming to Australia, Dori worked in the US in both consulting and in-house design roles. As Interaction Design consultant at IBM, she designed a chat solution for GE and conducted research for the Florida House of Representatives. She worked extensively with Microsoft for different projects ranging from call center support applications, technical support and community portals, and sales management applications. She has a Masters in Design and has taught design courses at university.