Global Speakers

Andrew Johnson is ACS’ Chief Executive Officer with a focus on workforce planning and development solutions. He has 13+ years senior management experience consulting to individual businesses on the skill needs within their organisation, supporting the identification of any skills gaps or shortages with current staffing arrangements, and strategy development to address future skills requirements.

As a SFIA Accredited Consultant Andrew supports human capital planning in transformation projects, where the focus in on improving employee engagement through clarity of career pathways, and identification of skills development areas to achieve individual career aspirations within an organisation.

Victor was born and raised in the Ryde area. He went to school at Marist Brothers Eastwood before studying law. He was a partner in a commercial law firm, where he represented clients in a number of landmark cases.

Victor was elected as Member for Ryde at a by-election in October 2008. He was re-elected at the 2011 state election.

In April 2011 he was sworn in as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Minister for Citizenship and Communities. His portfolio responsibilities included multicultural affairs, veterans’ affairs, volunteering and youth.

Following the Liberals & Nationals Government’s re-election in March 2015, Victor was sworn in as the state’s first Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation.

His portfolio responsibilities included Fair Trading, where he led a range of consumer affairs matters including strata title, home building compensation, real estate industry reform, free-range egg labelling, brothel regulation, biofuels, residential overcrowding and the establishment of a consumer complaints register.

Victor was also responsible for implementing the NSW Government’s ICT Strategy and innovation agenda which included the establishment of a whole-of-government Data Analytics Centre and response to the collaborative economy.

In January 2017, Victor was appointed Minister for Finance, Services and Property. His portfolio responsibilities include Property NSW, Office of State Revenue and Service NSW. He has also retained responsibility for the whole-of-government Data Analytics Centre.

Prior to his parliamentary career, Victor cherished the opportunity to travel to many places around the world and looks back fondly on his experiences in India, Central and South America, Europe, the US and Asia. He is also a passionate supporter of West Tigers rugby league team.

Bruce Hockman is the Chief Economist, Statistical Services Group.

Bruce has an economics degree from Adelaide University and he also did post-graduate studies at Macquarie University. Prior to joining the ABS Bruce worked at the RBA, Deutsche Bank and as CEO of the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle.

He joined the ABS in 2005 as Director of Quarterly Economy Wide Surveys and Prices in Sydney, the team provides around 60% of the data used for the quarterly national accounts. Bruce was appointed as Assistant Statistician of National Accounts Branch, in Canberra, in 2010.

Bruce was promoted to First Assistant Statistician in February 2012 and was the Division Head of the Business, Industry and Environment Statistics Division. In July 2015 he transferred to Macroeconomic Statistics Division as the General Manager.

With a long career in Macroeconomics Bruce uses his knowledge to apply international statistical frameworks to produce a coherent and reliable picture of the Australian Economy and Environment.

Dr. Ian Oppermann is the NSW Government’s Chief Data Scientist and CEO of the NSW Data Analytics Centre. Ian has 25 years’ experience in the ICT sector and, has led organizations with more than 300 people, delivering products and outcomes that have impacted hundreds of millions of people globally. He has held senior management roles in Europe and Australia as Director for Radio Access Performance at Nokia, Global Head of Sales Partnering (network software) at Nokia Siemens Networks, and then Divisional Chief and Flagship Director at CSIRO.

Ian is considered a thought leader in the area of the Digital Economy and is a regular speaker on “Big Data”, broadband enabled services and the impact of technology on society. He has contributed to 6 books and co-authored more than 120 papers which have been cited more than 3500 times. Ian has an MBA from the University of London and a Doctor of Philosophy in Mobile Telecommunications from Sydney University. Ian is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers Australia, a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, is Vice President of the Australian Computer Society, and a graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Ian is also president of the Australia National Committee of the IEC and president of the JTC1 strategic advisory committee in Australia.

Andrew is an experienced IT leader, having spent 25 years transforming business operations through the adoption of technology solutions in the banking, pharmaceutical, manufacturing and logistics industries. Andrew has led significant transformational IT, digital, standardisation and innovation delivery initiatives aimed at maximising team capability and capacity outcomes to deliver tangible business results.

Andrew currently leads a team of Certified Specialists across Australia and New Zealand delivering customer centric solutions to DHL Supply Chain’s customers. Andrew also has accountability for leadership of Information Technology solutions delivery for Life Science and Healthcare customers for six countries across Asia.

Andrew was born and grew up in South Africa. He has significant multi – cultural work experience across Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific.

He was previously the Executive Regional Sponsor for the DHL GoTeach Partnership with the S.O.S Children’s Village organisation. This is a mentoring program to empower and improve the employability of World Youth.

Robyn Elliott has been at the forefront of digital disruption in the media industry as Chief Information Officer at Fairfax Media and Foxtel. Since joining Fairfax Media in March 2015, Robyn has led initiatives to improve the flexibility and efficiency of technology platforms and grow digital revenue across the Fairfax portfolio. She has deep experience in navigating the complexity of transition to sustainable business models from both startup and heritage perspectives.

Robyn’s prior roles include consulting leadership positions in IBM and Accenture. She is also a sponsor of the Tech Girl Movement encouraging girls toward technology careers.

In her role, Belinda executes her passion for creating success from and to any form, whether it’s a technology for the healthcare sector, or software for the resources and mining sector. It’s a matter of applying the right digital transformation strategy, design and innovation principles with the right set of execution items to deliver this success. Belinda is well-versed in account development and management, solution selling, establishing and managing channel partners, region and market management for all segments as well as product and business development.

As ARENA’s Chief Financial Officer, Ian leads ARENA’s business development and transactions teams. His focus is on optimizing the use of ARENA’s grant money to help proponents secure the sponsor equity, third party equity and project finance debt needed to bring projects to financial close.

Ian possesses 15 years’ experience leading investment in infrastructure, development and commercialization of renewable energy projects at Origin Energy and Macquarie Group. He is skilled in managing joint venture partnerships and has a track record of designing innovative transaction structures. Ian brings a depth of experience to ARENA and has originated, developed and led projects totalling more than $12 billion in enterprise value and $3.7 billion total required equity commitment. He has experience of a broad range of renewable energy projects. Ian is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants (England and Wales).

Jason is Facebook’s ANZ’s Head of Technology, Entertainment & Comms. He works on commercialization of Facebook’s apps & services and Tech & Telecoms Industry Strategy across APAC. He has hands on experience in digital and mobile gained over 20 years’ work in the industry with start-ups, large enterprise, and the public sector.

Jason’s work in the tech, media, and telco, industries have taken him to North America, Europe and APAC. He has worked closely with leading consumer technology, telcos, media, entertainment, music, and gaming companies. His core specialisation is digital growth and innovation, and he has a particular interest in analytics and machine intelligence.

A passionate entrepreneur and investor, Jason has been involved in the development of start-ups, M&A, and exits.

Andrew Groth, a senior executive with over 30 years’ experience in delivering value to clients in technology, outsourcing, consulting, business processes and next-generation services. In his current, he is responsible for leading strategy and growth for the $10 billion company’s third largest market globally. Andrew also leads the Financial Services business for Infosys across the Asia Pacific region, helping organisations renew existing approaches and address new challenges. Andrew represents Infosys in the Business Council of Australia and actively participates in the BCA’s innovation task force.

David Havyatt is Senior Economist in the CEO Secretariat of Energy Consumers Australia. In this role David will be providing support to ECA in economic analysis and assisting the CEO in maintaining focus on the policy objective of the Long Term Interest of Consumers.

David joins ECA after a long career in telecommunications including senior sales,strategy and regulatory roles working for Telstra, AAPT, Hutchison and Unwired. More recently he has operated his own consultancy in policy issues in the Digital Economy as well as freelance writing, primarily in the fields of telecommunications policy and innovation. This was interrupted by two and a half years as a senior adviser to the Minister (and Shadow Minister) for Communications.

In his telco roles David has delivered outcomes for consumers including chairing industry working committees to deliver number portability and consumer protection codes. He was a long time champion of consumer advocate interest in a single consumer code and played a number of roles as both a consultant and adviser in the delivery of the Telecommunications Consumer Protection Code that has resulted in a steady decline in escalated complaints in the industry.

He has been a contributor and speaker to the work of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, which is an organization with a similar remit to ECA. In his regulatory and adviser roles he has been engaged in the detail of the economic regulation of telecommunications and the setting of access prices for network services.

David holds a Bachelor of Science, a Master of Arts and a Graduate Diploma in Economics. He is a former Board member of the TIO, ACIF (now Communications Alliance) and AMTA, and is a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Martin Collings established the Mastercard Labs presence in Australia in 2012 and was in charge of this area for 5 years until recently when he moved to a global role focused on the commercialization of innovation within Mastercard. With a long history working at the intersection of innovative technology and new business applications, he talks candidly about not only the successes, but some of the hard lessons learned along the way and how to avoid some of the pitfalls when moving an organisation towards being a leader in innovation

Marcel has worked in bioinformatics and genomics since 1998 in both commercial and academic capacities. He was awarded his PhD in 2003 from the University of Waikato in New Zealand, has published more than 80 papers attracting more than 10,000 citations, and is recipient of several highly competitive awards and fellowships. He is also a founder of two other successful start-up companies. In 2016, Marcel was admitted as a Fellow into the Faculty of Sciences of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Genome.One was one of the first companies in the world to implement the HiSeq X Ten genome sequencing platform, which has capacity to sequence 18,000 human genomes per year, and provide a clinical whole genome sequencing.

Dr Jennifer Loy is Professor of Product Design at the University of Technology Sydney. Her focus is on digital technologies, from data generation, digital communication and interaction, to the application of data in product design and digital fabrication technologies, in particular 3D Printing (additive manufacturing). Her research is on human-centered, research-led design outcomes for commercial creative and clinical industrial applications and she has a particular interest in the development of effective design for 3D printing and associated digital technologies, and the impact of disruptive design on business models, product service systems, stakeholder relationships and production systems. She has a PhD in Industrial Design and her industrial background is in furniture design for mass production in the UK and Australia.

Stephanie Bashir has been in the energy industry nearly 15 years with extensive experience in various operational, policy and strategy roles resulting in a proven ability to develop and execute strategies that support business and financial objectives. Stephanie’s expertise is widely sought, participating on a number of industry and policy forums designed to reform the Australian energy future. For example, recognized and highly sought after across the industry for thought leadership and expert knowledge as input into key reforms and market design developments. This includes international and local initiatives looking at new energy technologies, policy and market structures.

Ian R. Manchester received the B.E. (Hons 1) and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of New South Wales, Australia, in 2002 and 2006, respectively. He has held research positions at Umea University, Sweden, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. In 2012 he joined the faculty at the University of Sydney, where he is currently Associate Professor of Mechatronic Engineering, and a member of the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR). His current research interests include optimization methods for nonlinear system analysis, identification, and control, and applications in robotics and biomedical engineering.

Rachel is an internationally regarded digital strategist with close to twenty years of global experience having worked with governments, Fortune 500 companies, and leading academic institutions. As founder of Flaxworks, Rachel helped her clients to develop solutions that leverage existing infrastructure and look to future innovations to ensure sustainable long-term success. She has expertise in design thinking, digital transformation and strategy and has delivered a range of world-first innovations for companies such as MTV Networks, T-Mobile and Accenture.

Over the past five years, Rachel has led a range of health and social services projects and is passionate about the opportunity to deliver measurable improvements through the use of innovative technology and processes. In addition to developing new health start-ups for clients including New York based VC Innovation firm prehype, she delivered the digital strategy for Healthdirect Australia. This included a redesign, delivering six new digital services, including mindhealthconnect my aged care, Pregnancy, Birth and Baby, and the National Health Services Directory.

Rachel De Sain is responsible for leading the Agency in the development of innovative digital health services for consumers and healthcare providers, demonstrating how the application of digital technology can support people to live healthier lives. Her team will work with public and private sector organisations on enabling increased innovation and facilitating strong collaboration and co-design of services across the sector.

Pauline graduated in Arts Law in 1985 from Macquarie University. She was admitted as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales in 1985 and has been in private practice since then. She is an accredited specialist in Local Government and Planning Law and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Pauline served on the Council of the Law Society almost continuously since 1997. She chairs the Environmental Planning & Development Law committee Deputy Chair of the Future Committee.

A recent appointment to the Executive of the Law Council of Australia, Pauline sits on the LCA’s Access to Justice, National Criminal Law Liaison and Equality of Opportunity in the Law committees. She is also a past Director of the Law and Justice Foundation and the Legal Aid Commission of NSW, chairs Legal Aid’s Monitoring Committee and has sat on a number of panel selection committees for Legal Aid as well as its Human Rights committee.

Pauline has also been President of the Central Coast Chapter of the Urban Development Institute of Australia (NSW Division) for the past several years and is the Senior Vice President of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, having been actively involved with the Council since 1988.

In the role of General Manager, Operations Kareen oversees the development of standards and other documents, ensuring their alignment within the existing and planned information technology infrastructure while maximising contributors’ time. She manages the standards development, publishing, information technology and project office teams. Since joining Standards Australia in 2009, Kareen held other leadership positions within the organisation in the national sector management and standards development teams and has represented Australia and lead delegations at both the ISO and IEC. Prior to joining Standards Australia Kareen held positions with peak industry organisations where she specialised in supporting, promoting and advocating public policy interests for the Shipping and Infrastructure industries. Kareen commenced her career as an intellectual property lawyer.

Dr Jed Horner is Policy Manager for Standards Australia. He has worked for state government on innovation policy and digital transformation, as well as in the NGO sector, spearheading law reform on social policy issues at state and federal levels. He is involved in supporting the work of the Australian mirror committee for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, as well as supporting the international secretariat for standards development in this area.

Kevin O’Hara has a long history as a startup founder having founded and exited two very successful Australian startups to private equity. In 2005 Kevin founded the OCTIEF Group, and in 2010 founded the International Software-as-a-Service company OCTFOLIO. Following the successful expansion of both of Kevin’s startups, they were jointly acquired by IHG and Tulla Private Equity Group in 2013. Kevin has since completed his MBA with a major in Digital Transformation at USQ, Strategy in the Age of Digital Disruption at INSEAD, and is currently studying in the Executive Education cohort at Harvard Business School.

Kevin now works in the Venture Capital and Private Equity investment sector as the Group CIO and Technology Investment Portfolio Manager for Tulla Private Equity Group. Kevin also serves on the Investment Committee of CapitalPitch Ventures, as Group General Manager of the Techwitty Digital Technology Advisory, and on the Advisory Boards of numerous global technology companies.

Yuichi Nakamura is the senior general manager at System Platform Research Labs., NEC Corp, where he specialises in embedded system design, signal processing, and VLSI design.

Yuichi Nakamura received his B.E. degree in information engineering and M.E. degree in electrical engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1986 and 1988 respectively. He received his PhD. from the Graduate School of Information, Production and Systems, Waseda University, in 2007. He is also a guest professor of National Institute of Informatics

As Senior Vice President of People & Culture for Cochlear, Katharine McLennan’s combined career spans corporate strategy, operations, talent/leadership development and self transformation. Her most recent corporate roles have included Head of the QBE Global Leadership Academy and Executive General Manager, Talent and Business Unit HR for Commonwealth Bank of Australia. In addition to these corporate roles, Katharine has spent the last 14 years as executive coach and leadership facilitator serving the Top ASX 50 clients of Heidrick & Struggles, Johnson, Mettle and PricewaterhouseCoopers, where she focused on C-suite preparation, development and succession planning.

Before becoming the passionate leadership developer, Katharine’s execution and pragmatic sense were fully developed in her role as head of operational planning and execution of the Sydney Olympic Games between 1996 and 2000, as well as her experience in the non-profit sector with her work with the YWCA NSW.

Her corporate strategic background started from her formative years with Booz & Co across multiple industries around Australia throughout the early 1990’s. Katharine has degrees with honours in Biology/Neuroscience and History (Duke), Business (MBA, Stanford), and Political Science (MA, UNSW).

Katharine is a qualified psychotherapist, and a member of the UTS Business School Advisory Board and Quest for Life Foundation.

Karen Lawson took on the CEO position at Slingshot after five months working as the Head of Innovation for its corporate Scaleup program. Under her leadership the company has worked with some of Australia’s biggest corporates, including Qantas, Lion Group, Seek and HCF. Lawson also spearheaded the launch of a new Slingshot platform to connect corporates with Startups and Scaleups called CoVentured.

The former CEO of online job marketplace CareerOne, she has over a decade of experience working in executive roles within Australia’s technology sector. She played a key role in the reinvention of CareerOne from a job board into a broader technology business by partnering with Startups to deliver shareholder value. Prior to CareerOne she worked as Yahoo!7’s General Manager of Business development and partnerships, leading several of the company’s experimental new media and technology endeavours.

Andrew Dzurak is one of world’s leading experts in silicon-based quantum computing. He is the Director of ANFF-NSW, the NSW node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility, a network of university-based laboratories that provide researchers and industry with access to state-of-the-art nanofabrication facilities. Following a PhD in Cambridge, Andrew returned to Australia in 1994 to work with Professor Bob Clark in the establishment of the first nanofabrication facilities at UNSW. He also worked with Bob Clark and others in an initiative to develop a solid state quantum computer, leading to the establishment of the Centre for Quantum Computer Technology in January 2000. The centre now maintains the world’s largest focused collaboration on silicon-based quantum computing. Andrew is the Centre’s Work-Package Leader in this area, as well as Lead Investigator for a multi-institutional program grant in silicon quantum computing from the US Army Research Office.

Andrew, together with Andrea Morello, demonstrated the world’s first silicon qubits based on single implanted phosphorus atoms in 2012, and more recently has developed a new qubit technology by reconfiguring the ubiquitous CMOS transistors that make up all of today’s silicon processor chips. Since 2010 he has published 11 papers in the prestigious Science and Nature group journals, including 4 seminal papers in Nature that have demonstrated the world’s first one- and two-qubit quantum logic calculations in silicon chip devices. In total he has published well over 100 scientific papers and is a co-inventor on 11 patent families. Andrew has been awarded the 2011 Australian Eureka Prize for Scientific Research, the 2012 New South Wales Science and Engineering Award for Engineering and Information and Communications Technologies, and his two-qubit silicon logic gate was selected by Physics World, UK as one of the world’s Top Ten Scientific Breakthroughs for 2015.

Nick Koukoulas was appointed Chief Executive of Austroads in November 2014. Prior to Austroads, Nick was Managing Director of BSI Group for Australia and New Zealand. The global British Standards Institution (BSI) is the preeminent standards development organisation and delivers standards-based solutions to help organisations improve their quality and performance, reduce their risk and achieve globally recognized certification.

Nick is an experienced Board Member and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He has held roles as a senior executive for national and multi-national market leaders in area such as professional services, standards development, registered training organisations, maritime fire and safety, and importation and wholesale distribution.

Nick holds an MBA and has held Directorship positions in the private and in the not-for-profit sectors. He has extensive experience in change management and integration projects and has worked in the public and private sectors. Nick also sits on the Council of the World Road Association and on the Centre for Pavement Engineering Education council.

JJ has more than 23 years of experience spanning the energy value chain, in technical, commercial, strategic, advisory and board roles. She has been employed by ExxonMobil, Shell and AGL Energy, has been a trusted advisor to a variety of energy sector organisations, and was a leading energy equity analyst at JBWere.

JJ has a track record of “future proofing” the energy sector. She particularly enjoys helping organisations and their boards to anticipate change, reposition strategy, conceive new business models, create partnerships and build capabilities. She helped to lead the digitisation of the electricity industry at AGL, and was instrumental in establishing AGL’s New Energy division.

JJ holds a first class honours degree in Chemical Engineering and a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment; she is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a Fellow of FINSIA, and has held a variety of board positions.

Dr Dave Henry is a Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO based in Melbourne, and is Research Leader of the Digital Agriculture initiative within CSIROs Agriculture & Food Business Unit. His personal research interests have spanned pasture agronomy and animal nutrition, the application of proximal and remote sensing, livestock monitoring and control (virtual fencing), and how to capture value from new digital technologies such as sensors, the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence. His experience has taken him across the dairy, beef, sheep and mixed farming systems, and his current work has National reach and global significance.

Sohail is a firm believer that the solution to climate change lies in new technology, and has applied new technology to many ADB projects as an energy specialist since 2001 in Afghanistan, Cambodia, PRC, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Philippines, Tajikistan, Kyrgyz Republic and other Asian countries. He formulated a 100,000 electric tricycle project for the Philippines in 2011-2012, which is under implementation. His current projects include rehabilitation of 1,200 MW hydropower in Kyrgz Republic, Off-grid Solar in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Carbon Capture and Storage and High technology Roadmap for the Central Asian Region. As a blogger and social media enthusiast, he takes an active interest in solar power, drones, electric vehicles and large battery storage projects.

With a Masters in Engineering and an MBA from Melbourne Business School, before joining ADB he worked on wholesale electricity market design, pricing regulation, energy efficiency and demand management for the State Electricity Commission of Victoria and the Essential Services Commission in Melbourne.