Global Speakers

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Audrey Ciccone

Chief Strategist

Analytic Perspectives

CONFERENCE CHAIRPERSON

Audrey Ciccone is a certified HR professional with over 25 years’ experience working both in industry and as a consultant. Building on her earlier background working in manufacturing, healthcare and biotechnology industries, Audrey has combined her strengths in business strategy, storytelling and uncovering insight in data to build an international client base within Australia, Canada and the Asia Pacific region.

Combining her consulting expertise, business acumen and ability to communicate actionable insight, she works with clients to develop their analytics strategy, diagnose business risk and shift practices to achieve strategic business outcomes.

Audrey holds professional HR designations in Australia and Canada, has a degree in Psychology, management certification in Human Resources and continues to pursue knowledge at the cutting edge of HR practices. Audrey is a skilled speaker and has designed and facilitated workshops for HR professionals and business leaders in Canada, Australia and Singapore on a variety of topics including workforce analytics, strategic HR planning, engagement and leadership.

Audrey has served clients from small entrepreneurial businesses to advising executive teams in mid-cap organizations within a variety of industries including security, logistics, telecommunications, life sciences, digital communications and professional service firms.

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Dave Waters

Chief Human Resources Officer

Department of Transport and Main Roads

Dave Waters currently leads transformation of the HR function in the Queensland Government Department of Transport and Main Roads. His previous roles include Chief Human Resources Officer for the state’s Department of Health and head of employee relations for the Queensland health and education agencies both with over 80,000 employees. Dave’s professional pathway, including careers as a journalist and union official, has provided him with a unique perspective on the people and culture challenges facing the public sector and HR functions broadly. He is passionate about repositioning HR to a more coach-consultant footing as we capitalise on the digital opportunities of freeing ourselves from the transactional and elevating our gaze from the operational to a more strategic outlook.

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Gail Symons

Former Global Director, People & Culture

Jurlique International

Gail Symons has held leadership roles in several blue chip companies including Nortel Networks, Qantas, SingTel Optus and most recently as Global Director, People and Culture, Jurlique International. She has lead large global and regional teams, bringing commercially focused solutions and outcomes to a business.  Businesses Gail has worked in have included Optus Consumer, Nortel Asia Pacific region (based in Singapore) Qantas International business plus the corporate portfolios of Policy, People Programmers, Workforce Analytics and Strategic Resourcing. She is a People and Culture leader who brings commercially focused solutions and outcomes to a business.

Gail has a strong belief in the value of storytelling and decision making through data and analytics and has ensured, throughout her career, that the functions she has lead are strongly defined by diagnostics and analytics. The Workforce Analytics team in Qantas won a global award for cutting edge analytics under Gail’s leadership.

Gail has a background in Sociology from Sydney University and a Masters Degree from George Washington University, majoring in ‘Managing Performance across Cultures’.

Outside of work, Gail is a keen runner and loves her weekly Pilates class. She comes from a large family and is kept busy with her two sons and their many activities and adventures.’

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Lorelle Cooney

Head of Human Resources

New Horizons

Lorelle Cooney thrives on transforming an organisation’s competitive capability in her capacity as a C-suite partner. In her current role as the HR Head of New Horizons, her achievements are built on the foundations of customer trust, rapid delivery of ROI and personal motivation; they include data driven strategies that result in annual savings, disruptive talent acquisition strategies, reversal of poor performance and seamless customer transitions. Lorelle’s previous organisations include The Travel Corporation, Breville, NAB, Qantas, CSR, ANZ and Telstra.

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Mary Lemonis

Vice President Human Resources Asia Pacific & International

Campbell Soup

Mary Lemonis is the Vice President – Human Resources for Campbell’s Asia Pacific.  In this role, Mary is responsible for leading the HR function across Campbell’s Asia Pacific businesses including Arnott’s Biscuits and Campbell’s, with turnover in excess of $1.5BN and 5,900 employees located across five countries.

Mary has worked with Campbell for over fifteen years in a variety of HR roles.  Prior to her current role, Mary was based in the US for three and half years where she worked as VP HR for Emerging Markets – responsible for leading the HR function as part of Campbell’s market entry into Greater China and Russia – and Global Organisation Effectiveness Director.  During this time Mary participated in the International Women’s Forum (IWF) Leadership Foundation Fellows Program, spending time training at Harvard Business School and University of Cambridge with thirty women from across the globe.  In September 2014, Mary became a founding member and Board Director of IWF Australia.  During her time with Campbell, Mary also worked as HR Director Arnott’s Snackfoods, Corporate & HR Operations Director Asia Pacific and Organisation Effectiveness Manager.

Prior to joining Campbell, Mary worked with Lion – one of Australasia’s largest food and beverage companies – from 1995 to 2001.  During her time with Lion Nathan, Mary led the China HR Commercial Team based in Shanghai China, in addition to other generalist roles including Commercial and Supply Chain HR lead for the company’s largest business unit – Tooheys Pty Limited.

Mary earned her Bachelor of Manufacturing Management degree from Sydney’s University of Technology, and currently resides in Sydney, Australia.  Mary can be reached at [email protected].

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Kavita Khanna

Director People + Capability

Tonkin + Taylor

Kavita Khanna is a seasoned People and Management practitioner. She has built a career over the past two decades working across a breadth of portfolios including strategic HR, Organization Development and Change Management across a span of sectors including telecommunication, construction and consulting.

She has an unconventional view of what HR is and happily works in the interstitial spaces between HR and other management functions.

The philosophy she lives by:

  • “Culture eats strategy for breakfast and technology for lunch”

Her favourite quotes:

  • ”Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”
  • “Change Management is an oxymoron”
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Dr Jacques Liebenberg

Director of People & Performance

Metro Trains Melbourne

Jacques has extensive experience in both human resources and the rail sector, with over 20 years of service leading organizational transformation programs in both Australia and South Africa. Jacques has held some key senior positions including Deputy Director Human Resources (TUT South Africa), HR Manager Faculty of Health Science (UQ), GM Human Resources – Rail Operations (Queensland Rail), Train Control Manager (Queensland Rail) and Group Human Resources Manager (Metro Trains Melbourne). Jacques also holds a Doctorate in Philosophy (DPhil) from the University of Johannesburg. He is currently Director of People and Performance at Metro Trains Melbourne, managing key human resources outcomes for a workforce of 5,000 across a broad range of rail and business disciplines.

Jacques believes that the role of leaders is to enable their people to achieve success by helping them to be the very best they can be. He is focused on ensuring that the human resources function influences and facilitates strategic business change through being a true business partner.

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Geoff Martin

Head of People, Performance & Culture

Konekt

Geoff Martin is an energetic and highly respected senior HR leader with extensive experience gained in health services, the career transition, insurance and banking industries. Currently Geoff leads the HR function across 43 offices in a publicly listed health sector company. Previously he has led national HR teams of up to 13 people supporting client groups of up to 2,100 employees.

Geoff’s stakeholder relationship experience includes more recently at Board and CEO level, as well as CEO, CFO, CIO and Executive General Manager level and business leaders of all levels. His experience includes extensive transformational experience through restructuring and redeployment, off-shoring, M&A due diligence and integration,  rollout of visions and values, culture change and recruitment function redesign.  Geoff is a passionate leader who wants to make a difference to the capabilities of people and organizations for the benefit of all.

Metrics and data are becoming increasingly important in understanding drivers within organizations and industries, not only for HR. Through involvement with metrics HR can take a lead role in identifying the impacts on culture and how to ensure metrics and culture can be aligned for maximum benefit for all.

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Peter Howes

Vice President, Workforce Analytics and Planning

SAP SuccessFactors

With over four decades of experience in human resource management, Peter is Vice President, Workforce Planning and Analytics for SAP SuccessFactors. Peter has a distinguished global reputation as a consultant in Workforce Metrics, Analytics and Workforce Planning. For the past fifteen years Peter has spent most of his time consulting and advising to global companies in North America and Europe. Peter has spoken at more than 500 conferences and workshops across the globe over the past thirty years and has been involved in more than 100 consulting assignments in Workforce Planning and Workforce Analytics.

In July 2010 Peter sold his business, Infohrm, to SuccessFactors, which was subsequently acquired by SAP in February 2012. Peter was the founder and CEO of Infohrm from 1981-2010. Within SAP SuccessFactors Peter has a Ambassadorial role in developing the Workforce Analytics and Planning business of SuccessFactors. This involves working with the Product Management team, existing clients and prospective clients. He also writes, completes research and speaks at conferences.

Peter is a former Chair of the School of Management Advisory Committee at the Queensland University of Technology and currently Peter is a member of the QUT Council, the governing body for QUT. In 2003, was awarded the Outstanding Alumni award for the Faculty of Business at QUT. Peter is a Life Fellow of the Australian Human Resources Institute and is also a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management. Peter lives between Brisbane and London.

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Margarita Joseph

APAC Head of Talent Acquisition

American Express Global Business Travel (AmexGBT)

Margarita commenced her recruiting career in 2006 as an executive search consultant, upon returning to Malaysia after completing her Masters studies with University of Sydney.  She joined ASPAC Executive Search then moved to Kelly Outsourcing and Consulting Group (KellyOCG) in 2008.

During her time with KellyOCG, Margarita held several roles in executive search and managed recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) for South East-Asia before moving to Sydney in 2014. She joined American Express Global Business Travel early 2015, and is presently the APAC Head of Talent Acquisition.

From a workforce and talent analytics perspective, Margarita was key in building a NEW talent acquisition team using data from previous hiring trends then accurately determining ratio of total number of recruiters to total requisitions.  As a result, TA KPIs were finally met and communicated to the business regularly. Stakeholders started accepting the TA team as a strategic partner as data and analytics became more transparent and was concisely communicated.

The transparency and method of how data was interpreted to the business was a key enabler to strengthened stakeholder partnerships.  There was also instrumental change in stakeholder behaviour as they became more adaptable and accepting to rapid changes within the TA processes as Margarita and her team helped them understand data and the key components towards driving desired results.

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Adam Sharman

Global Operations People Solutions Manager

Fonterra Cooperative Group

Adam is an experience strategic talent and human capital leader with extensive experience leading HR and organization-wide transformation across multiple industries, including natural resources, telecommunications, government, FMCG and manufacturing.

Adam started his career in London with Accenture, during which time he specialized in strategic learning and development and change management programs for the financial services industry. Adam relocated to Melbourne with Accenture and lead change management programs for large scale systems and organization transformation for clients in the telecommunications and natural resources industries.

In 2012 Adam moved to New Zealand to support Deloitte in the growth of the Human Capital Consulting practice. During this time Adam led strategic organization design work for clients in government and manufacturing.

Adam is currently a senior HR leader at the Fonterra Cooperative Group, the world’s largest exporter of dairy products with over 18,000 staff globally and revenue of over NZ$1.6bn. Adam played a lead role in transforming and embedding the HR function as part of an organization wide transformation that resulted in a 65% net profit uplift for FY16.

Adam has also published multiple articles, including CIO upfront: In the cloud era, ‘think opportunity, not impact’; the evolution of change management for cloud technologies.

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Marcus Champ

Analytics Professional & Behavioral Scientist

Marcus’s professional background is in behavioral science, with undergraduate and graduate qualifications in Organisational Psychology. Marcus is passionate about using evidence to make decisions about workforce strategy, and has worked in the field of HR analytics for around 17 years in a wide range of industries. Some of the projects Marcus has worked on include: strategic workforce planning, modeling retention, analyzing safety behavior, productivity assessment, assessing and quantifying human capital, measuring HR effectiveness, and exploring the behavioral drivers of individual and organizational conduct.

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Andre Degreef

Senior Organization Development, Workforce Planning & Change Leader

University of Queensland

André Degreef has managed Human Resources, Workforce Planning and HR Analytics functions in some of Australia’s largest public sector agencies and has taken a lead role in building workforce planning and capability development competency across the public sector in both Queensland and New South Wales.

Having commenced his career as an organizational psychologist and worked extensively in organizational development and workforce capability functions, André is able to bring a holistic approach to the analysis and interpretation of workforce data and analytics. André is a Fellow of the Australian Human Resources Institute and is currently completing a Doctorate in Business Administration investigating emotionally intelligent change management.

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Rolf Siggaard

General Manager, HR (Technology Solutions & Zero Harm)

Downer New Zealand

Rolf is General Manager, HR, for the Downer New Zealand Technology Solutions businesses. Originally from Denmark, Rolf has experience from senior HR leadership roles in a range of large multinational organizations in New Zealand and overseas. With technology disruption and continuous change the ‘new normal’ for many industries, Rolf has been involved in shaping, designing and leading change processes from the front. He has a lifelong passion for analytics and using insights for effective story telling. He has learned the ‘hard way’ and is still learning what works and what doesn’t for a business to be agile, have highly engaged and smart people delivering great work every day.

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Asif Khan

Global HR Data Manager

Schneider Electric

Asif graduated from the Western Sydney University in 2004 and since then he has worked for some of the world’s largest multinational companies such as Accor Hotels, Telstra, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), Hewlett Packard (HP) and currently Schneider Electric.

In 2010, Asif joined Schneider Electric in the Pacific region as a HR Systems and Reporting Manager and played pivotal role in setting up the HR Systems, Reporting and Analytics strategy and helped transform many of the HR Systems and HR processes.

Since June 2016, Asif has moved into a Global HR Data Manager role for Schneider Electric and has made significant improvements to the HR Data Quality at a global level with a scope of approx. 150,000 employees.

Asif is passionate about the use of technology in the HR world and believes in a truly digitized experience for employees and managers.