Anne is an experienced sustainable buildings consultant who now leads the Arup Foresight and Innovation offering in Australasia. Anne’s innovative approach to design and sustainability is internationally recognized with invited and keynote presentations including the Singapore Government, the Green Building Council and NASA Langley. Anne has facilitated many workshops, most recently a strategy workshop for the South East Queensland water industry in which long term future scenario’s were developed.

Anne specialises in the area of education with experience on many education projects including the net zero designed Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland and the Science and Technology Building at the Queensland University of Technology. She also recently authored the Arup publication Future of Schools focusing on pre-tertiary education and has been invited to speak on this subject at multiple forums.

Anne believes that foresight and innovation skills are integral to achieving sustainable outcomes and is passionate about applying these techniques for long term positive outcomes. Anne’s work has included Smart cities strategic development working with the Brisbane City Council to develop their Smart, Connected framework. Anne is currently developing the Smart Cities readiness cards with the Smart Cities Council or Australia and New Zealand and also contributed to the Smart Cities Guide for Built Environment Consultants and has presented on this subject around Australia.

Anne is still passionate about sustainability for buildings and has been on the Green Building Council technical advisory group for many years as well as being an Green Star assessor, a WELL building assessor and a NABERS assessor. Currently Anne is assisting in the development of a strategy for Arup’s alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals.

Ben’s spent more than a decade developing businesses, consulting on digital strategy, identifying market gaps and future trends. He’s founded many successful companies, including design studio and venture lab Josephmark, motion design company Breeder, indigenous creative agency Gilimbaa and trending music platform We Are Hunted, which was acquired by Twitter in 2012.

As JM’s CEO, he’s become an influential figure within Australia’s creative and business communities, and his fearlessness in pushing the envelope has culminated in the truly entrepreneurial business that Josephmark is known for.

Dr. Bernadette Hyland-Wood is a Lecturer on data science in QUT’s School of Communication and is an Affiliated Investigator on the Computational Communication and Culture Program in QUT’s Digital Media Research Centre. Her research is at the nexus of data science, organizational behavior and leadership, and examines the barriers and facilitators of public data supply, especially during compounded crises.

Bernadette has been involved in knowledge representation policy and technologies for more than 15 years. As chair of the W3C Government Linked Data Working Group, she edited and co-authored highly cited publications on data exchange standards and best practices. Her work has informed government communications on COVID-19, public trust, and national data legislation, including the U.S. DATA Act.

Bernadette has founded four tech startups in Australia and the U.S., including a semantic technology spin-out from MIT. She oversaw the development of pioneering graph-based data visualization and open source software (OSS) platforms. She is a co-founder of Women in Technology (WiT), Australia’s largest professional networking organization supporting women in IT and life science research. She received her Bachelor of Arts (Honors) in Computational Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and a Ph.D. from the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland (UQ) in 2021.

Conor is the co-founder of Explorate, a company that has a vision to change the way freight moves around the world.

Conor’s reputation is built on thinking outside the box when it comes to supply chains and for the last three years has built Explorate into one of Australia’s leading digital freight companies.

Dr Cori Stewart is Founder and CEO of the ARM Hub, a not-for-profit company on a mission to digitally transform Australian industry. The ARM Hub specialises in AI, robotics, design and manufacturing and collaborates with industry to modernise its manufacturing practises, commercialise R&D, and build workforce capability.

The ARM Hub meets industry’s skills gaps delivering projects and services that accelerate Australia’s industrial transformation. We work across industry sectors from mining to food, and have a factory and maker space in Brisbane’s Northgate that is accessible to industry.

To support businesses’ access right-fit solutions, the ARM Hub delivers targeted industry programs on topics such as business model innovation, leadership, strategic planning, regulation/compliance, cyber security, R&D tax incentives and R&D grant readiness.

Cori has had a distinguished career and is a recognised leader in developing large-scale partnerships between industry, research institutions, governments and the community. Cori has previously held senior university appointments and government policy roles in industry development, the digital economy, creative industries and innovation.

Associate Professor Cori Stewart was awarded WiT’s Professional Technology Leader of 2020.

Isaac founded Proptech BNE. in 2019 after working to support the emerging technology sector in Australia for the better part of a decade. Isaac saw there was something missing from the current support ecosystem looking to grow the proptech economy, and that was an industry-led, outcome-driven community.

After working for numerous growth programs, accelerators, incubators and venture capital firms, Isaac realised there was a need for industry-led support and guidance for emerging proptech businesses that was not being met by any initiative he had seen…. Hence, the birth of Proptech BNE.

Along with being the founder of Proptech BNE. Isaac holds a number of advisory and/or board positions for some of the counties leading proptech businesses, including BLOCX, Dopple, Space Platforms, and Gallantree. Isaac is also currently the Head of Industry Relations for Building 4.0 CRC, The country’s leading industry-led research initiative solving some of the big issues for the property and construction sector globally.

Jason is a SaaS tech investor and C-Level Executive, focusing on scaling up tech companies. He usually takes an active role in the companies he invests in, as a Board Advisor and ‘fractional’ C-Level Executive.

His multi-sector, entrepreneurial portfolio career traverses startups & global corporations, with channel partnership and go2market experience across the US, Asia, EU & other markets. Dominated by building successful companies & exiting them at strategic points in time.

Kshira Saagar (the K is silent like in a Knight) is currently the Chief Data Officer of Latitude Financial Services and has spent 24.7% of his life helping key decision-makers and CxOs make smarter decisions using data, and strongly believes that every organisation can become truly data-driven.

He has been consecutively recognised among the Top 10 Analytics Leaders in Australia, for 2019,2020 and 2021. At every place he has worked, working and will work – he likes to go back to the fundamentals, asking people to ask more questions of data and being a tough taskmaster on getting actionable outcomes from data, on all possible occasions. Outside work, Kshira spends a lot of time on advancing data literacy initiatives for high school and undergrad students.

Pauline Fetaui is General Manager of River City Labs who joined in October 2019 to continue to pursue her passion of helping People create and live their purpose, whilst growing innovative technologies for the advancement of society. Pauline’s own contribution to this, includes; CheeHoo a Personal assistant and Organiser app she launched in 2019 and her other role as co-host of a Splash of Colour Podcast where authentic conversations about being human come to life.

Peter is the founder of Junta through which he participates heavily in the innovation ecosystem. A major role that he performs is interfacing between corporates and new ventures. He has coached and advised 800+ startups and new ventures on how to innovate, implement, and deliver to both consumers and businesses.

He has been the Mentor in Residence at River City Labs for over nine years. An Entrepreneur in Residence on twelve different programs over the last few years and also mentor on 15+ startup programs nationally. He has been doing large scale software development for the last 25 years for both enterprise and new ventures.

Peter has an MBA from QUT specialising in strategy, entrepreneurship, and microeconomics. He is a sessional lecturer in innovation, entrepreneurship, and business strategy at both UQ and QUT.

Peter won the Queensland Pearcey Entrepreneur Award for 2018.

Rob has over 30 years in the advertising and digital industries and is a former director of Greenfield and Icon in London and VMLY&R and Clemenger BBDO in Australia. Rob launched a business architecture business focused on the practical application of human-centred design and behavioural economics in 2014. 

Rob has worked across industry, academia and governments, delivering brand rigour, digital innovation and consumer advantage for organisations in Australia and remotely for international companies in the US and UK.

Rob is a fellow of QUT’s Centre for Behavioural Economics, Society and Technology and lectures on marketing technology, brand strategy and behaviour change. He is also a Multicultural Ambassador for QLD Govt, a board of Brisbane Portrait Prize and an IPA Certified Strategist. Rob has won over 35 international awards for creative communications, including 7 Cannes Lions and a coveted White D&AD pencil.

Prof Sarah Pearson has extensive global executive leadership experience spanning FTSE 100 multinationals, international C-suite roles in the public and private sector, leading brands such as Cadbury & McKinsey, startups and Venture Capital. She has led the development of innovation ecosystems nationally and internationally, been an entrepreneur and intrapreneur, Board Director and Advisor for numerous innovative organisations, and Chief Scientist & Chief Innovation Officer for DFAT. Sarah has advised Governments nationally and internationally and is proud of her input to several longstanding innovation programs in Australia and overseas. She holds a PhD in Particle Physics from Oxford (where she worked on parallel processing and Monte Carlo modelling), is the author on eight international patents, for cancer diagnosis (using AI/ML) and novel confectionary, and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering.

Nowadays she focusses on leveraging knowledge of emerging tech & innovation to accelerate economic growth, disrupt disadvantage, address global challenges, and leave no one behind. She has a portfolio of roles, including on the Investment Committee for Main Sequence Ventures, a Prof at UQ as a Paul Ramsay Foundation Fellow, a Non-Executive Director at RACQ, and numerous Advisory Board roles such as IIX Asia that delivers women’s livelihood bonds.

The tech-head prodigy behind BOP Industries, Scott Millar is a young entrepreneur taking the world by storm. Compared to a young Steve Jobs after turning a year nine business project into a thriving business, Scott has deferred university to run BOP Industries full time, now with a growing presence around the world.

BOP Industries is a Brisbane based EdTech company on a mission to inspire the next generation of digital creators. Scott and his team work with teachers, students, parents and industry around the world to provide opportunities and experiences to primary and high school students around the pillars of STEM, entrepreneurship, innovation and the future of work.

Scott is always working to innovate and create as we find new ways to inspire and engage young people, showing them the amazing things they can do at any age, from anywhere.