Mind-blowing speakers

Just Meat Protein

Aarti Tobin

Co-Founder, Just Meat Protein

Dr Aarti Tobin is Co-founder and CSO of Just Meat Protein, an Australian food-tech start-up commercialising a breakthrough technology that transforms underutilised meat into highly soluble, allergen free, nutrient-dense protein powders. Passionate about value adding to meat and improving global nutrition, she is leading the development of innovative protein ingredients that deliver sustainable and scalable solutions for the food industry.

A globally recognised food scientist and food technologist, Aarti has more than 35 years of experience in research, innovation, and commercialisation. She spent 31 years at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, where she led research to improve the value, functionality, and sustainability of animal-derived proteins. While at CSIRO, she developed the patent pending technology behind Just Meat Protein’s powders.

Combining deep scientific expertise with entrepreneurial leadership, Aarti took up the challenge of her current role as the CSO, 12 months ago. Aarti continues to translate research into market-ready products that address the global challenges in nutrition, healthy ageing, and food security.

Imparja Television

Adam Manovic

Executive, Cultural Media & Innovation, Imparja Television

Adam originally hails from the regional town of Mildura in North Western Victoria, but has Gooreng Gooreng bloodlines from Central Queensland – the Burnett River/Wide Bay area. Adam started his media career in community broadcasting in the late 1990s, initially in radio and then moved into Television.

Adam is an experienced creative producer, director, editor, executive producer and people leader, working with teams on developing, producing and overseeing content across multiple platforms.

Adam lives in the Brisbane seaside suburb of Wynnum with his partner Cherry, children Rosalia and Tully, and his two cats Keifer and Nola.

Adam is incredibly passionate about First Nations storytelling and serving the First Nations community with communications outcomes – helping maintain the longest continuing living cultures in the world.

Canva

Alex Skougarevskaya

Head of Design, Canva

Bio coming soon.

On the House

Alice Harris

Marketing Lead, On the House

Alice Harris is the Founding Marketing Lead at ON THE HOUSE, a digital out-of-home company. This ad-funded network provides free period products for women by placing vending machines that double as digital billboards in high foot traffic bathrooms, now live across 55 locations in four Australian cities. She leads brand strategy, GTM and content across ON THE HOUSE’s consumer and B2B channels while managing a freelance team of PR, design, video and web talent.

Before ON THE HOUSE, Alice spent two years as Social Media Manager at Kic, growing the app’s TikTok channel to 1.4M average organic views and running a UK growth campaign that added 34,000 followers in two weeks. She’s also worked with brands including Cocobella, Converse, Kmart and Aware Super through Praytell Agency, and flew to Tanzania to document the non-for-profit, Forever Projects, immersion trip where they climbed Mt Kilimanjaro.

Through her own consultancy, On The Pulse Creative, Alice continues to work with value aligned brands on content and brand strategy.

Virgin Australia

Alice Wilson

Senior User Interface Designer, Virgin Australia

Alice is a product designer and creative thinker with 15 years of experience crafting digital experiences across retail, ecommerce, fashion and, most recently, aviation. Throughout her career, she’s worked with teams of every shape and size, from startups to global organisations including ASOS, Boden and most recently Virgin Australia.


With a background spanning branding, creative direction, digital product design and design systems, Alice brings a strategic perspective to product design. She enjoys connecting business goals, customer needs and emerging technology to shape clear design direction and create experiences that are both intuitive and impactful.

Known for simplifying complexity, Alice is passionate about building scalable systems, elevating design quality and helping teams make confident design decisions. Whether she’s defining a vision, reimagining a customer journey or untangling a complex interface, she believes great design should feel purposeful, human and just a little bit delightful.

ARM Hub

Allison Bambrick

Executive Director, ARM Hub

Bio coming soon

Second Curve Psychology

Amy McWilliam

Director/ Psychologist, Second Curve Psychology

“Amy McWilliam is a registered psychologist with a Master of Organisational Psychology and the founder of Second Curve Psychology. She advises executives and organisations on the human side of work, leadership and organisational change.

Her perspective is informed by work across psychology, organisational culture, technology implementation and risk culture. Her recent paper, The Cost of Cognitive Convenience: The Psychological Impacts of Artificial Intelligence, examines AI adoption as a human, organisational and governance issue, not just a technical or productivity one.”

Innovation Architects

Angela Young

Strategic Advisor, Innovation Architects

Bio Coming Soon

Bopple

Angus McLachlan

Chief Executive Officer, Bopple

Angus McLachlan is CEO and co-founder of Bopple, the fast-growing technology platform helping ambitious hospitality brands scale service, make data-informed decisions, and personalise customer experiences. Bopple is a secret success story, the engine behind the digital experiences across Gelato Messina, Range Brewing, Bakers Delight, Nodo Donuts and thousands more.

Bootstrapped, the company has grown rapidly across Australia, New Zealand and further abroad with brands across the North Americas, Caribbean and Asia-Pacific.

Each month, Bopple processes hundreds of thousands of orders and millions of payments across its platforms, gathering the right data from each touchpoint into a single source — so hospitality can better understand and better serve every guest on every channel, every time. Over 2000 hospitality brands trust Bopple and its network of integration partners such as Square, Lightspeed, Uber, and DoorDash.

Griffith University

Anjali Jaiprakash

Strategic Partnerships, Griffith University

Dr Anjali Jaiprakash is a strategic partnerships leader working at the intersection of universities, industry and government, currently leading cross-sector partnership development for Griffith University’s Digital Health Framework across South East Queensland.

She brings deep experience in health innovation and commercialisation, having led major translational initiatives across medical robotics, biotechnology, AI-enabled drug discovery, surgical innovation and biomedical technologies, with a strong track record in building high-value partnerships, securing investment and translating research into commercial and health impact.

Anjali has secured more than AUD$30 million in funding as lead, negotiated commercial partnerships, and founded her own QUT spin-out, giving her a rare perspective from both sides of the partnership table, as a founder building trust and as an institutional leader deciding who earns it. She holds a PhD from QUT, completed executive education in data analytics at Wharton, and is an Adjunct A/Professor at UQ.

Atlassian

Anna Jaffe

Head of Regulatory Affairs & Responsible Technology, Atlassian

Anna Jaffe is Head of Regulatory Affairs & Responsible Technology at Atlassian, where she works at the intersection of technology policy, regulation, and responsible AI. She was the primary architect of Atlassian’s Responsible Technology Principles and the frameworks that make them operational across product and engineering teams. Anna previously practised as a technology lawyer at Herbert Smith Freehills and holds a Master of Laws in Law, Science and Technology from Stanford University.

Mott Macdonald

Anne Kovachevich

Sustainable Buildings and Precincts Leader, Mott Macdonald

Anne is the National Sustainable Buildings and Precincts leader for Mott MacDonald. Anne has a background in building physics and extensive experience in strategy and insights advisory including workshop facilitations, trends research and scenario planning. Anne in on the Technical Advisory Group for the Green Building Council of Australian and is also on the WELL cities Advisory Panel for the International Well Building Institute.

Anne is the co-founder of the Brisbane Futures Collaborative who bring together futurists and big picture thinking to discuss high interest topics and apply futures methodologies.

BrandHalo

Anthony Hook

CTO, MarTech & Product Strategy, BrandHalo

Anthony brings 23 years in MarTech, product, and agency leadership, including 8 years heading Product Strategy at Sitecore. He co-founded Triggerfish, a digital agency that built platforms for Subway, Global Payments, Isuzu UTE, and UnitingCare, and co-founded Dataweavers, a $5M venture backed by OIF Ventures.

A seasoned CTO, he knows what it takes to build and scale technology companies sustainably, from zero to funded and beyond.

Co-Spaces

Ben Howe

Managing Director, Co-Spaces

As Founder and Managing Director of CoSpaces, Ben is responsible for program delivery, and community management of some of the largest innovation hubs in Australia; including The Precinct, Forefront Creative Hub, Cohort Innovation Space, LX Health, Queensland AI Hub, and Old Station.

Established in 2012, CoSpaces has over 1200 members and manages over 15,000m2 of shared workspaces, labs, retail and events spaces.

In 2008, Ben graduated from the prestigious Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver. With over 20 years of experience in technology, design, and creative arts, Ben directs his passion towards re-purposing and activating new spaces, building commercially scale-able communities and helping companies grow.

Intuit Technologies

Bree Postma

Lead Consultant, Intuit Technologies

Bree Postma is a Lead Consultant – Technology at Intuit Technologies, specialising in digital strategy, customer experience, and technology advisory. She works with organisations to translate strategic direction into structured delivery models, ensuring decisions align with operational reality, governance requirements, and business objectives.

With experience across digital transformation, service design, and stakeholder engagement, Bree focuses on connecting strategy to execution. She supports executive and operational leaders to clarify priorities, manage organisational change, and structure initiatives so they deliver value while maintaining accountability and oversight.

As organisations increasingly adopt AI and automation, Bree works closely with clients to understand how new technologies impact processes, decision-making, and risk. Her perspective centres on ensuring innovation is introduced with clear governance, defined ownership, and practical controls that support long-term success.

Bree brings a practical, client-facing perspective to advisory engagements, helping organisations balance opportunity, risk, and operational readiness as technology continues to evolve.

Intuit Technologies

Brendon Jessup

Senior Executive – Microsoft Cloud And Business Solutions, Intuit Technologies

Brendon Jessup is one of the Senior Executives leading the Microsoft Cloud and Business Solutions Practice at Intuit Technologies, where he co-drives national growth across Modern Work, Cloud Infrastructure, Business Applications, Data, AI and Automation. With over 20 years of experience across enterprise, government and not-for-profit sectors, he brings deep technical capability, strategic insight and a strong focus on delivering measurable outcomes.

As a Microsoft Certified Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Brendon combines deep technical knowledge with practical solution design to solve complex business challenges. His consultative approach ensures that Microsoft technologies are applied in a way that is relevant, strategic and outcome driven. Under his leadership, initiatives like the myServiceTas Portal have moved from concept to statewide impact, delivering streamlined digital access for citizens and enabling meaningful transformation across government services.

Brendon’s strength lies in making the complex simple. He works closely with clients to ensure technology strategy aligns to business goals and is known for building long-term relationships based on trust, clarity and consistency.

Caligra

Caitlin Zotti

COO, Caligra

Caitlin Zotti is COO of Caligra, a hardware startup building the c100 – a Linux-native workstation designed for engineers, ML researchers, and data scientists who’ve outgrown general-purpose machines. Before Caligra, she spent seven years at Pin Payments, scaling the business and leading it through acquisition to a global payments leader. She brings a rare mix of operational depth and a track record of scaling startups from the early stage through acquisition and beyond.

Integral

Cameron Tuesley

CEO, Integral

As Integral’s founder, Cameron is an innovative entrepreneur, with strong business management acumen combined with extensive IT experience.

Over the past 25 years of his leadership, Integral has become a market leader when it comes to delivering innovative and complex IT solutions for large corporates, winning over 20 industry awards for its work, including three international and two national IT awards.

Cameron still advises clients directly, working with executives who are leading programs involving complex technology challenges, but his real passion is mentoring young people in IT and pushing sustainable engineering forward.

In 2012, those two passions collided in TeamArrow, a solar car project run in partnership with QUT that competed in the World Solar Challenge. In 2013 it became the first Australian car to cross the finish line; by 2017 TeamArrow had recorded the best Australian result in 30 years.

TeamArrow later spun out Prohelion, which Cameron founded. It is now a commercial supplier of advanced power management solutions to the Aerospace, Robotics, Defence, and Motorsport industries.

Mater Foundation

Camilla Marshall

Director, Marketing, Mater Foundation

With over 15 years’ experience in the Marketing industry, Camilla is a senior strategic leader who works to bring purpose, people and profitability together.

Her career has seen her thrive in local and global organisations across a number of industries including with Virgin Australia, Allianz Partners, Endeavour Foundation and most recently with Mater Foundation.

With experience across all facets of Marketing, Camilla has particular interest in data-driven marketing, bringing together consumer behaviour, technology and ethical practices.

Karmo

Carolyn Ong

Head of Product, Karmo

Carolyn Ong is Head of Product at Karmo, Australia’s largest car subscription company, where she leads product strategy and execution. She joined in November 2022, when modern product management was still new territory inside Karmo’s automotive roots, and forged it from scratch: the organisation, the ways of working and the delivery discipline that took Karmo to $60M ARR in June 2026, growth accelerated by the products and platforms running underneath it. She’s driven by a simple belief: strong products come from strong culture, and strong culture starts with the people building it. She takes as much pride in coaching PMs into champions of that culture as she does in their outcomes.

With more than eleven years in digital product across finance, insurance and travel, at companies including HSBC, RACQ and Flight Centre, spanning three countries, she brings rare commercial and product breadth to a sector moving fast. That range shapes her take on AI-era UI: a sharp instinct for where flexibility needs guardrails, especially when the product in question is helping someone make a properly consequential decision.

CSIRO

Cathy Robinson

Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO

Cathy is passionate about working data for local and First Nation communities. Cathy currently leads several initiatives with First Nation, local Council and rural partners to integrate diverse evidence sources that support sustainable food, land use and Country-based strategies and investments. This includes the South East Queensland Food System strategy and Digital Women Ranger program which show how multiple perspectives and data inputs can guide long-term as well as responsive decision making.

UniSuper

Christie Wilson

Cyber Resilience Manager, UniSuper

Christie Wilson is Cyber Resilience Manager at UniSuper, where she leads initiatives to strengthen cyber resilience and reduce human risk across the organisation.

With 30 years’ experience spanning IT, governance, risk, compliance, service delivery, and leadership, she brings a practical, business-focused approach to cyber security.

Christie is passionate about making security accessible and helping people build the confidence to identify and respond to cyber threats.

A regular presenter on cyber resilience and human-centred security, she combines technical expertise with clear, engaging communication to help organisations create stronger security cultures and improve resilience.

Quantum Australia

Claire Pink

Manager – Partnerships, Quantum Australia

Bio Coming Soon

Australian Writers' Guild

Claire Pullen

Group CEO, Australian Writers’ Guild

Claire is Executive Director of the Australian Writers’ Guild and Group CEO of the Guild’s group of companies, including the Australian Writers’ Guild Authorship Collecting Society (AWGACS). AWGACS is the collecting society for royalties for Australian and New Zealand screen authors, which distributes millions in royalties every year to screen authors. She represents the Guild and AWGACS nationally and internationally.

Prior to working at the Guild, she led communications, media and campaign teams in unions and NGOs. Claire has worked as a freelance journalist, has owned two microbusinesses and has represented the legal and disability communities as a Board member. Claire holds a Masters degree in Labour Law and Relations from the University of Sydney, an Arts degree with first-class Honours and several other qualifications. She has begun her Masters of Copyright Law at Melbourne University but as yet there are no signs of her finishing it.

Claudia McPherson

The University of Queensland

Claudia McPherson is a passionate mechatronic engineering and computer science student currently completing her third year of study. She is heavily involved in the tech space both within and outside of the University of Queensland, and has volunteered at Something Digital for the past two years.

Claudia is thrilled to be on the other side of the stage this year, and can’t wait to share the perspectives and experiences she has gathered from interning at Google as a Site Reliability Engineer over the summer, as well as her experiences founding and leading a new UQ Society, interning at startup nanoputian.io, and vice-chairing the Australian Computer Society’s Emerging Professionals Committee.

Claudia believes that technology is the best tool to begin to solve complex global issues, improve quality of life, and connect people. She can’t wait to gain more diverse perspectives experiences in the tech industry, and gradually learn where the intersection of her skills and passion lies.

BrandHalo

Cris Gillespie

Head of Partnerships & Customer Success, BrandHalo

I’m a marketing and commercial leader with more than fifteen years’ experience helping organisations strengthen brands, improve customer engagement and deliver commercial growth across complex and regulated industries.

Today I serve as Head of Partnerships & Client Success at BrandHalo, a Brisbane-based AI startup building brand infrastructure for the AI age.

BrandHalo delivers context-as-a-service, enabling organisations to ensure generative AI systems remain aligned with trusted brand, product and organisational information. My focus is helping organisations scale AI while protecting brand integrity, governance and trust.

Previously I held senior marketing roles including Head of Marketing at Caltex Australia, leading national brand and marketing initiatives across one of Australia’s largest retail networks during a period of major transformation.

At NTI Limited, I helped embed customer-centric thinking across the organisation, aligning functions such as sales, claims and roadside assistance around consistent service and engagement frameworks.

Across my career I’ve worked at the intersection of brand, technology and commercial strategy, helping organisations navigate change and deliver practical, scalable growth.

BrandHalo

Dan Shaw

CMO, Brand & Performance, BrandHalo

With 20 years as a senior marketing leader, Dan has shaped brand and performance strategy across some of Australia’s most recognised organisations, including Flight Centre, Allianz, Toyota, Wesfarmers, AEMO, UnitingCare, Mater, and Isuzu UTE.

He understands the commercial magic that happens when Brand, Marketing, and Customer experience align, and has spent his career engineering exactly that.

Virgin Australia

Daniel Fam

Lead UX Designer, Virgin Australia

Daniel Fam is a Lead UX Designer at Virgin Australia, where he helps shape digital experiences that make travel simpler and more intuitive for customers.

Having grown up in the UAE, studied architecture in Egypt and later moved to Australia to pursue design and technology, Daniel brings a cross-cultural perspective to his work. He is especially interested in how people perceive and interpret the same experiences differently, and how those differences influence the way products should be designed.

With more than a decade of experience across travel, financial services and technology, Daniel focuses on turning complex customer problems into clear, useful and thoughtful experiences.

We Are Mobilise

Danielle Schutte

Chief Operating Officer, We Are Mobilise

Danielle is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at We Are Mobilise, on a mission to prove that homelessness is solvable in Australia. She cut her teeth in Management Consulting and has worked extensively across health, ageing and human services. At We Are Mobilise, Danielle designed and rolled out Australia’s first Direct Cash Transfer programs for people facing homelessness, fighting the stigma and inertia that has prevented innovation in the homelessness sector for decades to give people the chance to make their own decisions to shape their lives. At present, those programs are running at $300k per month to keep roofs over thousands of people’s heads, and Danielle is leading a portfolio of work alongside Paul Ramsay Foundation and the Melbourne Institute for Applied Economics and Social Research to develop the evidence base in Australia for this approach.

Danielle has led the build of a tech system enabling We Are Mobilise to scale the impact and reach of these programs exponentially across the country, while maintaining a lean and hyper efficient team in Melbourne. She believes homelessness is truly a solvable problem, and that technology is the catalyst to help us get there as a nation.

Mapulus

David Herse

CEO /Founder, Mapulus

David is the founder of Mapulus, an Australian location intelligence platform that helps organisations see the physical world the way they see their customer data. As something they can actually query, understand, and act on.
He’s spent years working at the intersection of AI, spatial data, and organisational decision-making, helping teams in aged care, real estate, and the nonprofit sector discover that a lot of their hardest problems have a geographic dimension they’ve never looked at.

He’s an active member of Brisbane’s tech community and a speaker whose work sits at the edge of where AI meets the decisions no dashboard has figured out how to make yet.

Australian Financial Complaints Authority

David Lacey

Chief Scams Officer, Australian Financial Complaints Authority

David Lacey is the inaugural Chief Scams Officer at the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA), where he leads the development of a world first, multi party external dispute resolution framework for scams as part of the Government’s Scams Prevention Framework. In this role, he is responsible for expanding AFCA’s jurisdiction to address complex scam complaints involving banks, telecommunications providers and digital platforms, helping deliver fair, accessible and effective outcomes for consumers and firms.

David brings extensive experience across cyber security, identity protection and dispute resolution, with a strong commitment to supporting individuals impacted by scams. He is the founder and former CEO of IDCARE, Australia and New Zealand’s national identity and cyber support service, where he built a leading, human centred model to assist victims of identity crime and cyber incidents. His career spans senior executive roles across government and industry in cyber and identity security, law enforcement and national security.

In addition to his executive leadership, David is an academic and researcher specialising in cyber security, human behaviour and online deception. He has published widely on scams, fraud and cyber risk, with a particular focus on the human impacts of deception based harms. He is deeply passionate about improving outcomes for those affected by scams and identity crime, bringing a strong focus on fairness, transparency and community impact to his work at AFCA

Brisbane 2032

Dominique Lamb

Director of Community Affairs, Brisbane 2032

Dominique Lamb has a diverse background in corporate affairs, industrial relations, and not-for-profits. Dominique was previously the CEO of the National Retail Association and a director of NRA Legal.

In her role as CEO, Dominique advocated on behalf of 60,000 shop fronts across the country about a diverse range of issues, including but not limited to crime, ESG, youth employment, industrial relations, leasing and tenancy, franchising, and the digital economy.

Dominique served as the Queensland Small Business Commissioner from December 2022 until October 2025, where she focused on improving the operating environment for small businesses and reducing the time and cost of resolving disputes.

From October 2025, Dominique has taken on the role of Director of Community Affairs for the Brisbane Olympic Games, where she will continue her commitment to community engagement and advocacy.

Beyond her professional endeavours, Dominique is deeply committed to social causes, particularly those addressing domestic and family violence and closing the gap in our regional, remote, and rural communities.

Dept of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation

Elise Henry

Director – Private Sector Partnerships, DETSI

Elise Henry has more than 20 years working across innovation, economic development and government. Director of Innovation Partnerships in the Queensland Government, Elise leads a team responsible for the Corporate Innovation Network and the delivery of innovation challenges that connect industry, government, SMEs and startups. Elise specialises in building strategic partnerships that drive collaboration, innovation adoption and economic growth across Queensland.

SEEK

Fernando Mourao

Head of Responsible AI, SEEK

Fernando Mourão is Head of Responsible AI at SEEK, where he transforms responsible AI principles into operational reality for enterprise-scale deployments. With a decade of experience across AI, data science, and recommender systems, Fernando combines deep technical expertise with strategic governance leadership. His academic foundation, a PhD in Computer Science and executive education from MIT Sloan School of Management, informs his pragmatic approach to bridging AI strategy, governance, and operations. Beyond SEEK, Fernando serves on the Governance Institute of Australia’s AI Governance Expert Advisory Panel, contributing to industry-wide best practices. An AIGP-certified professional with 50+ publications, Fernando is dedicated to advancing responsible AI from the frameworks to the front lines, championing governance that keeps pace with innovation while building trust and delivering business value.

Quadley

Gen Fink

Founder, Quadley

Gen Fink is the founder of Quadley, a digital operations and communications platform for Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA). After experiencing the systemic communication chaos in campus living firsthand, she has spent the last nine months building Quadley, combining her rigorous professional standards with the guidance of industry mentors to build a secure, AI-powered hub for the modern student. Gennifer has built a career in SaaS strategy, service innovation, sales and executive leadership – learning exactly how technology should deliver for the end-user.

Cortisonic

Glen Harris

Founder, Cortisonic

Dr. Glen Harris is the Chief Executive Officer of Cortisonic. A physicist by training, his career spans quantum physics, nanomechanics, and advanced technology development.

After earning his PhD from the University of Queensland in 2015, he conducted postdoctoral research at Yale University, working on cutting-edge quantum systems in both experimental and theoretical physics. His expertise includes optomechanics, quantum sensing, and nanofabrication, where his work has pushed the boundaries of precision technologies.

Transitioning from academia to industry, Dr. Harris focuses on bridging fundamental research and commercial innovation. As CEO, he sets Cortisonic’s strategic direction and leads the translation of deep-tech research into scalable, real-world solutions.

Intuit Technologies

Heath Roberts

Senior Executive, Intuit Technologies

Heath Roberts is a senior executive at Intuit Technologies and leads the Advisory Practice, specialising in IT strategy, business process optimisation, and project portfolio management. He works closely with C-suite executives to align technology investment to business priorities and measurable outcomes, particularly in environments shaped by complexity, risk, and competing pressures.

With a background in management consulting and business development, Heath focuses on sequencing, governance, and decision structure. He supports organisations to bring clarity to technology investment when operating conditions are unstable and accountability is visible. Holding an MBA from the University of New England (AU), he brings a disciplined, commercially grounded perspective to executive technology decision-making.

Leukaemia Foundation

Isaac Williams

Head of Digital and Marketing Automation, Leukaemia Foundation

Hi, I’m Isaac. I lead Digital and Marketing Automation at the Leukaemia Foundation, where I work across digital experience, marketing technology, paid media and digital transformation. Most of my work sits at the intersection of technology and real human impact. I love figuring out how to connect systems, teams and strategy in ways that actually improve outcomes. I’m particularly interested in practical AI adoption and building digital capability inside complex organisations.

Dept of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation

Jacqueline Steel

Director, Sector Development, Innovation, DETSI

Jacqueline Steel is Director Sector Development for Innovation with the Queensland Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation. Over the past 10 years, Jacki’s role has focused on activities that bring innovators together as a community to share knowledge, establish connections and create pathways to translate ideas into impact. Jacki values collaboration and advocates strongly for investment in collective efforts that address real world problems in our businesses, communities and economy. By focusing on the future, Jacki and her team help empower regional leaders to translate insights into action and drive tangible outcomes for their communities.

Screen Queensland

Jacqui Feeney

CEO, Screen Queensland

Jacqui Feeney is CEO of Screen Queensland where she leads a team dedicated to building a sustainable, future proofed screen industry in Queensland.

Jacqui is a highly strategic creative business leader experience in entertainment, tech and innovation. Previously she held senior management roles at leading national and global media and entertainment companies including Fox Networks Group, National Geographic, Foxtel and SBS World Movies where she led major commissions and growth initiatives.
Jacqui has held a range of board responsibilities, including directorships with Ausfilm, start-up incubator Fishburners, Foxtel joint-ventures Nickelodeon and XYZ, the ASTRA industry association, plus NFPs Documentary Australia and the Sydney Film Festival where she was chair.

Absolutely AI

Jamie van Leeuwen

Creative Director, Absolutely AI

Jamie van Leeuwen is the Founder and Creative Director of Absolutely AI and a leading Australian voice in AI-driven storytelling. An award-winning creative and keynote speaker, he works with brands, institutions and cultural organisations to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping film and media. His focus is on combining human creativity with emerging technology to make powerful storytelling more accessible to the next generation of creators.

integr8 Investment Group

Jason Titman

Director and Executive Chair, integr8 Investment Group (Titman Family Office)

Jason Titman is an internationally experienced CEO, investor, board director and strategic advisor with more than 30 years of leadership across fintech, digital assets, eCommerce, professional services, hospitality, property development and high-growth businesses.

Having served as CEO, founder, investor and board member, Jason brings a unique blend of strategic leadership and operational execution. He has successfully guided organisations through rapid growth, international expansion, business transformation, debt and capital raisings and successful exits, working closely with founders, boards, private equity and venture capital investors.

Jason is passionate about building exceptional businesses by developing exceptional leaders. He is recognised for aligning stakeholders around a shared vision, creating high-performance cultures and helping organisations harness innovation and emerging technologies to achieve sustainable growth.

Alongside his commercial career, Jason serves on not-for-profit boards and is committed to creating opportunities through philanthropy, education and sport. He is particularly passionate about helping athletes build successful futures beyond competition.

Jason is driven by the belief that great leadership is measured not only by the businesses it builds, but by the lives it positively influences.

DIGI

Jennifer Duxbury

Director Policy, Regulatory Affairs and Research, DIGI

Jenny is a lawyer, public policy practitioner, and occasional academic with a career in media law, digital technology, and regulatory design. Her area of expertise is the hard policy questions that emerge at the interface of technology and media regulation. Most recently, as Director of Public Policy and Regulatory Affairs at the Digital Industry Group Inc (DIGI), she led the development of two landmark Australian regulatory frameworks: the Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation and the 15 Online Safety Codes registered under the Online Safety Act 2021, covering illegal content and age-restricted material unsuitable for audiences under 18.

Jenny holds a PhD in Public Policy examining the role of experts in value-laden public policy debates, a question that is increasingly apt in the era of artificial intelligence and synthetic media. She teaches on the Law and MBA programs at the University of Canberra, bringing real-world regulatory experience into the classroom.

Fun Facts:

• Wrote a PhD about whether experts actually matter at all in messy policy debates; then spent years proving they do (sometimes).
• Led the drafting of strict online safety rules for AI chatbots—a landmark achievement of the digital industry, and therefore the sort of story the Australian media prefers not to publish.
• Firmly believes good digital regulation is 10% drafting, 30% stakeholder wrangling, and 60% hoping the platform you just regulated doesn’t quietly become a cryptocurrency exchange, and a dating app for robots before the code you just drafted takes effect.

Jenny speaks on digital media regulation, online safety and disinformation policy, and the role of industry codes in the Australian regulatory landscape.

Flight Centre

Jess Santos

Global Community Experience Manager, Flight Centre

Jess is Flight Centre’s Global Community Experience & Social Media Manager — part voice of the customer, part voice of the brand, and full-time bridge between the two.

She looks after social and review platforms across five equity countries, which means she’s had a front-row seat to pretty much every kind of traveller feedback there is.

She also runs global oversight of Flight Centre’s Help Centre and Virtual Captain, our Salesforce Einstein-powered chatbot. Her role and experience are proof that great customer experience isn’t about choosing between humans and tech — it’s about knowing exactly when to use which.

Jess’s philosophy is simple: “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” So she keeps chasing new rooms — new challenges, new platforms, new problems worth solving.

IWJ Global

Jim Hogan

Founder & Principal Strategist, IWJ Global

Jim Hogan is a global strategist, keynote speaker, and Founder & Principal Strategist of IWJ Global. His work sits at the intersection of strategy, innovation, and human cognition, with a focus on helping organisations navigate complexity and build systems that adapt, learn, and scale.

With a career spanning enterprise technology, healthcare, and large-scale transformation, Jim has advised executive leaders across North America, APAC, and EMEA on how to translate emerging technologies and new ways of thinking into practical, high-impact outcomes. He is known for his ability to connect deep technical insight with executive decision-making, shaping strategies that are both ambitious and executable.

Jim’s current research explores neuroinclusion as a strategic capability — examining how organisations can unlock competitive advantage by designing for cognitive diversity. His work challenges traditional assumptions about leadership, agility, and innovation, reframing inclusion not as a moral imperative, but as a mechanism of strategic advantage.

An engaging and thought-provoking speaker, Jim brings a distinctive blend of storytelling, systems thinking, and real-world experience to the stage. His keynotes invite leaders to rethink how strategy is formed in complex environments — and how the conditions they create determine the outcomes they achieve.

Writer

Joan Westenberg

Writer

I’m a writer, investor, philosopher and founder. I’ve been published by Wired, the AFR, The Next Web, TIME, etc. Through Westenberg, I cover tech, philosophy and humans. As a creator, I help technology companies market their platforms and tell better stories. I founded Studio Self, a product positioning agency, and Signalvs, a new media PR startup. In 2025, I published Permissionless: A Manifesto for the Future of Everything, an anti-gatekeeping book for builders and pragmatists.

Federation University

Kim Percy

Artist, Federation University

Dr Kim Percy is a multidisciplinary artist, photographer, designer, and educator whose research sits at the intersection of neurodivergence, creativity, and emerging technology. Holding a PhD in Visual Arts, she is an Adjunct Researcher and a lecturer at Federation University and Collarts. As Head of Training at re:Think Dyslexia, she designs and delivers neurodivergence-focused programs for workplaces, government departments, and VET providers, grounded in Universal Design for Learning.

Her creative research explores how neurodivergent ways of thinking reshape artistic practice, pedagogy, and design. Kim has presented at the British Dyslexia Association Conference, LaTrobe University’s Language, Creativity and AI symposium, and multiple national conferences on creativity, education, and Metamodernism. She has been selected for numerous top-tier awards and festivals across Australia and internationally, and is intrigued by where digital technology and AI may take us. She is a passionate advocate for neuroaffirming pedagogy and the creative potential of neurodivergent minds.

ABC News

Laura Gartry

Newsroom Innovation Lead, ABC News

Laura Gartry is the Newsroom Innovation Lead at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, where she leads strategic projects focused on digital transformation and the future of news. Her work centres on helping teams adopt new formats and emerging technologies in ways that strengthen creativity, trust and audience connection, with a focus on experimentation and guiding the responsible use of AI in content production.

Laura has presented at national and international forums including the National Ethnic & Multicultural Broadcasters’ Conference, Frontline Club (London), Public Values in the Algorithmic Society (Amsterdam) and government-led programs such as DFAT-supported training initiatives. Her work brings together practical newsroom experience with broader industry and policy discussions on the future of media.

In 2024, she completed a Reuters Institute Journalist Fellowship at the University of Oxford, where she researched personalised news in the public interest. She is currently undertaking a PhD focused on designing algorithms for news recommender systems, exploring how personalisation can better serve audiences.

Earlier in her career, Laura built a strong foundation in investigative journalism as a senior digital producer on Four Corners and as a news reporter across Australia.

UniQuest Extension Fund

Leigh Ford

Investment Manager, UniQuest Extension Fund

Bio Coming Soon

Something Digital

Lisa Renneisen

Co-Founder, Something Digital

For more than 25 years, Lisa Renneisen has built a career across marketing, partnerships, events and digital strategy, working throughout Europe and Australia.

As Co-Founder of Something Digital and Bright Humans, Lisa specialises in creating meaningful experiences that bring people, ideas and industries together. With deep expertise across marketing, project management and customer experience, she leads the strategy and delivery of festivals, events and partnerships designed to spark connection, collaboration and innovation.

Known for her people-first approach, Lisa has a talent for building communities and creating standout journeys for clients, partners, attendees and stakeholders. She is particularly passionate about how emerging technologies and digital tools can enhance human connection and elevate live experiences.

Advancer

Llew Jury

Managing Director, Advancer

Llew is a leading digital & business innovation leader who’s led thousands of AI, digital, marketing and technology projects over the past 25 years. As Managing Director of AI Agency Advancer, he partners with leading business clients on AI, Training, Automation, Strategy and Development.

He’s a founding director of Sprint Ventures, an Australian Venture Capital firm with two funds, where he provides board governance and advisory to Sprint’s portfolio companies.

He is the former Founder & Managing Director of The Reload Group one of Australia’s largest independent digital agencies with 90 staff in 4 countries, which he built, globally expanded and then sold to Hardie Grant Media in 2022. Llew additionally was the co-founder of web design and app development agency Alfresco, which he sold in 2006 to a consortium led by the ASX listed STW Group.

Suncorp

Manelle Issa

Digital Capability Manager, Suncorp

Manelle is the Digital Capability Manager, delivering on strategic digital capabilities and workforce transformation at Suncorp, one of Australia’s largest insurance companies. At Suncorp, she has held previous roles within marketing, planning and governance working in strategic investment planning and performance. Prior to this, Manelle held worked in the Chamber of Commerce network within Australia and China, on international trade projects and with delegations, with a focus on export growth for Queensland business in China. She was program manager of the Queensland Government ecoBiz initative, providing education and advisory services to help SMEs across Queensland improve environmental sustainability and productivity using a state-of-the-art digital measurement platform developed in conjunction with University of Southern Queensland. Manelle also delivered the federally funded Digital Enterprise Program to uplift digital literacy for Small-Medium Enterprise.

Manelle is an Executive MBA candidate at Melbourne Business School. She holds a Graduate Certificate in Data Analytics (GPA 6.25) and Bachelor of Business and Creative Industries (with distinction) majoring in Marketing and Media Communications from the Queensland University of Technology.

In 2018, Manelle was appointed to the board of the Australia-China Youth Dialogue, a track-II dialogue fostering bilateral relations, leading digital transformation within the organisation. Manelle has been a mentor since 2014 and is passionate about contributing to the community. She leads the One Mob employee resource group at Suncorp, striving to cultivate a deadly, welcoming, and inclusive environment that honours and celebrates the rich diversity of First Nations culture.

Planet Startup

Marc Orchard

CEO | Founder, Planet Startup

Bio Coming Soon

QUT

Marek Kowalkiewicz

Professor and Chair in Digital Economy, QUT

Marek Kowalkiewicz is a LinkedIn Top Voice and one of Thinkers360’s Top 100 Global AI Thought Leaders. He is the author of The Economy of Algorithms: AI and the Rise of the Digital Minions, winner of the 2024 Australian Business Book Award (Technology). As Professor and Chair in Digital Economy at QUT Business School, Marek brings both research depth and real-world experience, having led global innovation teams in Silicon Valley, founded SAP’s Machine Learning Lab in Singapore, and held research roles at Microsoft Research Asia. His work helps leaders navigate AI’s business implications.

CSIRO

Maren Strachen

National Innovation Facilitator, CSIRO

Maren Strachan is a seasoned strategy and design facilitator, currently serving as a National Innovation Facilitator at CSIRO. With over 20 years’ experience across purpose-driven organisations, Maren has developed expertise in leading transformative initiatives, facilitating impactful workshops, stakeholder engagement, and translating complex concepts into actionable strategies. Maren’s diverse background includes executive leadership roles across sectors and industries, equipping her with a keen understanding of decision-making processes and their implications for organisational operations. Her current role at CSIRO involves designing engagement experiences to illicit and extract relevant information, coaching and working with cross-disciplinary teams to develop and execute strategies that support national innovation priorities, leveraging design thinking and facilitation to align vision with execution.

Tourism Australia

Melinda Walters

GM Digital & Marketing Operations, Tourism Australia

Melinda Walters is an accomplished marketing, digital and business leader with more than 20 years’ experience leading brand transformation, digital strategy, customer experience and commercial growth across some of Australia’s most recognised organisations. As General Manager, Digital and Marketing Operations at Tourism Australia, she leads the digital team driving digital innovation, global marketing operations, martech, data, customer experience and emerging AI initiatives.

Throughout her career, Melinda has built a reputation for combining strategic thinking with operational excellence, helping organisations navigate periods of rapid technological and consumer change. She has helped evolve Tourism Australia’s globally recognised marketing programs, including the award-winning “Come and Say G’day” campaign, and is passionate about how AI, search transformation and digital innovation are reshaping the future of marketing and customer engagement.

McCullough Robertson

Melissa Miller

Partner, McCullough Robertson

Melissa Miller is a Partner in McCullough Robertson’s Digital and Intellectual Property team, with more than 15 years’ experience helping organisations protect, manage and commercialise intellectual property and technology. She advises clients across sectors including life sciences, food and agribusiness, consumer, industrial and manufacturing, working with start-ups, listed and private companies, multinationals, universities and research organisations.

At Something Digital, Melissa will draw on her experience in IP strategy, commercial contracting, licensing, data, privacy and technology transactions to help digital leaders understand the practical IP issues that arise when ideas, innovation and emerging technologies move from concept to market.

Optio Capital

Michael Cotton

CPO, Optio Capital

Serial founder, CPO @ Optio Capital a private fund focusing of emerging technology.

Tourism and Events Queensland

Michelle Blancato

Creative & Content Director, Tourism and Events Queensland

Michelle is a media professional with over 20 years’ experience in the publishing and marketing industries. As the Creative and Content Director at Tourism and Events Queensland, Michelle ensures the successful and strategic delivery of the Queensland brand across global content channels and marketing initiatives.

Writer & Refugee Advocate

Nadine Cohen

Writer & Refugee Advocate

Nadine J. Cohen is a Sydney-based writer with bylines in The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, the SMH, the ABC, Harper’s Bazaar and more. She was among the first recipients of a D&AD Yellow Pencil Award in Viral Copywriting and among the first digital copywriters in the country, later working in strategy at Google before co-founding the fashion image-sharing startup The Photo Diner (now Flaunter). Nadine’s bestselling debut novel, Everyone and Everything, was released to critical acclaim in 2023, and she co-hosts the multi-award-winning Grave Matters podcast on SBS. She is also a passionate independent advocate for refugees affected by Australia’s offshore detention program.

Something Digital

Nadine Zrinzo

Co-Founder, Something Digital

Nadine has been bringing experiences to life almost 20 years across Australia, Asia, Europe and the US.

At Something Digital, Nadine takes on the role of a lead project manager + chief content curator. With a penchant for “leave no detail spared”, she brings to our events + experiences strong research, business production and project management skills.

Nadine’s superpower? Curating event programs and then pairing these with some of the most outstanding speakers on the planet. All with the goal of delivering a mind-blowing experience for attendees.

The University of Queensland

Naipeng Dong

Senior Lecturer The University of Queensland

Dr. Naipeng Dong is an expert in automatic formal verification of security and privacy in cryptographic protocols, Android applications and blockchain systems.

She has developed efficient automatic formal verification techniques with a focus on attacker reasoning and analysis on cryptogrpahic protocols, developed algorithms to verify fault-tolerance of systems with dishonest participants, and analysed systems in e-auction, e-health, Single-Sign-on authentication, and blockchain consensus.

Caloundra City Private School

Nathan Reynolds

Director of Enterprise and Partnerships, Caloundra City Private School

Nathan Reynolds is an educational leader with extensive experience in school design, systems leadership, and future-focused models of secondary education. Across his career, he has contributed to the establishment of two purpose-built schools and is currently leading the implementation of a transferable model of education that integrates student agency, industry engagement, and recognised academic pathways, including ATAR and QCE potential.

His work sits at the intersection of strategy, structure, and culture, with a particular focus on building learning environments that are intentionally designed rather than inherited by tradition. Nathan’s professional practice is driven by a central question: what becomes possible when schools are built to develop talent on purpose, rather than relying on individual brilliance within outdated systems?

The University of Queensland

Nic Carah

Director of Centre for Digital Cultures and Societies, The University of Queensland

Nicholas Carah is Director of the Centre for Digital Cultures and Societies and Professor in the School of Communication and Arts at The University of Queensland. He is Deputy Director of the Australian Internet Observatory and a Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.

The MachineGenes Group

Nigel Greenwood

Founder, The MachineGenes Group

Nigel Greenwood is an Australian mathematician, one of Australia’s Spitfire Memorial Defence Fellows and a former Honorary Senior Fellow in the School of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Queensland. He holds a first-class honours degree in pure mathematics and a PhD in applied mathematics, in which he pioneered a form of adversarial AI in 1994.

He is the inventor of the MachineGenes platform: novel forms of evolutionary Machine Learning (ML) and generative adversarial AI, built on a completely different basis to conventional ML/AI. Instead of being based on artificial neural networks (ANN), the MachineGenes platform is inspired by evolutionary ecosystems. It has significant advantages over ANN-based AI, including the ability to use tiny fragments of noise-polluted sensor data to generate fully-explainable models. A new form of generative adversarial AI running on isolated Edge devices then designs good strategies from bad training data.

It does not have the onerous training, computing, memory or power requirements of ANN-based AI, and does not ‘drift’ or hallucinate. The MachineGenes platform has been granted patents in the United States, UK/Europe, Canada, Australia and Singapore, and has further patents pending in the US, UK and Europe.

Nigel led Team MachineGenes in the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, a global race 2016-2021 to use AI to address some of humanity’s most pressing problems, for an end-prize larger than the Nobel. Demonstrating a medical application of its AI (a machine-intelligent artificial pancreas for unstable type-1 diabetes) Team MachineGenes was consistently listed among the top-10 teams worldwide and was a global semi-finalist in 2020. This work was also show-cased in the United Nation’s ‘AI for Good’ Global Summit in Geneva, Switzerland 2019, and awarded Australia’s National Bionics Innovation Prize in 2021.

In engineering, the team has also demonstrated that fully-explainable physics-based digital twins for individual aviation engines can literally be evolved in simulation, as if they were living organisms.

Nigel has founded The MachineGenes Group of companies to commercialise this technology in medicine and engineering. The Group is finally emerging from stealth mode in 2026.

BeatenZone Venture Partners

Peta Ellis

General Manager, BeatenZone Venture Partners

Peta Ellis has spent nearly 30 years turning potential into impact.

As General Manager at Beaten Zone Venture Partners, she leads investment in Australia’s next generation of defence and space technology, backing the founders who’ll shape what comes next.

A Human Transformation Architect, Executive Coach, and Keynote Speaker, Peta is known for one thing: cutting through the noise to find what’s really holding people and businesses back. Her work spans strategic investment, founder support, and executive coaching, with a particular focus on GenX professionals building legacies that last.

Host of The Briefing Room podcast. Strategist by trade. Truth-teller by nature.

Indigital

Peta-Anne Toohey

Social Reciprocity Lead, Indigital

Peta Toohey is a proud Aboriginal woman with ties to the Gundungurra and Dharug woman and Social Reciprocity, Research, Impact and Evaluation Manager at Indigital. She works alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to ensure emerging technologies strengthen Caring for Country, support community-led innovation, and keep communities at the centre of decisions about their data, knowledge and futures. With a background in sociology and applied research, Peta leads Indigital’s research, evaluation and Indigenous Data Governance work, bringing together communities, government, researchers and industry to translate Indigenous Data Sovereignty, Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property rights, and cultural authority into practical governance for emerging technologies. She led the development of Indigital’s Indigenous Data Protocols, embedding principles of consent, reciprocity and cultural authority into the organisation’s approach to data and AI. Peta has shared this work nationally and internationally, including at SXSW Sydney and CRUSA in Costa Rica, contributing to global conversations on Indigenous governance and the future of AI.

Remarkable

Pete Horsley

Founder, Remarkable

A global leader in inclusive innovation, Pete Horsley is dedicated to harnessing technology to elevate all human potential. As the Founder of Remarkable, the global startup venture arm of Cerebral Palsy Alliance, he is investing in and accelerating the next generation of Disability Tech solutions that build better technologies, break down barriers and drive equality.

With over 20 years in the disability sector, Pete has led global collaborations across industry, NGO, and academia, to foster systemic change. As a co-founder of the +N Inclusive Innovation Network, he brings together global technology leaders to scale impact.

Inductive

Peter Laurie

Director, Inductive

Peter participates heavily in the Australian innovation ecosystem. He has been an entrepreneur in residence for over twenty accelerator programs. He presents regularly on all aspects of entrepreneurship and innovation to a broad range of audiences, and is running an accelerator program named Inductive (https://inductive.au).

Peter is an electrical engineer by training, has an MBA from QUT, and has been doing commercial software development for the last thirty years. Peter won the Queensland Pearcey Entrepreneur Award for 2018.

Innovation Architects

Philippe Ceulen

Managing Director, Innovation Architects

Philippe Ceulen (Phil) is Managing Director of Innovation Architects, where he helps organisations and ecosystems innovate and grow through partnerships, programs, and advisory across Australia and ASEAN, and a Venture Partner at Tundra Ventures (formerly Mandalay), investing in Australia’s leading farm-to-fork innovations. A seasoned venture builder who has co-founded startups, led accelerators, and built founder communities, Phil brings a blend of investor insight and founder experience to building thriving innovation ecosystems.

On The House

Remy Tucker

Founder & CEO, On The House

Student midwife turned marketer, Remy Tucker understands both women and the brands trying to reach them. She’s the founder and CEO of ON THE HOUSE, the company behind free period products, funded by ads that actually work.

ON THE HOUSE puts free period product dispensers in high traffic women’s bathrooms, that double as digital billboards. The brand’s campaign dollars pay for the products inside.

The insight underneath it: every year, $1T gets spent on advertising trying to reach women. ON THE HOUSE reroutes a slice of that spend to a channel women actually notice, and trust.

So far the machines have dispensed 24,000 products, helped 9,000 women, and grown to 55 dispensers across the east coast of Australia, set to scale across Australia in 2027.

BrighterSuper

Renee Davidson

Head of Marketing, BrighterSuper

Renee Davidson is the Head of Marketing at Brighter Super, a leading Queensland-based superannuation fund that manages over $32 billion in retirement savings for more than 230,000 members. Her role involves overseeing marketing strategies to support the fund’s growth and brand presence, following the merger of LGIAsuper and Energy Super, and the acquisition of Suncorp Super.

Before joining Brighter Super, Renee held several senior marketing positions. Including General Manager of Marketing at Allianz Australia and RACQ, where she gained extensive experience in the financial services industry.

Her contributions to marketing have been recognised through her position as Queensland Patron of Australian Marketing Institute and inclusion in the CMO Top50.

Flyweel

Reuben Scheckter

CEO, Flyweel

Reuben Scheckter is the Co-Founder and CEO of Flyweel, an agentic finance platform for businesses that grow through paid advertising.

Before founding Flyweel, Reuben spent more than a decade building and scaling a lead generation business that deployed over $40 million in digital ad spend. The business was acquired and named an Australian Financial Review Fast Starter in 2022.

He saw the same problem repeatedly: as ad spend scales, the numbers become harder to trust, finance and growth teams work from different realities, and decisions arrive after the money has moved.

At Flyweel, Reuben is building the control layer for advertising spend, alongside the capital businesses need to close the gap between upfront spend and revenue realisation across the sales cycle. He is passionate about lean, founder-led growth, practical AI, performance marketing, sales, and the systems companies need when marketing becomes a core acquisition channel.

Spoutlogic

Rob Hudson

Founder, Spoutlogic

I combine commercial and brand rigour, human understanding and multidisciplinary thinking to help businesses seize the right opportunity, find their direction and truly perform in the categories they operate within.

I have over 25 years of experience specialising in business transformation strategy through branding, communications, and marketing, all with a layer of digital and creative innovation.

Dovetale Sport

Sam Forbes

Co-Founder & Exec Chair, Dovetale Sport

Sam Forbes is exploring a deceptively practical question: what happens when AI and quantum computing move beyond the lab and begin solving real-world problems?

A technology leader with more than 20 years’ experience, Sam is Co-Founder and Executive Chair of Dovetale Sport, where computer vision, AI and quantum optimisation turn ordinary match footage into actionable intelligence for coaches and clubs. He is also a PhD researcher at the University of Southern Queensland, investigating hybrid AI–quantum approaches to complex optimisation, with sport as a real-world test bed.

Bridging frontier research and commercial application, Sam brings a grounded perspective on what the next intelligence stack can do now…and what it may make possible next.

BOP Industries

Scott Millar

Generational Consultant, BOP Industries

Scott Millar is a high-impact generational strategist, dynamic keynote speaker and trusted voice on the future of work. Through his work with over 20,000 young people each year, Scott offers unparalleled insight into the trends transforming workplaces, industries and communities.

Driven by a mission to bridge generational divides and future-proof organisations, Scott empowers leaders to connect with the next generation of consumers and employees in meaningful, strategic ways. As one of Australia’s Top 30 Business Leaders Under 30, APAC’s Inspiring Youth Leader and a two-time TEDx speaker, he brings deep expertise and fresh perspective to every stage he steps onto.

Scott works with leaders across corporate, government and industry to stay ahead of generational shifts, emerging technologies and evolving workforce trends. Whether it’s designing strategies for intergenerational teams, understanding the next generation of consumers or navigating our increasingly digital future of work, he helps organisations build relevance and resilience in a rapidly changing world.

Known for his high-energy delivery and insight-driven storytelling, Scott leaves audiences feeling inspired, empowered and hopeful about what’s ahead. His work challenges teams to reimagine leadership, communication and culture in ways that attract top talent, deepen customer loyalty and future-proof their organisations, all while delivering practical strategies and tangible takeaways they can apply immediately.

Children's Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service

Shae Quabba

Design Anthropologist + Director, Experience and Engagement, Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service

Shae is a Design Anthropologist and experience innovation leader who has worked in the diverse sectors of health, entertainment, lifestyle technology, arts, FMCG and financial services. Following a successful career in business communications, she pivoted to attain her Master of Design with a focus on participatory innovation. Shae now works at the intersection of consumer experience, engagement and service design for social impact, curious about the influence of culture, context and an individual’s values on the experience design process. She is currently the Director of Experience & Engagement at Children’s Health Queensland.

ProcurePro

Shilpa Mohan

VP of Operations, ProcurePro

Originally studying Pharmacy, Shilpa Mohan went onto become an award-winning Interior Designer, working on small scale to $50m projects. Concurrently, her passion for storytelling saw her step onto the stage as a Speaker Curator and Host for TEDxSydney, where her curated talks have amassed $1m+ views.

After deciding to pivot to the tech space, Shilpa joined ProcurePro as their 8th employee in 2022 – an AFR Fast Starter company (2023,2024,2025), ranked LinkedIn’s Top 10 Startups 2024,2025. As Head of Operations, she has been instrumental in scaling the business globally to ~100 employees.

Shilpa has become a passionate advocate for Australia’s startup ecosystem as an angel investor, speaker, Startmate Mentor, an Airtree Pioneers Community Advisor, and SXSW Tech/Startups Advisor where she champions for the growth and inclusivity of the tech and startup landscape. She’s on a mission to help people pivot into startups, mentor women on accelerating their careers and find their voice and help founders build successful startups by coaching on operations, fundraising and storytelling.

The University of Queensland

Simon Beuse

PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland

Simon Beuse got his first computer as a kid, one of those bulky grey machines that took 20 minutes to boot. Sitting on a small wooden desk, it became his playground for experimenting, breaking, and fixing things. Once he got something running, the excitement faded. He was already chasing what was next.

That same curiosity now drives his work across AI, startups, and scaling. Simon brings over a decade of hands-on experience at the intersection of digital technology and firm growth. At Pon.Bike, the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer, he was involved in digital transformation initiatives across Germany, Australia, and the US. He has since worked for a Morgan Stanley-backed AI startup in Silicon Valley and founded Uncover Strategy, a consultancy and blog helping SMEs in Australia and Germany put AI to practical use.

As a fully-funded PhD candidate and UQ Global Change Scholar, Simon researches how physical firms use AI to scale, a question he has pursued for years through fieldwork, expert interviews, and speaking at events across the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem. His core conviction: AI is still massively underutilised in the businesses that need it most.

He is also a certified angel investor, a project reviewer for the Schmidt Futures and Rhodes Trust Rise Program, and an active connector between the German and Australian startup communities.

TEN13

Sophie Robertson

Partner, TEN13

“Sophie Robertson is a Partner at TEN13, a Brisbane-based venture capital and private equity firm that’s deployed $130m+ into 50+ early-stage tech companies across the globe – backing breakouts like Everlab, Autograb, Clipchamp (exited to MSFT), Go1 and Me&U. TEN13 runs a deal-by-deal model with a network of 500+ sophisticated investors and is sector agnostic.

Sophie leads Investor Relations and Capital Formation. She joined TEN13 after 15 years at Credit Suisse in London and Sydney as Director of Institutional Equity Sales.

With a non-technical background, she’s found recent developments in AI incredibly liberating from a personal workflow perspective, and continues to scratch the surface on the many possibilities ahead.

Blue Corridor Ventures

Steve Allan

Founding Partner, Blue Corridor Ventures

“Steve Allan is a Bay Area native with a few decades of experience in the innovation economy. Steve is an active Angel investor, and he currently leads Blue Corridor Ventures, an Australian-based investment firm focused on pre-seed & seed stage, late R&D and early commercial Australian start-ups seeking a strategic financial partner experienced in rapidly scaling in North America. Steve also serves as an Independent Member of the QIC Ventures Investment Committee.

Prior to relocating from San Francisco, California to Brisbane, Queensland, Steve ran a Silicon Valley-based Family Office and headed Silicon Valley Bank Analytics and Strategic Advisory business. In his brief time away from the Bay Area, Steve worked with JPMorgan Chase and AT&T in New York.

Steve has an MBA from Duke University and a BA from The University of Notre Dame. Steve is a CFA charterholder.

The Laundry Lady

Susan Toft

Founder and CEO, The Laundry Lady

Susan Toft is Founder & CEO of The Laundry Lady, the world’s first online laundry services marketplace. With 450+ contractors across three countries, she empowers women through tech innovation. A multi-award-winning entrepreneur, Susan champions workplace flexibility and women’s entrepreneurship, transforming laundry into a $12M global enterprise.

Yaala Sparkling

Tara Croker

Founder & Managing Director, Yaala Sparkling

Tara Croker, a proud First Nations Wiradjuri woman, is a trailblazing entrepreneur who seamlessly merges her Indigenous heritage with the dynamic world of business. Her impressive career trajectory includes coveted roles in high profile global corporations such as Google, YouTube, and News Corp, where she honed her business acumen and marketing expertise.

Driven by a deep rooted passion for the land and community, Tara founded Yaala Sparkling, a multi-award winning beverage company that celebrates the rich flavours of native Australian plants. She not only promotes sustainable and healthy practices, but also strives to increase First Nations participation within the native food industry. This manifests in her commitment to sourcing ingredients locally, then collaborating with Indigenous artists to tell the authentic story of the plants. With each sip of Yaala Sparkling, people embark on a journey of cultural discovery, savouring the authentic flavours that have sustained Indigenous communities for generations. Tara’s vision for Yaala Sparkling is twofold: to increase First Nations representation in the native food industry and to authentically connect people to native Australian plants.

Tara’s entrepreneurial journey has been marked by significant milestones, including a successful pitch on Shark Tank, numerous awards recognising her business acumen, co-Authoring a book, and studying at Harvard University. Beyond her professional accomplishments, she is a dedicated advocate for reconciliation efforts, mentoring young leaders and sitting on boards and advisory committees. Tara’s story is a testament to the power of combining cultural heritage with business and innovation, offering a unique perspective on leadership, entrepreneurship, and the pursuit of business with purpose.”

RACQ

Tim Cochrane

General Manager, Marketing, Membership and Digital, RACQ

I help organisations unlock sustainable growth by modernising customer, digital and operating model capabilities.

Over the past 15 years I have led growth and transformation across financial services, membership organisations and social enterprise, delivering outcomes including 3x customer growth at QSuper, 75,000+ net member growth at RACQ and enterprise transformation programs generating more than $70M in projected value.

My experience spans growth strategy, customer and member experience, product and service innovation, digital transformation, data and AI, organisational design and commercial leadership. I enjoy bringing together strategy, technology and people to solve complex problems, accelerate growth and create lasting customer value.

I am interested in how AI, advanced analytics and digital platforms can help organisations improve productivity, strengthen customer engagement and unlock new sources of value. Recent work has included leading AI-enabled marketing transformation, establishing Adobe’s first APAC Lighthouse partnership and helping shape enterprise digital

transformation strategies.

As a leader, I believe sustainable growth comes from aligning people, capability and culture behind a clear strategy, then maintaining a relentless focus on execution. I am passionate about developing high-performing teams and helping organisations navigate periods of significant change.

The University of Queensland

Tim Kastelle

Professor and Director of the Andrew N. Liveris Academy for Innovation and Leadership, The University of Queensland

Tim Kastelle is Professor and Director of the Andrew N. Liveris Academy for Innovation and Leadership. The Academy’s mission is educating students with demonstrated leadership prowess, a passion for sustainability and the potential to solve problems through large-scale innovation, with the Academy also taking leadership in sustainability and innovation both locally and globally. Tim’s research, teaching and engagement work are all based on his study of innovation management. He graduated from Princeton University with a degree in economics, and his MBA and PhD were completed at UQ. He has published widely in the leading innovation journals.

Tim is deeply committed to translating research into practice to help people and organisations create value from ideas. To this end, he writes a well-regarded innovation blog for managers (http://timkastelle.org/blog/), and he has worked to develop innovation and leadership programs in collaboration with a wide range of organisations, such as the Commonwealth Science & Industrial Research Organisation, CSR, Meat & Livestock Australia, Teys Australia, Logan City Council, and Metro South Health.

The University of Queensland

Tom Doig

Creative Writing Lecturer, The University of Queensland

Dr Tom Doig is a creative nonfiction author, investigative journalist and scholar. Tom was the recipient of the 2023 CLNZ-NZSA Writer’s Award for his work on prepper subcultures in Aotearoa New Zealand. He has written two books about the unprecedented 2014 Hazelwood mine fire disaster: Hazelwood (Penguin Random House, 2020) and The Coal Face (Penguin Books Australia, 2015). Hazelwood was a finalist for the 2020 Walkley Book Award, Journalism and the 2021 Ned Kelly Awards, Best True Crime and Highly Commended in the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, Non-Fiction. The Coal Face was joint winner of the 2015 Oral History Victoria Education Innovation Award. Dr Doig has also written a humorous travel memoir, Mörön to Mörön: Two men, two bikes, one Mongolian misadventure (Allen & Unwin, 2013). He is the contributing editor of the interdisciplinary collection Living with the Climate Crisis: Voices from Aotearoa (Bridget Williams Books, 2020).

Dr Doig teaches creative nonfiction and poetry.

As a scholar, Dr Doig is interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the accelerating climate crisis, with a focus on the cultural, social and psychological aspects of climate breakdown. He is currently researching a new book: We Are All Preppers Now (forthcoming with Scribe Publications), documenting survivalists, doomsday preppers, climate activists and other subcultures of imminent collapse around the world.

Intuit Technologies

Tom Field

Enterprise Solutions Executive – Microsoft, Intuit Technologies

Tom Field is an Enterprise Solutions Executive at Intuit Technologies, specialising in enterprise platform strategy across cloud, applications and AI-enabled environments. With over 20 years’ experience spanning software development, enterprise sales and solution design, he brings a blend of technical depth and commercial leadership to complex technology engagements.

Tom leads AI solution strategy at Intuit Technologies, helping organisations apply AI and automation in ways that align with infrastructure capability, operational discipline and cost control. He works across government and enterprise environments to structure modern hybrid platforms that support AI growth while maintaining architectural clarity and accountability.

With deep expertise across software, automation and enterprise platforms, Tom focuses on translating capability into measurable business outcomes. He advocates for responsible, scalable AI adoption, ensuring emerging technologies are implemented with disciplined architecture and long-term sustainability in mind.

ProcurePro

Tom Newby

Co-Founder & Head of Data/AI/R&D, ProcurePro

Tom is a Co-Founder and Head of Data & AI at ProcurePro. He has a background in software, data and AI, and has spent the last decade working in construction, infrastructure and real estate sectors. Through co-founding ProcurePro he’s worked closely with executives and procurement teams, to solve real construction industry problems with technology.

LGAQ

Tracy Whitelaw

Chief Digital Officer, LGAQ

Tracy Whitelaw is an award-winning digital leader, startup founder and board director who has built a career around a simple belief: the most powerful thing about technology isn’t the technology. It’s what people can do with it.


As Chief Digital Officer at the Local Government Association of Queensland, Tracy leads digital, data, technology and innovation, working across Queensland’s 77 councils and championing the practical, responsible adoption of AI and emerging technology.


She’s also co-founder and CEO of immersive technology company HavenXR, holds board and advisory roles, and has delivered technology through everything from the Brisbane floods, the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games and G20 to major digital transformation programs.

Named Australian Executive Leader of the Year in 2021 and Best Government Technology Leader in 2026, Tracy is passionate about purpose, impact and building the cultures where great ideas can actually succeed. After a career spent at the intersection of people and technology, she’s learned that transformation rarely succeeds because of the tech. It succeeds because people believe in where it can take them.

UQ Ventures

Tyson Jennings

ilab Manager, UQ Ventures

Tyson is the ilab Program Manager and leads the UQ Ventures ilab Accelerator program. ilab Accelerator is a three-month program where startups receive $10,000 equity-free funding to help them get ready for market and take their venture to the next level, with a chance to pitch their idea at the ilab Pitch Night.

Tyson was previously a Ventures Program Officer and lead the Ventures Validate program. Validate is designed to help UQ students, staff and alumni to develop a validated business model in an interactive learning space.

Prior to joining Ventures, Tyson co-foundered Yodel – a community-based business listing app designed to connect locals with local businesses. Since establishing Yodel in 2017, his startup has grown significantly, raising capital, completing a major pivot, competing in pitch events across Australia, launching internationally, and becoming one of Brisbane’s most loved members of the startup ecosystem. 

Tyson has a background in corporate sales and partnerships, specialising in identifying and setting up partnerships in new and existing markets.

Tyson is originally from New Zealand and although he has been in Australia for a long time, he still loves the All Blacks and basketball!
“

Writer

Van Badham

Writer

VAN BADHAM is an internationally award-winning writer, theatremaker and occasional broadcaster. She is a graduate of a BCA/BA (hons) at the University of Wollongong, won an exchange scholarship to study at the University of Sheffield (UK) and has a Masters from the VCA.

As a journalist, she’s a featured columnist for The Guardian and has also written for The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Telegraph (UK) and The Age. She was a Walkley finalist for her non-fiction book debut, 2021’s best-selling QAnon And On: A Short and Shocking History of Internet Conspiracy Cults and she was the first Australian to win Britain’s Harold Hobson prize for theatre criticism.

As a commentator she’s appeared numerous times for the ABC’s Q And A and The Drum shows, for The Project on Ten, on Politics HQ for Sky and the Today Show on Channel 9, and regularly for ABC radio, while as a writer of radio drama she’s been broadcast both by the ABC and BBC. Presently, she co-hosts the award winning news/politics podcast The Week on Wednesday, which has had more than a million downloads as of August, 2023.

As a theatremaker, Van is a former literary associate at both London’s Finborough Theatre and Malthouse, Melbourne, and her plays include Banging Denmark for the Sydney Theatre Company, The Bloody Chamber for Malthouse, Animal Farm for Black Swan State Theatre Company of Western Australia, Big Baby for Terrapin and The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of Stars for Griffin. Van was writer in residence at LAMDA in London for two years, she was the first Australian included in the New York Summer Play Festival and her plays have had professional seasons in Canada, the US, across the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Iceland. She has won three premiers awards for drama, a Green Room award for Best Production and a London fringe award, as well as numerous awards at the Adelaide Fringe.

Van is currently writing a second non-fiction book for Hardie Grant, working on narrative radio projects for the ABC, under commission for new work at the Sydney Theatre Company and State Theatre Company of South Australia and developing original television content with Jungle Entertainment in Sydney.

Acknowledgement of Country

Waveney Yasso

Acknowledgement of Country

Proud Yuwi Burra & South Sea Island descendant, Waveney calls Magandjin home.

Waveney graduated from WAAPA Borloo (Perth) studying Contemporary Music, drums as her first instrument.

Soon after, Waveney toured school across Queensland with Artslink, showcasing her original Children’s music show ‘‘Have You Ever Heard A Wombat Sing’’.

You might recognise Waveney from global sensation ‘Pub Choir’, she has toured the world playing guitar & drumming with Australia’s best. Ben Lee, Paul Kelly, Powderfinger, Lior, Killing Heidi, The Cat Empire, The Grates, Ball Park Music and Meg Mac, begin the long list of names she has shared the stage with.

As a composer Waveney has created original work across a range of genres. Creating music for film, TV commercials, Award Ceremonies, theatre work & in June 2023 she released a children’s album titled ‘Our Backyard’ with Alinta & Waveney. Winning her Major Minor Music Australia’s ‘Michael McGlynn New Comer’ award shortly after.

In 2024 Waveney arranged, recorded & performed music for the Queensland Museum in collaboration with Yuggera Language Elder Gaja Kerry Charlton to create a piece that will now open World Science Festival Brisbane. Her creative ingenuity is limitless & has helped shape & colour several works continuing the pursuit of reviving language and culture through music.​​

Dept. Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation

Wietske Smith

A/Deputy Director-General, Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation

Wietske has extensive experience delivering corporate and operational services across the Queensland public sector and has provided strategic leadership across all corporate service functions, supporting transformational change and ensuring customer service delivery.

She has held many senior roles including, Deputy Director-General, Corporate (Department of Local Government, Water and Volunteers), Head of Corporate Services (TransLink), Executive Director (Customer Experience) and General Manager (Governance) at the Department of Transport and Main Roads.

Wietske holds a Bachelor of Business (Accounting), is a Certified Practicing Accountant and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

National Quantum Computing Tested Facility

Will Campbell

Research Associate, National Quantum Computing Tested Facility

Quantum Engineer and Research Platform Fellow at the University of Queensland, contributes to the development and operation of the National Quantum Computing Testbed (NQCT). With a Background rooted in experimental physics and high-precision quantum systems, I am focused on bridging the gap between fundamental research and the practical engineering required to scale quantum hardware.

BlackCard

Yarraka Bayles

Senior Facilitator, BlackCard

Yarraka Bayles is an award-winning Aboriginal artist, media personality and cultural educator with more than 30 years’ experience in media and Indigenous affairs.

Growing up in the studios of Radio Redfern in the 1980s, Yarraka moved to Brisbane in the 1990s, where she began her own career in media and the arts.

Having witnessed three decades of extraordinary evolution in communications — from community radio and traditional media to digital platforms, social media and now AI — Yarraka is passionate about the possibilities technology creates for First Nations storytelling, while ensuring cultural integrity, authenticity and cultural authority remain at the forefront.

As Senior Facilitator at The BlackCard, Yarraka shares powerful lived expertise grounded in Aboriginal Terms of Reference, self-determination and truth-telling — ensuring Aboriginal voices remain at the centre of our stories and our future.

The University of Queensland

Zain Al-Saffi

Engineering Student, The University of Queensland

Zain is an Engineering student at UQ, President of the UQ Computing Society, and a Rio Tinto Excellence Scholar. With experience spanning quantitative research internships at Optiver, Law at SV and AI growth at Eucalyptus, he understands how to build complex, automated systems. Furthermore after encouragement from his professor, he turned one of his assignments, an AI model for law that currently beats the frontier models, into a startup. His academic research into how algorithms shape climate narratives highlight a commitment to algorithmic governance; bringing perspective on how to scale technology without losing sight of societal consequences.