Agenda
Tuesday, 11 November 2025
“Redefining CFO Leadership in the Digital Enterprise”
Please note that 1:1 meetings will be running throughout the day.
Registration & Check-In
Secure your seat in the keynote room for the day.
Welcome to the 16th CFO Edge: Redefining CFO Leadership in the Digital Enterprise
Jim Berry - CEO & Founder at ADAPT
In this opening address, we set the stage for a day dedicated to the modern CFO agenda – where finance leaders are no longer just managing risk and reporting numbers, but steering technology strategy, driving business model reinvention, and enabling enterprise-wide resilience. We’ll explore what it means to lead in today’s volatile, AI-powered economy, introduce the key themes of the day, under pinned by unique Australian insights from ADAPT – and preview the sessions and speakers shaping the future of finance.
Get an Edge: Making the Most of Your Day
Tenar Larsen - Head of People & Performance, Executive Programs
From Platform to Profit: CFO imperatives in Australia’s Age of AI & Tech Disruption
Dom Price - Work Futurist and ADAPT Advisor The Hon Victor Dominello - Director UNSW/UTS Trustworthy Digital Society Hub, Tech Council of Australia Board Member and Former Minister for Customer Service and Digital Govt and Founder of ServiceGen
A high-voltage, no-spin conversation between two of Australia’s sharpest minds: Victor Dominello, the digital-government architect, and Dom Price, work futurist, and team doctor.
They’ll zero in on what CFOs must understand, unlearn, and do now in the fast-shifting terrain of AI, tech, and work. CFOs will leave with a blueprint – not just for survival, but for leadership in Australia’s immediate future.
• Transformation at Scale – Lessons from Service NSW, Digital ID, and data platforms on doing digital right.
• Trust at Speed – Driving tech investment while safeguarding ethics, transparency, and user trust.
• People & AI at Work – Reshaping teams, tools, and culture for effectiveness, not just efficiency.
• Metrics that Matter – From output to outcomes: CX, impact, data responsibility, and resilience.
• Risk & Resilience – Tackling technical debt, security, regulation, and the digital divide with adaptive strategies.
• Leading in Uncertainty – Guiding organisations through AI disruption and crisis with agility and foresighted.
The Hon. Victor Dominello
CEO of Future Government Institute | Co-Founder, ServiceGen | Service Transformation Expert
Victor Dominello is a globally recognised leader in public sector transformation and a pioneer of secure, citizen-focused digital identity.
A former NSW Minister for Customer Service and Digital Government, he created world-first reforms including the Department of Customer Service, Service NSW, and the Digital Restart Fund. His innovations, such as the digital driver’s licence, QR check-ins, and vaccine certificates, have set global benchmarks.
Victor’s leadership has been recognised worldwide. He was named to the Okta Identity 25 list of global visionaries, with his image featured on the Nasdaq Tower in Times Square. Today, as CEO of the Future Government Institute and Co-Founder of ServiceGen, he advises governments and organisations worldwide, including the World Bank. He also contributes to national policy, recently participating in the Treasurer’s Economic Reform Roundtable on efficient and high-quality government services.
Dom Price
As a work futurist, formerly with Atlassian, Dom Price was the in-house ‘team doctor’, designing collaborative patterns which are easily adaptable for any purpose.
But he doesn’t believe it’s enough to simply make predictions about the future, or even just prepare for it. What sets Dom apart is his ability to inspire people to transform their working lives, and with it, their futures. This person-centred approach has established him as a thought leader, at the forefront of the zeitgeist that is life at work in the years ahead.
Dom has a galvanising take on people, practices, technology, and workspaces – being passionate about filling the gap between knowledge and action.
His experience in global strategic positions across the fields of technology and finance, as well as extensive travel to fifty countries, has informed a unique perspective on the future of work. One which values interconnectedness but never forgets the individual at the core of even the largest scale operation.
The 4 Critical Foundations for AI Success in Finance
Shilpa Bhale - Director, Strategy and Product Management at Oracle
AI has moved beyond the hype. It’s now at the heart of top-performing finance teams. Today’s forward-thinking finance leaders aren’t just automating processes; they’re redefining the strategic value their function delivers to the business. This session will unpack what an AI-enabled finance function looks like in action and why strong foundations in people, process, data, and governance are critical for sustained success. You will gain an understanding of how your private data drives unique outcomes for your organisation and how leading CFOs are shifting from reactive analysis to predictive, frictionless operations that drive strategic growth.
ADAPT State of Australia Maturity & Performance Insights: AI with an ROI
Gabby Fredkin - Head of Analytics & Insights at ADAPT
ADAPT’s research team reveal the latest local fact-based insights from over 5000 interactions and 2000 detailed surveys with our region’s top CIOs, CISO, CFOs, CTOs, and digital leaders. This session will assist you in comparing the resource allocation, investment priorities and unique challenges of Australian CFOs for you to benchmark and validate your priorities and thinking. Gabby will reveal the core findings distilled from your aggregated pre-event surveys and examine the AI and tech strategies that are generating value – focused on what the top performers are doing differently to scale AI success through a CFO lens.
Morning Break
Refreshments, Snacks & Connections
McKinsey: Navigating Agentic AI for Business Impact
Solly Brown - Partner at McKinsey & Co-Leader of QuantumBlack Australia & NZ
In a world defined by economic upheaval, geopolitical volatility, and rapid technological advancement, CFOs face unprecedented pressure to deliver tangible value – immediately, not eventually.
Through a focused look at the agentic organisation, this session will cut through the noise around agentic AI to explore how leading organisations are shifting from proof-of-concept to enterprise-scale productivity, and what that means for finance leaders.
As businesses transition from isolated AI experiments to enterprise-wide implementation, finance leaders must navigate a new landscape of opportunity and accountability where embedding agentic AI into core workflows is accelerating value capture, reshaping enterprise performance and demanding a pragmatic shift from ambition to action.
Solly will explore:
• What CFOs should now expect from AI beyond the experimentation phase
• Why scaling requires a shift from scattered use cases to domain-driven investment
• Practical case of agentic AI at scale, with productivity and value capture in mind
From Proof-of-Concept to Productivity: Unlocking Impact for CFOs
Adrian Fahy - Director of Finance Planning & Strategy at Dell Technologies
Matt Boon, Strategic Research Director at ADAPT in a fireside chat with Dell Technologies Director of Finance Planning & Strategy, Adrian Fahy exploring how emerging digital solutions are reshaping the CFO’s role.
Discover actionable strategies for moving beyond AI hype to deliver measurable business value, increase cost efficiency, and manage risk – future-proofing your finance function for sustainable growth in a rapidly evolving market.
The Human Edge: How CFOs and Their Teams Can Lead Strategic Value Creation Through the Power of Personality and Being Human
Florian Pecher - CFO Performance Coach at Imperative Advisory
In the age of AI, our human edge matters more than ever.
Competitors and AI can replicate and extrapolate what we do, but never who we really are as human beings – individually and collectively.
When CFOs and their teams fully capitalise on their unique personality strengths and perspectives, they’re able to compete with greater intensity externally, collaborate with greater depth within the organisation, and create more innovative solutions.
It all starts with:
1. Mind state: showing up centred, with clarity of intent (how you’re being)
2. Strategic self-awareness: own and team personality (who you’re being)
3. Disciplined execution: translating insight into action (what you’re doing)
Florian brings a rare combination of real-world experience to this session (gained in over two decades as a global investment banker and Performance Coach) along with scientifically validated insights from performance and personality psychology.
Participants will leave with a clear framework linking their unique human edge to tangible performance outcomes – and the personality traits driving these at individual and team level.
ADAPT Executive Insight Roundtables
Attend your pre-selected roundtable to participate in a peer discussion with confidence under Chatham House Rules moderated by an ADAPT analyst with subject matter experts.
Embracing the Era of Agentic AI – What CFO’s Need to Know
Justin Chapman - Vice President of Finance for Oracle JAPAC Applications
Join your peers for a candid conversation on the adoption strategy and best practices to achieve AI Driven Finance. Hear firsthand experiences on how top CFOs are leveraging AI to streamline operations, enhance decision-making and help their teams unlock the full potential of AI to become trusted business partners in the digital age.
The Agentic Finance Function – Exclusive Research on CFO Priorities & ROI
Esther Monks - Industry Advisor at Workday Vince Randall - Vice President, Planning Business Unit, APJ at Workday
Join this roundtable to explore how Agentic AI is creating a new class of autonomous finance functions, representing a quantum leap in productivity. We will reveal new research on the real-world implications for Australian businesses, including critical data on its strategic adoption and financial impact. This candid, data-driven discussion will equip you to build the business case, manage the risks, and position your finance function to lead in the new agentic era.
Navigating Transformation: People, Processes, and Technology for a Resilient Finance Function
Prashant Shetty - Executive Manager, Finance Transformation Leader at IAG
Join Christian Hecker, SVP, Chief Revenue Officer, oCFO, SAP and IAG Prashant Shetty, Finance Transformation Leader at IAG) to explore how to build a resilient and value-driven… organisation by strategically leading your team through the critical interplay of people, processes, and technology. Learn how to leverage intelligent automation and data-driven insights to navigate complexity, enhance decision-making, and create a future-ready finance function.
Challenge the Notion of Real-time Governance in the Age of AI
Jitto Arulampalam - CEO & Co-Founder at RedOwl Gareth Lewis - Director at Mastercard Sumal Karunanayake - Head of Partners at Amazon Web Services (ANZ)
Join Mastercard, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and RedOwl for an immersive discussion on the emerging category of real-time governance for the office of the CFO. We’ll dive deep into:
– Capturing and operationalising organisational memory to turbocharge your AI Agents
– The significance of human-in-the-loop, when using AI in financial systems
– The power of pre-transactional intelligence in financial operations’
Peer Networking Seated Lunch
Lunch Roundtable: The AI-Empowered CFO: Leading with Insight, Partnering for Scale
Sam Mani - Managing Director, Oracle Business Group at Accenture Priyunko Paul - Associate Director at Accenture Australia Pty Ltd LJ Cagney - Managing Director, CFO & Enterprise Value, Strategy and Consulting at Accenture
The CFO’s remit is expanding, from financial stewardship to enterprise strategy. As the Office of Finance evolves into a hub for insight, agility, and performance, AI and Generative AI (GenAI) are emerging as critical enablers of long-term value creation.
This closed-door roundtable, hosted by Accenture’s Oracle practice and ADAPTs Matt Boon, invites CFOs and senior finance leaders to explore how AI is being applied to accelerate planning cycles, improve forecast accuracy, and unlock real-time decision intelligence. We’ll examine practical use cases—from autonomous close to conversational analytics—and unpack the governance, talent, and data implications of scaling AI responsibly.
Importantly, CFOs don’t need to understand every technical nuance. But they do need to know what AI can do, how to ask the right questions, and how to engage their CIOs in building a finance function—and a business—that’s fit for the future. This is about avoiding short-term wins that don’t scale, and instead architecting a roadmap for sustained impact.
Key Themes for Discussion:
– AI as a Strategic Lever
How CFOs are using AI to shift finance from reactive reporting to proactive performance management.
– From Automation to Augmentation
Real-world use cases where AI is enhancing planning, forecasting, and scenario modelling—not just reducing manual effort.
– Oracle’s Embedded Intelligence
How Oracle Cloud ERP and EPM are enabling faster close cycles, smarter insights, and more agile finance operations.
– Responsible AI in Finance
Governance, auditability, and ethical deployment—ensuring AI enhances trust, transparency, and control.
– CFO–CIO Collaboration for Scalable Success
How finance leaders can engage with CIOs to align on architecture, data, and delivery—avoiding fragmented pilots and building for scale.
– The Future Finance Workforce
What AI means for finance talent, leadership, and operating models—and how to build a function that’s insight-driven, adaptive, and innovation-ready.
ADAPT Executive Insight Roundtables - share with confidence under the Chatham House Rule
Attend your preselected roundtable to participate in a peer discussion moderated by ADAPT analysts with subject matter experts.
Reimagining Finance: Building Trust in Data to Unleash the Power of Analytics and AI
Johny Li - Senior Solution Engineer at Alteryx Marie Holmes - Country Manager at Alteryx (ANZ)
The desire to redefine Finance as a pre-emptive, proactive and autonomous function is a vision shared amongst many leaders, though execution has its hurdles. If CFOs are motivated to transition into Chief Value Officers, success is underpinned by providing data that can be trusted and insights derived with clear actions and value-centric performance. The evolution of AI and the potential it offers provides another catalyst for change that CFOs are eager to capitalize on. As the innovation tide swells further, the need to act swiftly while maintaining transformation control is critical.
This exclusive roundtable will share perspectives on the several questions which are top of mind of many CFOs:
1. How can CFOs rebuild trust in data?
2. What is the transformative potential of AI in Finance?
3. How can Finance leaders become responsible guardians of AI?
4. What skills are needed in Finance to transition to a more autonomous and value-centric function?
5. What does the implementation pathway look like?
Accelerating Financial Leadership: CFOs at the Forefront of AI Transformation
with SageJoin Sage for an exclusive roundtable unveiling our latest CFO research report, spotlighting how AI is reshaping financial leadership. Discover why high-performing CFOs are embracing AI—and where untapped potential still lies.
– Exploring the key drivers and barriers to AI adoption among CFOs.
– Identifying practical steps to embed AI into core financial operations.
– Defining the CFO’s role in leading AI-driven transformation across the organisation.
– Highlighting the most impactful use cases for AI in finance today.
Balancing innovation with governance in AI adoption for growing organisations.
This insightful discussion will explore the evolving role of CFOs in an AI-powered future—and how to lead the charge
From Automation to Autonomy: The CFO’s Guide to AI-Enabled Finance
Rosie Cairnes - BlackLine's Regional Vice President for Australia and New Zealand Mike Goldsworthy - Principal Value Architect at BlackLine
The concept of “autonomous finance” is no longer a futuristic vision but an emerging reality. This roundtable will address the strategic imperatives for CFOs in leading this next wave of transformation. We will discuss the practical path from automation to autonomy, focusing on how AI is reshaping finance processes, team structures, and the skills required for success. Join us to explore how to lead the change, cultivate a future-ready finance team, and build an operating model that is accurate, efficient, and intelligent.
Afternoon Break
Refreshments, Snacks & Connections
CFO Edge Panel: Redefining CFO Leadership in the Digital Enterprise
Peter Hind - Principal Research Analyst at ADAPT David Walker - Group Chief Technology Officer of Westpac and DBS Bank Samantha Randall - CFO ANZ at Accenture JB Naudet - CFO at the Australian Red Cross
Today’s CFOs are stepping beyond traditional finance to lead enterprise transformation – from modernising the financial core to shaping digital strategy and managing technical risk. This panel brings together leading Australian CFOs to explore how finance is becoming the control tower for resilience, innovation, and growth.
Debating:
– Blending financial governance with digital strategy across the enterprise
– CFO-CIO collaboration: shared ownership of ERP modernisation and transformation outcomes
– Replacing legacy systems with cloud-native ERP and intelligent finance platforms
– Quantifying and managing technical debt as a financial risk
– Building business cases that fund change while preserving agility and value creation.
How CFOs Can Embrace their Adaptive Intelligence
Andrea Clarke - Work Futurist & Author at FutureFit
CFO Edge 2025: Insights Summary
Summarising the day’s core findings into actionable insights to take back to your job.
CFO Edge Peer Networking Drinks
An opportunity to stay, mingle and meet other attendees over drinks and food and discuss the day.