Our Speakers Include...

Shilpa is the Strategy and Product Management Director for Oracle’s ERP Cloud Financials, where she shapes the vision and execution of this flagship offering. With over 23 years of experience in finance and technology, Shilpa has held consulting, strategy, and leadership roles, helping global clients achieve strategic business outcomes through technology investments. She supports clients in making the right choices for their businesses when partnering with Oracle across data, applications, platform, infrastructure, and industry solutions. Shilpa holds a Bachelor’s in Finance and a Master’s in Computers. Based in Sydney, she is passionate about mentoring young professionals, enjoys board games, and loves travelling with her family. 

I am a Partner at McKinsey & Company based in Sydney, where much of my work is oriented around helping organisations on strategy, AI and transformation. I am leader in our analytics practice and QuantumBlack Australia (QuantumBlack is an analytics consulting firm acquired by McKinsey). My QB teams work with organisations on issues related to advanced analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

I also have a passion for public sector, where I serve organisations on strategy, organisation and transformation topics.

Before joining McKinsey I studied for a PhD in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Prior to this my background was in theoretical physics.

I help people adapt to change — and help businesses see it coming. Through writing, speaking and foresight reports, I turn emerging signals into clear, actionable insights for today.

My hope is to inspire leaders at all levels to be ready for change and not reactive—through simple tactics, small habits, and powerful stories that remind us of how much change we are truly capable of.

For the past decade, I have worked with forward-thinking organisations delivering leadership programs that help build the personal agency of their people and adaptability at scale — including Rio Tinto, Austrade, NBN & Atlassian.

I value unconventional thinking, challenging outdated beliefs, and always asking, ‘What’s possible’.

My first book, Future Fit (2019), was awarded Australian Business Book of the Year and was a finalist at the 2020 UK Business Book Awards. Prior to my move into building capability in leaders, I was based in Washington, D.C., covering breaking news for major media outlets. I also worked across human rights, helping to generate grants to rebuild Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan, & Georgia with funding from USAID & the US State Department.

David Walker was appointed Westpac Group’s Chief Technology Officer in August 2019. Since then, he is leading Westpac through its technology transformation – simplifying and merging the bank, building 4th gen cloud-native applications, establishing and operating evergreen platforms, leading Westpac’s AI technology, and building a culture of passionate and forward-thinking tech and emerging talent.

David began his technology career in 1987 as a software engineer, focusing on coding complex systems. After a decade of evolving his software engineering craft, David founded a data science consulting. Over the following decade, it became the number one expert data insights company in Australia and Southeast Asia.

For the last 15 years, David has held executive roles in large, complex organisations across the APAC region. Prior to joining Westpac, David was part of the leadership team of Singaporean bank, DBS. In his ten years there, David helped transform DBS from a traditional bricks and mortar bank with little brand presence or recognition outside Singapore, to being recognised as the ‘Best Bank in the World’ and the ‘Best Digital Bank in the World’ by leading global financial publication Euromoney.

As a work futurist, formerly with Atlassian, Dom 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.

Victor Dominello is a former Senior Government Minister of New South Wales (Australia), serving prominently as the Former Minister for Customer Service and Digital.

Recognised by The Australian in July 2022 as one of Australia’s top 100 innovators, he made history in 2019 as the world’s first Customer Service Minister. During his 12-year cabinet career, he led diverse portfolios including Digital Government, Innovation, Finance, and Aboriginal Affairs, garnering global acclaim for transforming NSW public service delivery through initiatives like the Department of Customer Service, Service NSW and the Digital Restart Fund.

Before politics, Victor practiced law as a partner in a commercial firm for over a decade. In September 2023, he co-founded ServiceGen, advising governments and organisations on innovative service delivery strategies.

Currently, Victor holds the following roles: Chair of the Federal Ministerial Digital ID Expert Panel (Department of Finance) and Chair of the Independent Advisory Board (Services Australia), Strategic Advisor and Global Luminary at Accenture, Advisor for Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, and Professor at the University of New South Wales. He also serves on several boards, including Director of the UNSW-UTS Trustworthy Digital Society Hub and Board Director of the Tech Council of Australia since 2023.

Adrian Fahy is Senior Director, Finance Planning & Sales Strategy at Dell within the Finance organisation.

The organisation leads sales planning, forecasting, go‑to‑market strategy, and business transformation and partners closely with sales, marketing and the product teams to drive actionable growth plans.

A recent focus for Adrian has been on driving business transformation in line with the company’s modernisation agenda. A focus on simplification, standardisation and automation within the CFO organization itself, and driving productivity in Sales through accelerated adoption of modern toolsets, processes and philosophies.

Adrian has been with Dell for close to 30 years, and in that time has lived and worked in 5 countries across 2 continents. He has held senior roles at the Global, Regional and Country level with Dell Technologies across the CFO and Marketing organizations.

Academically Adrian completed a Bachelors Degree in Business Atlantic Technological University Galway and undertook Postgraduate Masters study in Science and Engineering at the University of Limerick, both in Ireland.

Adrian and his wife Lisa live in Sydney. Lisa is a Specialist in Emergency Medicine and the Clinical Director within NSW Ambulance. They have 3 children, 2 boys and a girl, that range from to 7 to 14 years old.

Florian brings 22 years of global investment banking experience across London, Germany, Hong Kong, and Sydney, including 12 years in senior leadership at HSBC.

As a Senior Director, he worked with hundreds of the world’s top CEOs and CFOs on their most critical transactions: cross-border M&A, billion-dollar financings, corporate restructurings.

As HSBC Hong Kong’s former Head of Sales Management, he also led a broad range of strategic initiatives for HSBC in its home market. This included building and leading a high performing team, leveraging data analytics to drive revenue, policy design and implementation, as well as delivering L&D, mentoring, and wellbeing programs for 2,500+ staff.

Today, Florian advises and coaches some of Asia-Pacific’s top CFOs, investment bankers, and private capital leaders. He specializes in helping CFOs shift from being consumed by operational finance to driving strategic value creation as trusted partners to the CEO. That means reclaiming time to set the agenda, honing an authentic personal brand and positioning, and influencing organizational dynamics with greater impact.

As an ICF-certified ontological coach, he guides leaders through the internal mindset shifts, that underpin lasting peak performance and transformation – harmonising vision, self-mastery, and action. Based in Sydney and serving clients across Asia-Pacific, he brings a global perspective to CFOs shaping the region’s future.

Justin is a Chartered Accountant whose expertise stretches far beyond the typical boundaries of finance. Having sharpened his skills at institutions like UWA and Stanford, and across industry giants such as PwC, BHP Billiton, and DXC, Justin brings a comprehensive perspective from his time in consulting, customer success, and technology. At Oracle, Justin leads the Global Business Finance (GBF) Group, shaping a modern finance agenda within the Sales Organisation. He and his team build deep, collaborative partnerships with business units, providing critical insights and foresight through advanced analytics that power informed decision-making. Justin is passionate about integrating best practices to streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and uncover new revenue streams, always leveraging technology to identify cost savings and boost shareholder value.

Esther joined Workday in April 2023, based in Melbourne. As Industry Advisor, Esther brings insights from our customers global transformation journeys to the region, and applies a local lens to solutions.

Esther is a chartered accountant, with diverse experience spanning professional services (finance transformation and assurance), commercial finance, regional CFO and strategy roles. She has worked in or consulted to numerous industries including Public Sector and Healthcare, FSI, manufacturing and distribution, FMCG, Online Media, and has worked across Australia, Asia and North America.

Vince Randall is Vice President of Workday’s Planning Business Unit for the Asia Pacific and Japan region. In this role, Vince and his team are laser-focused on empowering FP&A and finance teams across the region to build more speed, flexibility, and accuracy into their organisations.

Vince joined Workday in 2018 through the acquisition of Adaptive Insights, where he was Managing Director for ANZ. Vince has spent over 20 years in technology and enterprise software companies, holding a variety of sales and technical roles. Throughout his career, Vince has worked for multi-national companies such as SAP, Epicor Software, NetSuite and IBM. 

Prashant Shetty, Chartered Accountant with 20+ years of experience spanning Big 4 and the insurance sector, bringing a blend of strategic vision and executional discipline. With deep expertise in IFRS and US GAAP with a proven record of shaping and delivering enterprise-wide finance transformations.

Christian Hecker leads the oCFO portfolio Go-to-Market globally. In this role, he and his team focus on the CFO persona to show the power of SAP’s combined solution portfolio. This includes SAP Cloud ERP offering, supported by GROW and RISE frameworks, as well as Finance, Quote to Cash, x-Planning & Analysis scenarios – end to end, Sustainability, Procurement, and Travel solutions. Christian previously worked in various finance functions within SAP, including Financial Planning & Analytics, Accounting, Pricing, Investor Relations and was actively involved in SAP’s own financial transformation.

Jitto Arulampalam is the CEO and Co-Founder of RedOwl, a company pioneering the use of Augmented Intelligence for the Office of the CFO. With a vision to transform how finance teams make decisions, Jitto leads RedOwl in developing intelligent solutions that enhance strategic insights, operational efficiency, and business performance. Drawing on deep experience across leadership and innovation, he is passionate about empowering organisations to harness data and AI to drive smarter, faster financial outcomes. 

As an accomplished sales and business leader, I stand for my accounts management expertise and highly successful track record of building, motivating and leading high performing sales and account management teams in a channel environment. I possess more than 20 years of experience developing and implementing engagement and influencing strategies resulting in the profitable growth of transactional banking businesses across corporate, institutional and commercial market segments. With a strong history of success in all areas of transactional banking, merchant acquiring and corporate card solutions, I bring people management skills to the forefront of everything I do and thrive on developing and mentoring the performance of talented individuals.

I bring a rich background and expertise in business development, key accounts management, client engagement and strategic planning with demonstrable experience in delivering business sales performance and growth in banking and financial solutions. Leveraging my extensive knowledge of sales strategies, processes and best practices, I have a proven track record of consistently exceeding revenue and FUM growth targets. I have also been instrumental in developing and executing innovative strategies and providing well-informed recommendations for long-term business and financial growth whilst anticipating and understanding client, stakeholder and organisational needs.

As a confident communicator, I have a natural talent to establish positive stakeholder relationships and ensure all aspects of services are delivered at the highest level. Possessing an optimistic outlook and a results-focused mindset, I consistently deliver on all commitments whilst managing large portfolios. I am also a cybercrime prevention educator with extensive experience in running seminars to increase cyber-safety awareness for customers as well as bankers.

Sumal Karunanayake is Head of Partners for Australia & New Zealand at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he helps to drive the ‘Partners Everywhere’ strategy to accelerate cloud adoption, AI and digital transformation across the region. With nearly 30 years of experience in software sales management, Sumal has consistently demonstrated his ability to rapidly scale revenue, customer acquisition, and retention for businesses ranging from startups to Tier 1 software and technology companies including SAP, CA Technologies (now Broadcom), NetSuite (Oracle), Forgerock (now Ping Identity), TechnologyOne,
and AWS, where he has served on their respective core Senior Regional Leadership Teams.

His experience spans both European and Asia Pacific Japan markets, where he has served as in-market leader with comprehensive expertise in establishing, accelerating, and managing software businesses, in addition to working predominantly with North American technology companies. Sumal specialises in formulating and executing go-to-market strategies from conceptualisation through closed-loop execution, working collaboratively across product, business operations, financial management, and delivery.

Sam Mani is the Managing Director for the Oracle Business Group at Accenture. She is responsible for the overall delivery of Oracle services. This includes accountability of meeting the program milestones, essential resources and clients realising the benefits of expected program outcomes. Sam holds the key relationship with Oracle to ensure all parties are in alignment for the successful program.

Priyunko is an Associate Director in Accenture’s ANZ technology practice & leads the Oracle applications practice in ANZ region. As Oracle applications lead, he supports organisations across ANZ and APAC in defining and implementing cloud strategy and roadmap in Finance and Supply chain digital transformation. Priyunko has 19+ years of experience in Oracle technology enabled Financial & Supply Chain business transformation engagements across APAC region. In recent times, he has helped organisations define their Digital strategy & address cloud migration challenges through executive engagement and close collaboration with global ERP cloud capability at Accenture. Priyunko has led multiple complex Oracle ERP transformations for Finance and supply chain processed across different industries. He is an expert in evaluating and selecting right solution for Finance and Supply chain processes to drive business benefits & align to organisation’s technology vision. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering and an MBA from India. 

Lisa Jane (LJ) Cagney is a Managing Director based in Sydney. She has 30 years of professional experience in consulting, business and technology transformation.

LJ works with clients to deliver transformation with a focus on CFO/Finance leveraging data and technology (ERP, AI, EPM, big data…) to automate process and enhance value and consulting with teams to establish the right target operating model.

LJ is experienced in supporting global and regional projects and working with geographically dispersed teams.

Johny Li is part of the solution engineering practice in Australia and New Zealand supporting organisations as they go through their transformation journeys. Johny has a focus on people-led change, and empowering finance teams to integrate technology to drive process uplift and culture change.

Marie Holmes is the Country Manager for ANZ at Alteryx, where she is responsible for defining and executing the go-to-market strategy. In this role, she leads business activities and partnerships to drive Alteryx’s next phase of growth in the region, empowering the team to shape the future of data analytics for customers across ANZ. She is passionate about helping businesses unlock insights and tell compelling stories through data, transforming complex information into meaningful, actionable outcomes.

With over 25 years of experience in building technology businesses and leading high-performing teams, Marie has held leadership positions at both global technology companies and high-tech scale-ups. Prior to joining Alteryx, she was Senior Director for VMware Tanzu in ANZ (now part of Broadcom), where she led the go-to-market function and drove revenue growth. She has also held senior regional leadership roles at Amdocs and
Logica Plc and has extensive experience in country leadership.

While primarily based in Australia, Marie has also worked in leadership roles in Malaysia and Dublin. In addition to her corporate career, she has collaborated with a portfolio of startup and scale-up emerging tech companies, helping shape their go-to-market strategies to successfully enter and expand in new markets.

Marie originally moved to Australia as a graduate engineer, beginning her career with Telstra Network Engineering in Melbourne.

She holds an Honours degree in Electronic Engineering with a specialization in Telecommunications from the University of Limerick, Ireland.

Rosie Cairnes is BlackLine’s Regional Vice President for Australia and New Zealand. With over thirty years of experience in the IT industry, she has worked with industry giants like SmartForce, SAI Global, and SkillSoft. Rosie is dedicated to empowering and guiding organisations to seamlessly integrate technology in every aspect of their work for a better future.

Mike Goldsworthy is a Principal Value Architect at BlackLine. With over two decades of experience in IT and finance, Mike has a deep understanding of both professional services and end-user perspectives. His expertise lies in large ERP process architecture and best-of-breed application solution architecture, with a particular focus on seamless integration and optimising financial processes. Mike has a proven track record in successfully executing global, multi-jurisdiction deployments, mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. Prior to his career in technology consulting, he commenced his career in CA with five years in Audit. 

Experienced Finance Professional with a demonstrated history of working in the Information Technology and Services Industry. Highly skilled in all aspects of Corporate Financial Management, Advisory, Cash Flow, Treasury, Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), Business Collaboration, mentoring and building High Performing Finance teams.

Major Skills, Expertise & Achievements

• Highly skilled and experienced CFO and Commercial Director with strong finance background and leading-edge comprehension and expertise in customer insights and business intelligence.
• Recognised throughout my career for the ability to build and enhance strong team cultures and increase engagement outcomes due to innate leadership style which empowers and supports decision making and individual development.
• Successfully led operations and delivered key commercial outcomes across the broader Asia Pacific region which resulted in growth in revenue and market share.
• Designed, led and delivered several data analytics and forecasting systems into the Asia Pacific region to improve the quality of decision making via enriched data and visuals, with the aim of providing real competitive advantage in tightly contested markets.
• Fluent English and French

Jim founded ADAPT with a vision to help Australia thrive commercially, now and for the future.  To enable that, Jim leads ADAPT’s mission to connect, inform and equip our local business and tech leaders.

Leading the development of ADAPTs agenda’s and content strategy whilst also advising executive leadership teams from global technology service providers, Jim is uniquely experienced to be the voice of the end-user, the customer and the vendor.

Bringing his deep knowledge of the local market, Jim regularly presents “Know your Customer” webinars and guides the world’s largest vendors with their G-T-M and content strategies.

Through entrepreneurial product development and a servant leader mentality with his team and clients, ADAPT grows annually with clearly differentiated value for all stakeholders.

Gabby’s primary role is managing ADAPT’s overall strategy for Data Analytics. He has extensive experience in using data to identify trends in technology that help shape Australian organisations. Utilising modern Data Science techniques, he provides ADAPT and their customers with confidence in the accuracy and validity of the information used for ADAPT’s Research, Advisory, and Events.​

With a passion for creating stories with data, Gabby is consistently rated as one of the top speakers at ADAPT Events. In round table discussions, he specialises in using statistics to initiate thought-provoking discussions. Gabby is effective in translating information into insights, enabling ADAPT’s customers to become more data-driven.​

Gabby’s primary areas of expertise are: ​

• Advanced AI and ML practices, including AI ethics.​
• Building models to benchmark and predict IT performance.​
• End-user behaviour and human-centred design.​
• Cross-functional team design and value, such as DevSecOps.​

As Director of Strategic Research at ADAPT Matt Boon, is responsible for directing and developing ADAPTs research content and positions. In his role at ADAPT Boon advises C-Suite executives across the end-user and technology provider landscape. Boon is also responsible for bringing together groups of C-Suite leaders to discuss and prepare for the myriad of challenges and opportunities they face.

ADAPT host’s numerous industry leading IT focused events annually and Boon is responsible for hosting, chairing and delivering ADAPT independent content and positions to help attendees make informed IT decisions.

Peter Hind has spent the last 25 years as an analyst and commentator on the ICT industry. He says his primary areas of interest are the potential of technology to transform the way organisations operate, the change management obstacles executives encounter in realising this potential and the tactics and techniques leaders have deployed to overcome these difficulties.

Peter now takes on multiple roles within ADAPT including the moderation of private events and roundtables, interviewing business executives about the strategies they are pursuing and assisting with the structuring of our delegate surveys and the interrogation and analysis of ADAPT’s treasure trove of end-user and C-level data