Our Speakers Include...

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.

A passionate, dynamic leader with a proven track record of delivery across large scale enterprise, Aarti’s strengths are in leading and motivating people, and she is driven to achieve results.

Having led diverse, multidisciplinary teams across geographies, Aarti is committed to maximizing engagement across all levels of the business.

Aarti’s ability to co-innovate and collaborate makes her a trusted advisor, whilst her focus on strategic business and technology alignment makes her a catalyst for true partnership and change.

With an MBA from Macquarie Business School (Sydney, Australia), Aarti brings a global mindset to her role.

It is her relentless pursuit for excellence that ultimately enables Aarti to improve business outcomes, transform business models, modernize technology and enhance customer experience.

Peter Weill’s work centers on the role, value, and governance of digitization in enterprises. Weill joined the MIT Sloan faculty in 2000 to become director of MIT Sloan’s Center for Information Systems Research (CISR).

MIT CISR is funded by approximately 100 corporate sponsors and patrons, and undertakes practical research on how firms generate business value from Information Technology (IT). As chair, Weill focuses on globalizing the center’s research and delivery. In 2008, Ziff Davis recognized Weill as #24 of The Top 100 Most Influential People in IT, the highest-ranked academic. In Dec 2019, his 2015 MIT SMR article Thriving in an Increasingly Digital Era was recognized as one of The Best 10 SMR Articles in the 2010s.

Peter has worked on digitization issues with the Executive Committees and Boards of more than 40 companies globally. He conducts workshops for key conferences, including the CEO Summits for Microsoft, IBM, and SAP, and the International Monetary Conference.

Abhik is a senior leader with over 20 years of experience in consulting and corporate roles, particularly within the financial services and technology sectors. He leads Atlassian’s Value Advisory practice for the APAC region, collaborating with enterprise customers across the region to maximise the value of Atlassian’s solutions. Prior to Atlassian, Abhik held leadership roles at companies including Macquarie, NAB, AMP and Salesforce. He holds a Master of Business Administration and currently shares his expertise as an Adjunct Professor at the SP Jain School of Global Management.

Sherif has been in technology for over 17 years. He is currently a Distinguished Product Manager for Atlassian. During his time there, he was responsible for Confluence, a popular content collaboration tool for teams. Most recently, Sherif spends most of his days solving problems across all of Atlassian’s cloud products to empower organisations of all sizes to form teams, align on projects, enable information to flow freely and encourage employees to bring their whole selves to work. Sherif has played key roles in developing new products at Atlassian, major company acquisitions and forming the corporate digital strategy. Sherif thinks building simple products is hard and so is writing a simple, short bio.

Nick Sone is a results-oriented leader with a proven track record of delivering against high-growth sales targets and strategic business objectives. He believes that technology is best implemented when all stakeholders have a clear understanding of how it fits together and can be optimised for an organisation’s goals and the benefit of their customers and clients.

Nick’s background as a systems integrator and cloud computing specialist, combined with his certification as a practising accountant, provides him with a deep empathy for his customers’ challenges. He ensures that any technology solution delivered meets business goals within the framework of tightly defined capital and operational expenditures.

Felix is the Head of Observability for Australia and New Zealand at Splunk. He helps organisations improve their operational resilience and engineering effectiveness through data-driven practices.

With over 5 years at Splunk focused on DevOps and Observability and previous experience at Puppet supporting teams with automation at scale, Felix has worked closely with some of the region’s largest enterprises to shape and drive modernisation initiatives.

David Hall-Johnston serves as APJ Field CTO for Dell Technologies where he partners with customers to create long lasting value through aligning their business needs with the right technology strategy.

With over 20 years of experience leading strategy & architecture teams across the Financial Services, Energy & Utilities and Travel & Transportation industries, David has a deep understanding of the trends & issues that our clients are facing today and into the future.

David has lived and worked extensively throughout the Asia Pacific region and calls Melbourne home.

David brings the latest insights from leading edge AI deployments across the region, along with learnings from Cisco’s internal AI usage which spans over 1000 GPUs and multiple cloud providers – to clients to help align solutions with business strategy, and unlock the full potential of AI.

Previously – David built and lead the Dell APJ team focused on Generative AI, HPC and Data Analytics. His team designed some of the largest AI systems in the APJ region, ran organization wide AI transformation and upskilling programs.

At Microsoft David was Director of product management & marketing at Microsoft – leading multiple product cycles from engineering spec to market introduction. David has a background in computer science, market research, analyst relations, economics, and public relations.

Regular media spokesperson, speaker and round table host at industry AI events.

Dual Homed in Colorado, USA and Melbourne, Australia.

Credentials:

– AI infrastructure & Operations (nvidia)
– Generative AI with Large Language Models( DeepLearning.AI)
– AI in Medicine Specialization (DeepLearning.AI)
– Generative AI AI Blue Belt (Cisco)
– Bachelor of Business Systems (Monash University)

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.​

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

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.