August Contributors Include...

Karen is an experienced Technology Executive and Enterprise leader with extensive digital transformation skills and a proven track record of delivering innovative solutions that drive successful outcomes in complex environments.

As a passionate people leader, she is committed to building diverse teams and nurturing a collaborative and inclusive culture. She is an advocate of ‘digitising with diversity,’ opening up career opportunities for a broader range of people, particularly those who are neuro-diverse. This diversity significantly increases their ability to innovate, as well as their overall performance and engagement.

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.

A visionary and value-oriented Chief Information Officer with extensive global experience in planning, developing, and implementing cutting edge technology strategies that digitise, transform and enable business differentiation, optimisation and sustainable growth. As an executive leader collaborates with executive teams to align technology strategy with businesses and the wider corporate vision.

With a career spanning leading financial institutions globally, including Credit Suisse, CBA, Westpac, Macquarie, and NAB, has extensive experience in design and delivery of cost-effective technology solutions to address complex business problems, embed robust operational risk management, digitise and drive customer experience. This is combined with business intelligence, commercial acumen, and cyber security to enable market-attuned growth, future-proof businesses, and innovation with deep expertise in all aspects of project lifecycle, from feasibility analysis and conceptual design, through to implementation.

A track record of building and leading large teams high performance teams that are industry-leading, multidisciplinary, and geographical dispersed with deep skills across IT and businesses that are engaged and focused with vast experience in insourcing and outsourcing models. A strong advocate for and fosters inclusive, diverse and continuous learning cultures.

Mr Chris Crozier was recently appointed Chief Information Officer, leading the Defence Digital Group at Defence.

Prior to joining Defence, Mr Crozier was the Group Chief Information Officer for Orica International, the world’s largest manufacturer and supplier of explosives for mining and civil construction.

As the Group Chief Information Officer, Mr Crozier was accountable for global digital technology strategies and operations across a footprint of the organisation spanning 120 countries, covering Business (IT), Customer (IoT) and Manufacturing (OT) systems, including the governance of Orica’s digital ecosystems, architecture, data, and cyber posture.

Prior to this, Mr Crozier held executive roles within Orica as Vice President of AusPac (60% of Orica’s global EBIT), Chief Digital Officer and Global Vice President Supply Chain; and BHP as Global Chief Information Officer and Global Chief Procurement Officer.

As a 35-year veteran of the Mining and Resources Sector, having commenced his professional life with Rio Tinto as a Research Engineer, Mr Crozier has experienced the highs and lows of the commodity cycle.

Mr Crozier has a Chemical Engineering Degree (Honours First Class) and Master of Business Administration.

In his spare time, Mr Crozier enjoys endurance sports, including cycling, running and swimming.

John Hunt was appointed Chief Information and Replenishment Officer on 1 September 2021. John initially joined Woolworths Group in 2017 as Chief Information Officer. John spent over 25 years at Woolworths Holdings, South Africa where he held a range of senior IT and core retail leadership roles, including CIO and Senior Executive for Food Planning and Value chain.

A graduate from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town, John is a retailer through and through and is passionate about how information technology and technology innovation is being optimally used in enabling the business to support both the front line team members as well as ensuring our customers have the best shopping experience.

Josh Harbert is a highly analytical, creative, and revenue-focused business leader with a proven track record in enabling early- and mid-stage technology companies to aggressively grow revenue and market share. He excels at orchestrating internal and external business intelligence into result-oriented plans and aligning multiple stakeholders. With a diverse background as a hardcore programmer, product innovator, business leader, salesman, and experienced marketer, Josh seamlessly navigates between cross-functional internal teams, customers, partners, and executives. His gregarious personality and executive presence foster passion and loyalty.

Josh is skilled in creating high-performance teams, developing talent, driving innovation, and establishing and exceeding goals. He is an expert in demand generation, operations, pipeline development, digital marketing technology, brand/creative, category creation, and customer engagement. Josh fosters innovation and greatness by ensuring team members understand their roles, why their work matters to the business, and that they can be proud of their results.

Based in Sydney, Ian Poulton manages the OpenText Australia and New Zealand pre-sales organisation. This team covers the wide range of industries and solutions that OpenText supports. Having started nearly 15 years ago in a hands-on role within the team, Ian has been managing the team for 7 years.

I am a high-energy, disciplined, hands-on sales leader with a track record helping customers, colleagues and shareholders to create and achieve their goals.

I have:

• Led $20-30m USD dollar sales organisations across APJC
• Managed, outsourced and developed networks, created new products
• Created major revenue streams for customers, and helped them change their business for the better
• Trained multi-disciplinary sales teams of up to 200 professionals
• Given keynotes to audiences of 1,000+
• Consulted on major outsourcing projects and designed technology and people solutions
• Sold, created &/or delivered truly fantastic technology solutions
• Delivered and grown Major Global Accounts and Partnerships
• Re-defined routes to market, and turned struggling businesses around
• M&A evaluations, integrations, and create growth through collaboration.
• Travelled the world and done great business on 4 continents

I have transformed market performance, and developed and led high-performing sales teams.

I am lucky; my broad experiences on the journey (so far) have taught me that learning, teaching, selling and collaborating are actually all the same thing.

I am excited by strategically significant opportunities to improve the ways that companies do business.

George Harb is responsible for driving growth of OpenText in the ANZ region. In addition to leading the business in the ANZ region, as an experienced B2B integration and software business leader, he has been spearheading the Business Network unit for OpenText within the Asia-Pacific region. In both roles he works with customers and partners to help them derive value from OpenText’s offerings and solve business challenges. Having joined in 2016, George has held a number of senior sales leadership roles at OpenText. As an internationally experienced business executive, he has spent significant time residing overseas and working with customers across Asia and Southern Africa, his appointment at OpenText bringing him back home to Australia. With over 20 years of experience in Technology, B2B integration and Software (On and Off Cloud) sales leadership, he has a proven track record in accelerating growth, delivering improvements in operational efficiency and raising customer satisfaction. George’s expertise lies in helping companies transform in a digital first world.

Michael is an experienced business leader with a strong technical foundation in statistical AI systems. He began his career with a PhD in Finance from the London School of Economics, eventually moving into institutional asset management and quantitative research (Blackrock, Fidelity, AXA). Later, transitioning to the development of AI systems for institutional investment programmes, while continuing to teach Masters courses in quantitative techniques and analysis at LSE and Imperial College.

David J. Gee has 20+ years experience as CIO and CISO. He joined Macquarie Group in early 2021 as Global Head Technology, Cyber and Data Risk. David is responsible for protecting Macquarie Group using his significant expertise in technology and cybersecurity. He has served as CISO for HSBC Asia Pacific, based in HK and responsible for the most critical and profitable countries for this large investment bank. David drove the cybersecurity maturity uplift and led all aspects of cyber for HSBC in these 19 countries. Prior to HSBC, David had an extensive Transformational CIO experience across numerous significant roles.

At MetLife Japan, David was Statutory Executive Officer, Senior Vice President and CIO. This is the second largest market for MetLife – a US$70B enterprise. David led the digital transformation for this large insurer with a significant focus on digitizing end to end customer engagement processes. At MetLife Japan managed a team of 230 IT Staff supported by 1200-1300 external resources, with an Annual IT spend in excess of U$300m.

David is Board Advisor to Sekuro, a successful cybersecurity company.

He is also past CIO at Credit Union of Australia where he successfully led a major transformation of all systems and technology. In this role he won CIO of the Year for Financial Services in Australia.

David has also been Executive Advisor for large scale transformation with KPMG, Ernst & Young and ICG. He has deep experience with Fintech and innovation ecosystems. Mentor at Stone & Chalk and Tyro Fintech Hub. Venture Partner with Sapien Ventures and Advisory Board of Venturetec.Accelerator. David also has been Fintech Advisor for a number of startups.

He is a digital industry thought leader and regular columnist with ITnews, CSO (Cyber), CIO Magazine and Computerworld, with more than 100+ articles published.

David was Information Officer and CIO for Lilly USA ($12B sales) & member of Lilly USA management. He has also enjoyed international expatriate assignments in Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Kobe and in the USA.

Raj Sundarason is the Chief Evangelist in Asia Pacific and Japan. He is responsible for building and helping customers realize value in their digital transformation programs. With 20 years of experience, Raj works with customers and prospects to understand how digital adoption programs can impact their P&Ls. Built on the ideology of the Power of How, he collaborates with senior digital transformation leaders to match business problems with adoption solutions that impact a combination of revenue, cost and risk imperatives. 

Shan is an experienced technology executive, with a proven track record of leading strategy and change in large enterprise organisations for Chief Executives and Boards around the world.

He uses strategic foresight to map a course through innovation, disruption or transformation for organisations, leveraging deep technical domain knowledge in IT Systems, Technology Strategy, Software Engineering, Data and AI.

He is a highly articulate technologist who combines novel technical thought leadership, pragmatic business acumen, empathy and quick-witted humour to win the hearts and minds of stakeholders and employees alike. He leverages this corporate and industry influence to efficiently execute and deliver truly game-changing and disruptive outcomes.

He finds immense job-satisfaction in building and leading high performance cross-functional globally distributed teams. These include domains such as architecture, engineering, data & AI, CX & UX, delivery, analysis, operations and support.

He is currently Telstra’s Principal (EGM) for Software Engineering CoE, leading the art of engineering for over 6000 engineers and technologists. He is also an avid key-note speaker at industry conferences, advisor to some of Australia’s leading C-Suite members and mentor to up-and-coming industry-disrupting startups.

Adam Dinneen brings more than 15 years of experience working in business and technology roles. Throughout his career, he has excelled in digital product development, technical presales, and leading projects that generated business and customer value using a broad range of technologies and delivery methods. 
 
With a passion for delivering great digital experiences that meet the product vision, business objectives and user needs, Adam is skilled at collaborating with business, design and development teams, as well as building strong stakeholder and customer relationships. 

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

Byron is a highly experienced technology and business journalist, editor, corporate writer, and event producer.

Prior to joining Adapt, he was the editor-in-chief at CIO Australia and associate editor at CSO Australia. He also created and led the well-known CIO50 awards program in Australia and The CIO Show podcast.

Byron creates valuable insights for our community of senior technology and business professionals that help them reach their organisational and professional goals. He has a passion for uncovering stories about the careers and personal philosophies of Australia’s top technology and digital executives.

When he is not working, Byron enjoys hot yoga, swimming, running, and spending time with his family.