Past Speakers

With over 20 years of work experience across three continents and a multitude of industries, I am currently the Chief Technology Officer for Enterprise Commercial at Microsoft, where I lead the technical strategy, vision, and execution for our largest and most strategic customers. I have a strong background in business strategy, analysis and development and I am also a certified Prosci change practitioner.

I currently serve as the co-chair of the Military Employee Resource Group Board at Microsoft, where I support the recruitment, retention, and development of veterans and their allies. I am passionate about delivering innovative and impactful solutions that enable digital transformation, empower customers, and drive business growth. I am always looking for new opportunities to learn, collaborate, and contribute to the technology community and beyond.

Dedicated to empowering individuals, businesses, and enterprises to thrive through cutting-edge IT solutions, Patrick serves as an esteemed ADAPT Advisor.

With a profound passion for facilitating success in the realm of high-performing IT, Patrick brings forth a wealth of expertise, specialising in the Financial Services Industry, honed across diverse domains.

Having collaborated closely with regulatory bodies like the European Commission, EBA, ECB, and Executive Boards of prestigious institutions, Patrick offers invaluable counsel on critical facets including risk & security, compliance, IT strategy & transformation, digitisation strategies (in collaboration with MIT CISR), and large-scale cloud adoption.

Patrick’s leadership has seen the creation and nurturing of a top-tier global IT organisation spread across 45 countries, leading a team of 2000+ FTEs to unparalleled success.

His vision and expertise have resulted in the successful implementation of multi-year IT strategies, groundbreaking digitisation initiatives, and the establishment of market-leading practices in application development and infrastructure engineering encompassing cloud, AI & ML, API, Agile, and DevOps methodologies.

Patrick’s track record boasts the creation and delivery of pioneering capabilities such as the world’s first online IPO engine, Unified Payments Platform, and innovative New Way of Working initiatives.

A stalwart in the field, Patrick leverages his profound knowledge and experience to navigate the complex landscapes of IT operations and program management, optimising services on a global scale, all while focusing on elevating employee (EX) and client experience (CX).

In his role as an ADAPT Advisor, Patrick serves as a beacon of expertise and guidance, offering invaluable insights and strategies to propel businesses towards unparalleled success in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Jason O’Connell is Chief Technology Officer for Macquarie Bank. Macquarie Bank is the Australian retail banking arm of Macquarie Group.

As a Digital only bank, Macquarie has invested heavily in technology, and has close to 100% of its systems running on public cloud. Jason has a strong focus on the power of platforms to improve developer experience, as well as automation at scale. Strategically Macquarie Bank is moving towards cloud-native higher order services, to reduce operations, increase scale and unleash innovation for the business.

Craig Scroggie is the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of NEXTDC, Australia’s leading Data-Centre-as-a-Service provider. Prior to becoming CEO in June 2012, Mr Scroggie served on the Board of Directors since IPO (2010) as a Non-Executive Director, including as Chairman of the Audit and Risk Management Committee.

Mr Scroggie has more than 25 years’ experience in the ICT industry, having held senior positions with Symantec, Veritas Software, Computer Associates, EMC Corporation and Fujitsu. Prior to joining NEXTDC, Mr Scroggie was Symantec’s Vice President & Managing Director for the Pacific Region.

Mr Scroggie currently serves on the Board of Sovereign Cloud Holdings (ASX:SOV) and also serves on the University of Southern Queensland Business School Advisory Board and is Chairman of the La Trobe University Business School Advisory Board and holds the position of Adjunct Professor.

Mr Scroggie is a Graduate of the University of Southern Queensland and holds an Advanced Certificate in Information Technology, a Graduate Certificate in Management, a Postgraduate Diploma in Management, a Master of Business Administration; and is a Graduate and Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

In 2013 Mr Scroggie was awarded the University of Southern Queensland Faculty of Business & Law Alumnus of the Year and in 2015 was inducted into the ARN ICT Industry Awards Hall of Fame.

Warren Jennings is the Industry CTO for Agribusiness, Manufacturing, Logistics and Retail in Telstra’s Enterprise division. For over two decades he has focused on helping customers and industries derive value from digitisation and create value through the use of innovative and emerging technologies to solve real world problems in sectors such as agribusiness, retail, logistics, health, financial services and mining.

Tim Hope is a seasoned leader and CTO executive at Versent with a passion for enterprise transformation. Over his 20-year career, Tim has engaged with the financial services industry, public sector and corporations to support their adoption of emerging technologies. Tim leads the Versent Solution and Advisory capability ensuring that Versent’s offerings deliver connect with the evolving market to drive customer outcomes and growth for Versent. Tim has been an integral part of Versent’s journey, guiding the born-in-the-cloud consultancy through remarkable growth since its inception.

With over 25 years of experience in technology architecture and engineering in banking and financial services, I am a proven leader and innovator in my field. I have successfully led large-scale transformations, delivered cutting-edge solutions, and built high-performance teams across Wall Street, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

As the Group Chief Architect at NAB, I am responsible for our global technology strategy, product roadmap, architecture, and engineering acceleration. My mission is to redefine our products and platforms with a modern technology lens, and to create a customer-centric and agile culture. I leverage my expertise in cloud, data, AI and software development to enable our business growth and competitive advantage. I also collaborate with internal and external partners to foster innovation and excellence.

Astrid Groves is the General Manager – Channels, Alliances and Operations of APC by Schneider Electric. Astrid is invested in leading the Australian IT industry towards a sustainable future. With over 20 years experience working as a customer, partner, distributor and vendor, her unique and broad perspective has seen her develop a customer centric, high performance channel driving sustainable success and opportunity for IT partners.

Nathan McGregor is the Senior Vice President, Sales for the Asia Pacific (APAC) region at Cradlepoint. Nathan has over 20 years’ of leadership experience in the telecommunications and IT industry working for prominent companies, including Cisco Meraki, Hitachi, Juniper Networks, Ericsson and Alcatel Lucent. He has successfully led technology businesses across APAC delivering networking, IoT, and analytics solutions across all industries. Working closely with indirect channel and carrier partners, he has a strong track record in supporting customers success in the use of innovative technologies to drive business value.

Wayne brings over 25 years of experience in serving banking, telecommunications, and government clients on a broad range of digital issues, including cloud services and security, analytics, data governance, core IT platform architecture, networking, and IT operating model/organisation design, including agile-at-scale.

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.​

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.

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