Agenda

Tuesday, 13 October 2026

“The Human in the Loop & Managing Digital Colleagues”

Please note that 1:1 meetings will be running throughout the day.

07:45 - 08:30

Registration & Check-in

Secure your seat in the keynote room for the day.

Jim Berry

CEO & Founder at ADAPT

About

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.

08:30 - 08:50

Welcome to the 3rd People & AI Edge: "The Human in the Loop & Managing Digital Colleagues"

Jim Berry - CEO & Founder at ADAPT Read More

The world of work is being rewritten - not gradually, but all at once. Agentic AI is moving from pilot to practice, digital colleagues are entering the workforce, and the people function is being asked to lead a transformation it was never designed for.

In this opening address, ADAPT CEO Jim Berry sets the stakes for the day - why the decisions people leaders make in the next 12 months will define the organisations they work for over the next decade, and why the human in the loop has never mattered more.

Gabby Fredkin

Head of Analytics & Insights at ADAPT

About

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.​
08:50 - 09:10

What are the Top Performers Doing Differently?

Gabby Fredkin - Head of Analytics & Insights at ADAPT Read More

The gap between ambition and execution is widening - and the people function sits at the centre of it.

Drawing on ADAPT’s proprietary research across 1000+ Australian C-suite leaders, Gabby Fredkin unpacks what separates the organisations closing that gap from those falling further behind.

What are top performers doing differently on workforce readiness, capability-building, and AI adoption? Where are the hidden bottlenecks - and which of them sit squarely on the CHRO’s desk?

This session gives the room a data-anchored baseline before the day’s conversations begin, so every discussion that follows is grounded in what is actually happening across Australian enterprise - not what the headlines suggest

Shannon Barry

Senior Community Success Manager at ADAPT

About
09:10 - 09:15

Get an Edge: Making the Most of Your Day

Shannon Barry - Senior Community Success Manager at ADAPT Read More

Catherine Walsh

Chief People Officer at Qantas

About

An accomplished, commercial leader with experience in delivering strong people performance in large, complex businesses. With a background in law, she has moved into leadership roles with iconic Australian businesses with a focus on building great, safe workplaces with talented teams delivering strategic outcomes for the customer.

Dom Price

Work Futurist at Be Luminous

About

Dom Price is a Work Futurist, team obsessive, and Partner at Be Luminous and someone who has lived the chaos of scaling a business from the inside out. Joining Atlassian as employee #600, Dom stayed for 12 years as their resident Work Futurist, helping grow the company to over 16,000 people globally. That’s not theory - that’s scar tissue.

Dom operates at the intersection of tech and humans, and his mission is simple: upgrade the human operating system of how we work. Because as he’ll tell you, “a fool with a tool is still a fool… you’ve just made them faster.” In a world drunk on AI and the next shiny solution, Dom is the pragmatic voice asking whether your people are actually set up to use it well - driving change that’s sustainable, not just spectacular.

As a keynote speaker, Dom doesn’t trade in polished frameworks or borrowed wisdom. He shares real, lived experience the messy, hard-won kind which is exactly why he’s in demand. Less thought leader, more battle-tested practitioner.

Co-creator of the Atlassian Team Playbook, TED speaker, and advisor to C-suite leaders globally. Dom believes that work and life should be about thriving, not just surviving. A keen traveller and veteran of 53+ countries, he calls Australia home. Manchester made him. The rest? Still very much in progress.

09:15 - 09:55

A Fireside Chat with Catherine Walsh, Chief People Officer at Qantas

Catherine Walsh - Chief People Officer at Qantas Dom Price - Work Futurist at Be Luminous Read More

Qantas isn’t just Australia’s national carrier, itt’s part of the national identity. When it flies well, the whole country feels it. When it doesn’t, the whole country hears about it. That’s an extraordinary amount of pressure to place on 27,000 people who show up every single day.

So how do you build a workforce that doesn’t just perform, but genuinely cares? How do you turn brand pride into a retention strategy, a customer experience multiplier, and a cultural backbone that holds under pressure?

Catherine Walsh has spent her career building great workplaces inside complex, high-stakes businesses. Dom Price has spent his obsessing over the human operating system; the how of work, not just the what. Together, they’ll pull apart what it really means to put people first in an organisation where the stakes are sky-high and the expectations are higher.

The conversation will explore:

- Why culture is your most durable competitive advantage - At Qantas, every employee impacts the customer experience. Their culture is on display every hour of every day.

- The link between employee experience and customer experience - You can’t deliver a world-class journey at 35,000 feet if the people behind it don’t feel seen, valued, or set up to succeed.

- Brand pride as a people strategy - What it means to work for an icon and how you sustain that sense of meaning and belonging across a workforce as diverse and distributed as Qantas’s.

Upgrading the human OS. Before you reach for the next tool or platform, are your people actually set up to do their best work? The fundamentals of trust, clarity, and psychological safety never go out of fashion.
Less theory, more truth. This is what great people leadership looks like from the inside.

09:55 - 10:25

Strategic Insights from Workday

A boardroom session moderated by an ADAPT Analyst with Workday and your peers

Read More
10:25 - 10:45

Morning Break: Refreshments, Snacks & Connections

Rebecca Nash

Chief People Officer at AMP

About

With over three decades of experience in global businesses, I currently serve as Chief People, Sustainability, and Community Officer at AMP, leading initiatives in workforce strategy, AI capability, employee experience, talent management, leadership development, diversity and inclusion, cultural transformation, and corporate communications. My role also includes accountability for sustainability, The AMP Foundation, and Customer Dispute Resolution. My career reflects a consistent focus on business, customer & workforce transformation, stakeholder management, and change management. I am deeply committed to fostering inclusive workplaces, driving customer focused organizational transformation, and ensuring strategic alignment to deliver meaningful business outcomes.

Dr Juliette Tobias-Webb

Australia's Leading Behavioral Scientist and Professor at AI & Cyber Futures Centre

About

Dr Juliette Tobias-Webb is one of Australia’s leading behavioural scientists, helping organisations understand and shape human decision-making in a rapidly changing world.

With a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Cambridge, she works at the intersection of behavioural science, AI, and emerging technology.

Dr Juliette is an Adjunct Professor at the AI and Cyber Futures Centre and the founder of a behavioural science consultancy working with organisations including Mastercard, Google, Publicis Groupe, Citibank and Atlassian. She has previously held senior behavioural science roles at the Commonwealth Bank and Ogilvy Australia.

Her research is published in leading psychology and neuroscience journals, and her expertise is frequently featured in media such as Triple J Hack, ABC, and The Australian Financial Review.

Dr Juliette has been recognised as one of Australia’s Superstars of STEM and was selected among 100 women in STEM to take part in an Antarctic leadership expedition.

Peter Hind

Principal Research Analyst at ADAPT

About

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

10:45 - 11:15

Panel Discussion | The Human in the Loop: Leading the AI-Augmented Workforce

Rebecca Nash - Chief People Officer at AMP Dr Juliette Tobias-Webb - Australia's Leading Behavioral Scientist and Professor at AI & Cyber Futures Centre Peter Hind - Principal Research Analyst at ADAPT Read More

ADAPT sits down with ANZ’s most influential HR and AI leaders go beyond the theory - sharing unfiltered perspectives on what it takes to lead a workforce through the age of intelligent agents, and how the people function itself is being reinvented in the process.

Discussion Points:

- When change is permanent, not episodic - how do you build a workforce that absorbs it as a default?
- When AI adoption outpaces the human operating system, it stalls - so what does genuinely people-led AI transformation look like in practice?
- Agentic AI is already in your workflows - how are you redesigning roles, accountability, and culture without losing momentum?
- HR cannot govern AI alone - what does cross-functional leadership between people, technology, and analytics teams actually look like?
- As digital colleagues and AI agents move from experimentation to low-touch decision-making - who is accountable, and where does the human fit?

11:15 - 11:35

Strategic Insights from Cornerstone OD

A boardroom session moderated by an ADAPT Analyst with Cornerstone and your peers

Read More
11:35 - 11:55

Building a Smarter People Function

Thought Leader at ASX100

Read More

AI is giving HR the intelligence to move from workforce reporting to real-time enablement - how do you put it work?

- How is AI elevating people analytics from hindsight to genuine workforce foresight?
- What does AI-enabled intelligence actually change about employee experience and enablement?
- How do you get the right workforce insights into the hands of the right people?

13:00 - 13:55

Peer Networking Seated Lunch

14:55 - 15:05

14:55 - 15:05

Afternoon Break: Refreshments + Snacks

Karen Lonergan

Chief People Officer at PwC

About

Karen is PwC Australia’s Chief People Officer and a member of the Management Leadership Team.

Karen is a seasoned enterprise leader with specialist skills in people, culture and transformation, as well as broader experience in customer advocacy, corporate affairs and government relations, reporting to CEOs and boards of major Australian companies.

Karen’s work spans the professional services, real estate, retail and transportation sectors in Australia, Asia, the USA, Europe and Africa. She is passionate about enhancing culture, leadership, employee engagement and performance while positioning organizations for growth and helping them navigate complexity and disruption.

Outside of her business life Karen loves to travel, particularly with her family, and she is a prolific consumer of podcasts across a range of genres.

Consultants are at the bleeding edge of AI … by Jim Berry

Consultants are at the bleeding edge of AI and Agentic impacting their operations - so she has lots of lessons learned to share.

Matt Boon

Senior Research Director at ADAPT

About

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.

15:05 - 15:35

Humans at the Helm: Rethinking Workforce Strategy in the Age of AI

Karen Lonergan - Chief People Officer at PwC Matt Boon - Senior Research Director at ADAPT Read More

In conversation with ADAPT’s Matt Boon, Karen brings a practitioner’s lens to the most pressing people challenge of the decade - how to lead organisations through AI transformation without losing the human elements that make them work. From workforce architecture to leadership culture, she explores what it takes to build organisations where AI amplifies people rather than replaces them, and where the people function earns its seat at the strategy table.

David Walker

(former) Group Chief Technology Officer at Westpac & DBS and Chair of the AI Council at UNSW

About

David began his career in 1987 coding enterprise software for ten years. He then founded an ASEAN data science firm and exited after ten years to then spend the next 20 years as an IT executive at ANZ Bank, DBS Bank in Singapore — which became the world’s best bank — and most recently he was the CTO of Westpac Bank. Now he’s the founder of Activate, an organisation helping organisations become future-ready, an adjunct at UNSW where he chairs the AI Institute External Advisory, and an independent director and advisor to start-ups and multinationals.

Gerard Florian

ADAPT Advisor and Chair at UNSW Information Technology Committee

About

Gerard Florian, ANZ’s Group Executive, Technology. Via a short presentation and then armchair interview, he will outline what they are doing, what they have learned along the way, and with hindsight, the advice they suggest.

Lisa Drum

Head of Product at ADAPT

About

AboutExecutive transformation leader who brings clarity to complex environments and converts strategy into delivery momentum. Experience spans enterprise technology leadership (Microsoft, T-Mobile, public sector) and consulting across Australia / Asia Pac, the US, EU and LATAM. I work with senior leaders to frame decisions, align business and technology priorities, and shape modernisation pathways that are practical, sequenced and measurable. Known for clear thinking, executive facilitation, and translating between commercial intent, technical reality and operational constraint to keep teams aligned and outcomes moving.

Focus areas:

- Business and technology transformation
- Executive facilitation and decision support
- Data and modernisation strategy
- Customer and employee experience uplift
- Cross-functional leadership and coaching
- Turning complexity into clear choices

15:35 - 16:05

The Workforce Question AI Can't Answer Without HR

David Walker - (former) Group Chief Technology Officer at Westpac & DBS and Chair of the AI Council at UNSW Gerard Florian - ADAPT Advisor and Chair at UNSW Information Technology Committee Lisa Drum - Head of Product at ADAPT Read More

As agentic AI reshapes work, this panel asks whether HR is ready to co-design the operating model, or risk being left managing the consequences.

- How must you rethink workforce strategy when people, process, and technology converge?
- AI is redefining core workflows and operating models; how must organisations decide where human accountability begins and ends?
- How to build the cross-functional accountability model that AI-era work actually demands - and why the CHRO-CIO alliance is the partnership that makes or breaks it

16:05 - 16:10

Closing Comments

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16:10 - 17:10

People Edge Peer Networking Drinks

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An opportunity to stay, mingle and meet other attendees over drinks and food and discuss the day.

Register your interest

People Edge