Our Speakers

Harness the collective intelligence of the world’s foremost thought leaders to learn best practices and be inspired.
Catherine
Walsh
Chief People Officer at Qantas

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.

Karen
Lonergan
Chief People Officer at PwC Australia

Karen Lonergan

Chief People Officer at PwC Australia

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.

Dom
Price
Work Futurist at Be Luminous

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.

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

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.

Rebecca
Nash
Chief People Officer at AMP

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.

Gerard
Florian
ADAPT Advisor and Chair at UNSW Information Technology Committee

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.

Register your interest

People Edge