Past Speakers

Dominello is a public figure focused on the advancement of digital government and developing trusted, valued services for citizens. He is a seasoned government leader, having served as a Minister in New South Wales for 12 years, and is best known for his role as Minister for Customer Service and Minister for Digital. He is celebrated for the creation and transformation of the Department of Customer Service. He is considered the pioneer of digital government in Australia, and his achievements have been admired, studied and modelled by other governments around the world.

Dominello brings 23+ years of government experience, including 12 years as a former member of Parliament and Cabinet member. In March 2023, he retired from government and is now a part-time professor at The University of New South Wales and a public evangelist for digital government advancement.

Dominello serves as an independent advisor and board member to corporate boards and governments with a focus on digital technologies and mental health.
In September 2023, Victor launched Service Generation, which provides advice to governments and large organisations to help them profoundly shift service delivery for the times ahead

Robert is an experienced cyber security professional who led SME for North Korean Cyber Security for the United States Department of State (CTR Program), held roles as Head of Cyber Operations at BAE Systems, GM of WithYouWithMe Cyber, advisor to the Australian Shadow Cabinet for Cyber Security and CEO of Internet 2.0.

Dr Lesley Seebeck is an independent consultant; her current roles include a fractional appointment as Professor of Cyber Security Strategy and Leadership at UNSW, Chair of the National Institute of Strategic Resilience, and Senior Fellow, Strategic Analysis Australia. She has held senior executive roles in the federal government and was the former head of the ANU Cyber Institute. Her writing and further details can be found at lesleyseebeck.com.

Anafrid is a SABSA Certified Chartered Security Architect, ISACA Certified Information Systems Auditor, and ISO 27001 Lead Auditor, having 10 plus years of experience in developing, overseeing, managing, and implementing strategic security programs across organisations. She is an award winning security ambassador shifting the security culture within organisations and a strong believer of teamwork, collaboration, and valuing people.

“The cornerstone of business resilience is building a cultural foundation that encourages people to work together. I work to strengthen ‘the human element’- because people are our greatest assets.”
As a People, Cyber, and Technology leader, Anafrid leads and influences fit-for-purpose business outcomes through solid business partnerships. Linking cyber to organisational safety and wellbeing principles to ensure it becomes part of daily conversations, she leads incident response and recovery activities with minimal disruption to the business, customers, and community – having a people-first approach.

Bennet is clearly a rising star. As well as creating and leading GWW’s cyber security strategy, she has been named a highly commended ‘One to Watch in IT Security’ by the Australian Women in Security Awards, ranked 4^th in the 2022 CSO#30 and impressively the Next CIO to watch award in the 2023 CIO#50. The judges there saying “Anafrid Bennet is already displaying the leadership, technology, business, innovation and people skills to take her far in our industry. Like any great leader, she inspires others to excel, and leads by example. If Anafrid is indicative of the next generation of CIOs and technology leaders, then our industry is in very safe hands.” 

With over 20 years of experience in start-ups and the broader technology industry, I am a renowned advocate for cyber security in Australia. My journey has been marked by fostering collaboration and propelling the growth of Australia’s cyber security industry.

Key Achievements:

• Developed strategic initiatives and partnerships that fuel innovation in collaboration with start-ups, industry leaders, government agencies and academia.
• Recognised thought leader, sharing insights on entrepreneurship, cyber security and public-private sector collaboration.
• Featured in reputable media outlets, amplifying the significance of cyber security in today’s digital landscape.

I am committed to driving innovation and resilience in the field, leveraging my expertise to align strategies with industry needs and address evolving cyber threats. My role at AustCyber involved close collaboration with various stakeholders to develop strategic initiatives and forge partnerships that fuel innovation.

John is a non-executive director, speaker, cyber security advisor and Telstra Purple Ambassador with over 30 years in the ICT sector.  He is the Security Principal for Telstra Purple in Queensland and provides leadership for Telstra Purple in cyber security governance and risk nationally. John is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a graduate of the company directors’ course, a director of the Australian National Cyber Institute, a director of CREST ANZ, and a director and founding member of the Active Cyber Defence Alliance.

Chris Mohan has worked for fortune 50 companies security teams, bringing insight and actionable measures to those firms’ security posture and responsibilities. Chris’ career has had him in grow from a world of front line IT operations through to advising and guiding those in boardrooms.

His drive is to instil relevant, intelligent and practical security controls and practices that securely enable the business in an unpredictable online world. Chris became one of the few to achieve the prestigious GIAC Security Expert (GSE) certification and holds a number of other security and vendor qualifications.

Tamara’s work with clients is driven by a passion to provide insight, objectivity and evidence as a platform for driving change in the way people and organisations manage risk. She works closely with executive teams across the financial sector on issues related to risk, culture, strategy and people with a focus on crystallising how people work in practice and what this means for firm-wide risks. Core to this is providing actionable advice and synthesising the relationship between complex issues to provide clarity.

Tamara is a highly-skilled specialist with a unique blend of regulatory and practical perspectives affecting risk management and outcomes. Prior to Rhizome, she spent 15 years with the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority in roles spanning supervision, policy, strategy and risk advisory across banking, insurance, superannuation and wealth management. Tamara has also worked with international regulators and thought-leaders to regularly exchange ideas and approaches to supervising and assessing culture in global financial institutions.

Herb is the Project Fort Zero team lead and Industry CTO Government at Dell Technologies. He has and extensive multi-decade career beginning as a GE trained engineer and manager, and subsequently as a successful software entrepreneur, an IBM trained architect, IBM’s first CTO for Cyber Security, and the Chief Architect for a US Department of Defense’s mission support agency’s global portfolio.  

Herb supported the Intelligence Community around the world post 9/11, designing secure clouds, secure networks, and agency-wide mission infrastructures. He was deployed to create the operational watch for our National Counter Terrorism Center and invent analytics for social media intelligence. Herb participated in joint R&D activities, including the system that became IBM Streams. In the commercial arena, Herb has designed healthcare data analytics for the affordable care act, implemented cognitive solutions for IBM Watson and applied blockchain to secure software supply chains for globally distributed IoT devices. 

Macquarie Cloud Services (MCS) is the most trusted Cloud Services provider in Australia – with the highest independently verified NPS in the country. MCS has chosen Azure and only Azure as its cloud platform of choice & is proud to deliver unparalleled services that uniquely benefit our customers.

Our passion & steadfast focus runs deep on Azure, with global awarding winning Customer Service, innovative Managed Services, tightly integrated Operations, and an abundance of Azure certified experts spanning all available knowledge paths.

We take great pride in what we do. Be it migration, optimisation, transformation, or perhaps delivering to unique and sometimes demanding criteria – we’re up for any challenge! We enjoy applying our craft, and working in true partnership with our customers, Microsoft, and our select vendors that share our objectives & culture.

A leader with deep expertise in the industry that’s committed to excellence, making a positive difference with a customer-centric approach, understanding real business challenges, and solving them, delivering world class solutions and outcomes.

I’m a passionate, people and relationship first person that’s driven to help and empower businesses, work better together, being thoughtful and strategic and win together, genuinely working to create something great.

Through Cybersecurity at Macquarie Cloud Services, I prioritise understanding your specific business objectives and risk landscape as well as your roadmap and strategy. This enables me the delivery of security services that addresses your pain points, enhance your security posture, and foster sustainable growth and give you confidence with your cyber security strategy and implementation.

Experienced Senior Technology Business leader with a passion for helping people leverage technology to solve problems.

Skilled in IT Strategy, Complex Solution Sales and Leadership, I am on on a mission to build better Technology Sales Teams. Teams that can have a genuine positive impact on our customers, prospects and industry as a whole.

I am most happy when I am helping those around me succeed and am always looking to connect with like minded professionals.

James is an Audit, Risk & Compliance specialist, focused on enabling automation and cross-functional collaboration across these areas. As a solutions engineer, James works with clients to discover and embark on their digitisation journey and achieve integrated GRC across their organisation.

Fernando Serto has recently joined Cloudflare as Chief Technologist and Evangelist. Prior to this role, he was the Head of Security Technology and Strategy for APJ at Akamai, and has been in the IT industry for almost two decades, starting his early career as a developer, transitioning to Infrastructure roles in Server, Application and Networking space in both Operations and Professional Services, with a focus on Security.

For the last decade, Fernando has been focused on resolving customer’s challenges, and evangelising new technologies in the Application Performance and Security areas. Fernando has also spent a number of years working for a major Telco in APAC, specialising in WAN, Cloud, Security and Media solutions.

Vigyan Jain is a Data Management and Data Security Solutions Architect for Asia Pacific and Japan at Rubrik. He has over 14 years of leadership experience in the IT industry with a specialised focus on data management and governance. He has been assisting customers globally with their Digital Transformation efforts, Cloud Migration & Data Management modernisation requirements. Prior to joining Rubrik, Vigyan served many roles at MongoDB and Oracle. Before working at Oracle, Vigyan served as a consultant for McKinsey & Company’s digital practice. Vigyan has a background in instrumentation and control engineering and loves solving real world problems.

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.

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.

Guy Brown is the Security Strategist at Fastly, and he focuses on advising Australian and New Zealand enterprises and government organisations on designing and securing their digital assets across complex environments (on-prem, cloud and hybrid). Guy has over 20 years’ experience in the IT industry and has held dedicated security roles in Application Security, Networking Security, Automated Threats, and DDoS protection.

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

Shane Hill is part of ADAPT’s Strategic Research and Advisory team. As Senior Research Analyst, he produces pragmatic insights tailored to the specific needs of technology leaders in Australia and New Zealand.

Hill has worked in technology delivery and market intelligence roles for the past 15 years. His expertise encompasses automation, data science, and machine learning domains. He focuses on how emerging technologies will impact the business models, frameworks, and operations of end-user and vendor organisations.

Formerly of Gartner and with IT services experience across multiple jurisdictions, Shane has led business transformation, technology modernisation, vendor management, and advisory programs for leading consultancies, major corporates, government agencies, and boutique firms.

Jim is known for exceeding expectations in execution.

His entire career has been spent connecting the right people at the right time in roles across Europe and Asia Pac. ​
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He founded ADAPT to deliver quality outcomes with integrity – 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. ​
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At the centre of agenda creation and strategic partner management for two decades, Jim is uniquely experienced to be the voice of the end-user, the customer and the vendor. ​
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He satisfies C-suite attendees with all agendas across ADAPT EDGE events. He also regularly presents “Know your Customer” webinars and guides the world’s largest vendors with their g-t-m and content strategies.​
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Through entrepreneurial product development and a servant leader mentality with his team and clients, ADAPT grows annually with clearly differentiated value for all stakeholders.