Speakers

Sharjeel
Aleemullah
Elise
Aplin
Penelope
Barr
John-Ross Barresi
John-Ross
Barresi
Brad
Bennett
Adam
Boas
Anthony
Borton
Kath
Bray
Oliver Brennan
Oliver
Brennan
James
Brett
Ellen
Broad
Alison Cameron
Alison
Cameron
Kerrie Campbell
Kerrie
Campbell
Marina Chiovetti
Marina
Chiovetti
David
Colwell
Samantha
Connelly
Ben
Crothers
Nigel
Dalton
Megan
Dell
Tim
Dunlop
Lisa
Duty
Juliet
Fallace
Omer Felder
Omer
Felder
Dan Fischer
Dan
Fischer
Adrian Fittolani
Adrian
Fittolani
Stan Grant
Stan
Grant
Lambros Kallianiotis
Lambros
Kallianiotis
Alyce Katsanos
Alyce
Katsanos
Wai Ling Ko
Wai Ling
Ko
Stuart Mitchell
Stuart
Mitchell
Peter Moran
Peter
Moran
Leandro Pinter
Leandro
Pinter
Pat Reed
Pat
Reed
Jerome Reid
Jerome
Reid
James Ross
James
Ross
Scott Shaw
Scott
Shaw
Victoria Schiffer
Victoria
Schiffer
John Sullivan
John
Sullivan
Brett Wakeman
Brett
Wakeman
Sally Warhaft
Sally
Warhaft
Piers Warmers
Piers
Warmers
Sylvia Yanto
Sylvia
Yanto
Chen Zhu
Chen
Zhu
 
 
 
 
 
Sharjeel
Aleemullah
Elise
Aplin
Ellen
Broad
Penelope
Barr
John-Ross Barresi
John-Ross
Barresi
Adam
Boas
Kath
Bray
James
Brett
Alison Cameron
Alison
Cameron
Kerrie Campbell
Kerrie
Campbell
Marina Chiovetti
Marina
Chiovetti
Samantha
Connelly
David
Colwell
Ben
Crothers
Nigel
Dalton
Megan
Dell
Lisa
Duty
Juliet
Fallace
Omer Felder
Omer
Felder
Adrian Fittolani
Adrian
Fittolani
Lambros Kallianiotis
Lambros
Kallianiotis
Alyce Katsanos
Alyce
Katsanos
Wai Ling Ko
Wai Ling
Ko
Stuart Mitchell
Stuart
Mitchell
Peter Moran
Peter
Moran
Leandro Pinter
Leandro
Pinter
Pat Reed
Pat
Reed
James Ross
James
Ross
Scott Shaw
Scott
Shaw
John Sullivan
John
Sullivan
Sylvia Yanto
Sylvia
Yanto
Brett Wakeman
Brett
Wakeman
Piers Warmers
Piers
Warmers
Chen Zhu
Chen
Zhu
Anthony
Borton
Oliver Brennan
Oliver
Brennan
Dan Fischer
Dan
Fischer
Stan Grant
Stan
Grant
Tim Dunlop
Tim
Dunlop
Jerome Reid
Jerome
Reid
Sally Warhaft
Sally
Warhaft
 

Sharjeel Aleemullah

Sharjeel Aleemullah

Agile Coach & Scrum Master, Digital, CBA (Commonwealth Bank of Australia)

Over the last 3 years Sharjeel Aleemullah has been applying and innovating on Agile ways of working from the trenches of CBA, where 50 unique scrum teams are dedicated to creating iconic digital experiences that aim to enhance the financial well-being of all Australians. This includes experiences that span across the CommBank mobile app, NetBank and CommBank.com.au, touching the lives of over 6 million digitally active users.

Prior to CBA, Sharjeel spent 7 years as a technology nomad delivering large scale projects in numerous industries, gaining an appreciation of tech disruption in aviation, telecommunications, finance, retail banking, pharmaceuticals and digital media.
Drawing on his breadth and depth of experience, Sharjeel has brought teams back from the pits of despair and transformed them into high performing superstars by adapting and evolving agile concepts in a very pragmatic way.

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Elise Aplin

Product Development Coach, Property Exchange Australia

Elise Aplin is a passionate technologist who quietly thinks the internet is a bit of a mess and very much in need of improvement. She employs a bunch of cool frameworks (Agile, Lean, Systems Thinking, Design Thinking and their related friends) to help companies get better at solving real problems through the delivery of digital products. Elise has previously worked as a facilitator, coach, analyst and mentor and now enjoys providing product development coaching for Property Exchange Australia (PEXA).

Penelope Barr

Technology Leader, ANZ
Activate Agile speaker

Penelope Barr is a globally-recognised, award-winning innovator, intrapreneur & technologist. Her work has been recognised with Innovation & Technology awards in 5 countries.

Penelope has an exciting track record in helping organisations solve complex problems to meet 21st century challenges. 20+ years in global digital & technology roles, building products, leading teams & managing large transformational change programs means Penelope brings a wealth of experience to the conversation. She has her own start-ups & a podcast.

Penelope coaches & leads individuals, teams & organisations in problem-solving, agile delivery & lean start-up across the breadth of start-ups, not-for-profits & corporates. She’s known for strong facilitation & training skills & engages with energy & enthusiasm.

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John-Ross Barresi

Project & Innovation Coordinator, Senior O&M Specialist, Guide Dogs Victoria
Sponsored by ThoughtWorks

After graduating from LaTrobe University in 2001 as an Orientation and Mobility Specialist, John-Ross Barresi worked at Vision Australia providing Orientation and Mobility training to those who are blind or vision impaired. In 2004, John-Ross began at Guide Dogs Victoria, where he has been able to further develop his keen interest in adaptive technology and how it can assist his clients to enhance their independent mobility. In his current role of Innovation & Project Coordinator/Senior O&M Specialist, he manages projects that design and implement new technologies that aim to provide greater independence for his clients.

Brad Bennett

Founder & Director, EPiC Agile
Sponsored by EPiC Agile

Brad Bennett founded EPiC Agile in 2013 to support organisations with Agile at scale adoption. For Brad, it was obvious Agile was going to take over the world.

Brad quickly learnt that for change to really stick, it needs to be embodied at all levels, and this can only be done by building build strong human connections. Brad describes EPiC as 75% human and 25% Agile and has built a company based on the human values of Empathy, Passion, Integrity & Community (EPiC).

EPiC has established global partnerships and is a thought leader in the development and application of innovative business agility strategies. Joined by business partner Rob Gaunt, EPiC now has offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Singapore and Auckland.
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Adam Boas

CTO, MyXplor

Adam Boas has a long history in software delivery as a developer, tech lead, architect and manager. His career in application, web and mobile development has taken him from coding and design to architecture and team building as well as coaching and management. He has worked in consultancies and product companies in various industries.

Over the past 10 years, Adam has developed a keen interest in both distributed systems and distributed teams. His work with distributed teams has involved both working with remote individuals and teams in product companies as well as building offshore delivery centres and teams to provide elastic capacity to other product companies.

Most recently, after leading teams to rebuild monolithic back office customer and payment systems at REA he has been focussed on working with startups, experimenting with high performing distributed systems and working with teams at Culture Amp to build high performance data pipelines. Adam is currently CTO at MyXplor, building software to improve child care systems.

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Anthony Borton

DevOps Architect, Microsoft
Sponsored by Microsoft

Anthony Borton is a DevOps Architect on the Microsoft Global Enterprise DevOps customer advisory team. In this role, he helps organisations be more successful with their Agile DevOps transformations. Prior to joining Microsoft, he authored and delivered training around the world on Agile and DevOps. Anthony is passionate about continuous learning and is never scared to experiment so he can learn from both successes and failures.

Kath Bray

Customer Engagement Lead, ANZ
Sponsored by ANZ

Kath Bray is Managing Director for ANZ’s Customer Engagement Portfolio, focused on building compelling customer-oriented and data-informed propositions for priority segments. Prior to this, Kath was leading ANZ’s ‘New Ways of Working’ transformation, pioneering new working practices in Agile across the business.

Formerly Managing Director of Products, Kath has been responsible for all aspects of product design and management for ANZ’s Retail, Corporate and Commercial businesses. She has 20 years of global banking experience, having joined ANZ’s Institutional Business in 2011, and gone on to lead Deposits and Payments Product for Retail, Corporate and Commercial.

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Oliver Brennan

Head of Development, THE ICONIC

Ollie Brennan has over 12 years’ experience in the software space. Most recently, as Head of Development at THE ICONIC, he has built and led an enthusiastic engineering team during a period of hyper-growth and improvement.

When not working, Ollie spends his time organising the SydPHP user group and hanging out with his cat.

James Brett

Digital Leadership Coach, Author, and CTO, Curiously

James Brett describes himself as a digital leader who is passionate about developing people and organisations to create a positive future for humanity.

James has worked in digital for 20 years, initially as a highly technical developer and more recently performing various roles as a CTO, Digital Strategist, and Leadership Coach for executive teams. He holds a global perspective on digital, having lived in the USA, UK, China, and Australia, allowing him to understand the complex cultural and market dynamics that impact technology and product delivery across continents.

James is also a certified Leadership Agility Coach, Integrative Enneagram Coach, Neuro-semantics NLP Master Practitioner, and Holacracy Practitioner. He leverages this unique combination of psychology and digital skills to grow high-performance teams, leaders and organisations. His latest book, Evolving Digital Leadership will be available to the public in June 2018.

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Ellen Broad

Independent Data Consultant and Author

Ellen Broad returned to Australia from the UK in late 2016, where she was Head of Policy for the Open Data Institute (ODI), an international non-profit founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt. While in the UK Ellen became an expert adviser to senior UK government minister Elisabeth Truss on data. She has also held roles as Manager of Digital Policy and Projects for the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (Netherlands) and Executive Officer for the Australian Digital Alliance. She is an independent consultant for organisations including Data61, Knowledge Unlatched, Queensland government and the Open Data Institute Australian Network, while doing a masters in applied data analytics.

Ellen’s written and spoken about AI, open data and data sharing issues in places like the New Scientist and the Guardian, for ABC Radio National’s ‘Big Ideas’ and ‘Future Tense’ Programmes and at SXSW. Unrelated to her job, Ellen built an open data board game, Datopolis together with ODI CEO Jeni Tennison, which is being played in 19 countries. She is currently writing a book called MADE BY HUMANS: The AI Condition to be published in August 2018.

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Alison Cameron

Founder and Director, Adaptive Cultures and The Leadership Retreat

Exposure to working with world leaders in her early 20’s revealed to Alison Cameron that no one (including the wisest leaders and experts) had the answers to humanity’s most challenging and complex problems. Her life has since been spent exploring how we might, as a humanity and as leaders rise to meet these challenges.

As a co-founder of Adaptive Cultures Alison works with complex global organisations in enabling cultural evolution and adaptive leadership. She works with organisations to help them to positively disrupt and make a greater contribution to their customers and their world.

The Adaptive Cultures practitioner programs have enabled a community of leaders and culture practitioners around the world to create sustainable systemic transformation.

Alison has a cut-through style that calls us to the task of living our best selves in an authentic, engaging and meaningful way, guiding senior executives and global influencers to living more of their wisdom and compassion.

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Kerrie Campbell

CIO, Information and Digital Services, Flinders University

Kerrie Campbell has worked in the IT industry in various sectors including banking, Utilities, Federal Government and Higher Education for the last 30 years.

Kerrie is currently CIO at Flinders University, she has a passion for implementing progressive methods to improve IT delivery and is a strong supporter and builder of positive cultures.

Kerrie previously acted in the CIO role at the University of Adelaide and has been responsible for the implementation and development of the continuous improvement culture and improved delivery at the University of Adelaide.

Kerrie has previously worked as Director in the Application Services area for the Department of Human Services and Business Manager for British Gas in the United Kingdom.

Kerrie has had seats on the 100% Project Board, Adelaide University Council, SABREnet Board and eRSA board.

The vision of the 100% Project is to see 100% of Australia’s leadership potential, female and male, equally contributing to our social and economic future.

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Marina Chiovetti

Director of Acceleration and Leadership Coach, Curiously

With a vision to make every hour of the workday more satisfying and productive, Marina Chiovetti is passionate about bringing Agile and Design Thinking to all IT teams across Australia. Marina is currently tasked with setting up and running the Digital.NSW Accelerator, as part of the NSW Government – a ‘Lab’ style service that shepherds projects through a Discovery-Alpha-Beta-MVP delivery model, introducing many government teams to the benefits of ‘breaking free’ from traditional delivery approaches.

With a background in Agile, Service Design, and a keen interest in how humans work, Marina applies coaching techniques to executives and teams to build long-lasting change.

David Colwell

David Colwell

Manager of Solution Architects APAC, Tricentis
Sponsored by Tricentis

David Colwell has worked within the testing industry for over 10 years. David started out his career as a data entry grunt. He rapidly got sick of the repetitive work, and discovered a test automation tool – Win Runner – during a conversation with someone in the testing team. He then automated his daily job, and was subsequently given notice. However, the test manager took David under his wing and taught him everything there is to know about testing and test automation. This experience prepared David to become Automation Mentor for One Patch.

Shortly thereafter, he was appointed as a Technical test lead at DX Solutions, a second-time BRW Fast 100 company. Over the course of the next 5 years, David got promoted to Head of QA at DX Solutions, with a team of over 85 test engineers, leads and managers. After leaving DX Solutions, he got hired by Tricentis, a start-up based in Austria to lead the APAC technical division.

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Samantha Connelly

Quality Coach, Campaign Monitor

Sam Connelly could be described as a motorbike riding, robotics obsessed, girl geek. She is a Quality Coach at Campaign Monitor; she would prefer ‘product risk investigator’ as her title with the tagline ‘I will help you find your bugs’.

Mobile explorative testing is her specialty and she is also the co-chair of the Sydney Testers meetup group. Sam credits a technical background and a curious mind as being her major drivers in her pursuits. She has previously hosted her own community radio show and started a Robogals chapter in Tasmania.

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Ben Crothers

Principal Designer, Atlassian

Ben Crothers is a strategist, mentor, explainer, design thinker and team leader. He has 20 years of deep knowledge and expertise in product strategy and design, user research, conceptual thinking, Agile team patterns and visualisation.

Ben is driven by his belief that we need better systems, better thinking, and better ways of working together, so that we can solve the world’s complex problems in a better way. Much of this has to do with using visualisation techniques to explore problems, explain concepts, and envision new experiences.

Ben currently works at Atlassian as Principal Designer, where he runs strategic conversations and workshops, trains teams in Agile practices, and helps teams apply Agile approaches in more useful ways. He is also the author of a new book for progressive teams, Presto Sketching: The Magic of Simple Drawing for Brilliant Product Thinking and Design.

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Nigel Dalton

Chief Inventor, REA Group

Nigel Dalton has over 25 years of IT-related experience across multi-nationals and startups. In 2007 he joined travel publisher Lonely Planet as General Manager of Information Technology, becoming Deputy Director of Digital (web and mobile businesses) in 2010.

Most recently, he co-founded a consultancy, Luna Tractor, to help organisations apply systems thinking, lean and Agile software development techniques to all aspects of business.

Previously, Nigel held roles with AXA Australia, online human resource startup ePredix in the USA (now owned by SHL), as well as Silicon Systems and Mitsubishi Electric in New Zealand.

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Megan Dell

Head of UX, 99designs

Megan Dell began working in the field of user experience back in the day when nobody really cared about the internet. It was a great time, being able to get away with some really experimental things compared to the rest of a tightly regulated insurance company. She worked on the online quoting applications for Australia’s largest personal insurance brands at Suncorp – if you are looking to buy car or travel insurance online, it is likely you’ve experienced some of her work.

After a stint in agency-land, working as both a UX Consultant and at times a UI Designer, Megan has since worked in-house at tech companies such as MYOB, Australia Post, REA Group, and is now Head of UX at 99designs – an online graphic design marketplace.

She speaks about Design in an Agile workplace, Lean Startup approaches, as well as being a female leader, and the importance of mental health.

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Tim Dunlop

Tim Dunlop

Author

Tim Dunlop is the author of the internationally acclaimed book Why The Future Is Workless, which examines the impact of new technologies on the ways we work. Tim’s research into the future of work has made him a globally recognised speaker in this field, and he writes regularly for The Guardian on this topic.

Tim teaches new media at the University of Melbourne’s Master of Journalism program and holds a PhD in political philosophy. Tim has a background in business, having been involved with a number of media startups. Tim’s forthcoming book – The Future Of Everything: Big, Audacious Ideas for a Better World – will be released on 1 September 2018.

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Lisa Duty

General Manager, EPiC Singapore
Sponsored by EPiC Agile

Lisa Duty is a passionate culture-first agilist and reformed management consultant who loves helping clients take Agile beyond process and delivery to transform the vibration of their organisation… one team, one individual at a time.

She combines Agile expertise with strategy, design thinking and people-centric change to achieve meaningful outcomes with energy, empathy and authenticity.

Having lived and worked extensively across Australia, Asia and the UK, Lisa is on her second stint in Singapore to lead EPiC’s culture-hacking capability across Asia, building deep connections with our customers and their teams.

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Juliet Fallace

Agile Transformation Capability Lead, Australian Bureau of Statistics

Juliet Fallace has over 20 years combined Program and Project Manager private and public sector experience. Currently employed as an EL2 at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Juliet is responsible for leading continuous improvement business process and transformational programs. During Juliet’s ABS career she has led service delivery programs, change management programs, strategic and operational technical and business transformation projects.

Recently certified as a qualified Professional Scrum Master, Juliet has been leading the ABS for the past 3 years towards transforming how business delivers its products and services through the adoption of Agile practices.

Omer Felder

Director, Customer Success Application Delivery Management, Micro Focus
Sponsored by Micro Focus

Omer Felder is a Global Director of ADM Customer Success and is charged with ensuring customers’ value realisation of their Micro Focus Application Delivery Management solutions. In this role, Omer is responsible for regularly meeting with customers around the world and driving a customer-centric agenda. In addition, he ensures that customers realise the full value of their business outcomes by using the Micro Focus ADM portfolio of products and DevOps solutions.

Omer previously worked as a Senior R&D manager in Micro Focus Software’s enterprise security product portfolio. Here, he was responsible for the development of some of the industry’s most innovative products in the security domain.

Omer joined Micro Focus in 2010 after managing R&D organisations within a number of startup companies, as well as managing several teams in enterprise software companies. He is passionate about R&D excellence and brings years of experience in development and testing practices to his current role. He is responsible for driving continuous increases in customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score survey metrics.

Omer is located in the ADM R&D labs in Yehud, Israel.

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Dan Fischer

Senior Manager, Digital Experience and Services, Qantas
Board Member, Digital and Technology Collective

Dan Fischer is passionate about the intersection of commerce and design, and the role that emotion and context play in building winning digital experiences. Dan is also curious about how organisational design can foster a culture of innovation.

Dan has spearheaded the full-stack re-platforming of qantas.com and Qantas app, and designed the digital tribe’s new operating model.

At Qantas, Dan’s team powers the digital tribe by providing the design, production, operations platform and ways of working leadership. This enables the Qantas squads to focus on delivering customer value faster.

Previously, Dan was the Multimedia Executive Producer and Deputy Network Editor at News Corp Australia. Here, he led the network’s interactive storytelling of major news events including the 2011 Queensland floods, Cyclone Yasi, Japan’s 2011 tsunami and the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes.

From 2001 to 2010, Dan worked in various roles at Telstra, including designing BigPond’s Online Customer Service strategy and leading strategy for BigPond Movies.

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Adrian Fittolani

General Manager, Content Group, Envato
Activate Agile speaker

Adrian Fittolani is a father, a runner, a developer, a guitarist, a handyman, a speaker, a sports coach, a dressmaker, a husband, a mechanic, a trainer and the Program Director at Envato. He considers himself to be good at only three of these things. A different three, depending on the week. For all of them though, for his 16 year career in software, and for being a member of Melbourne’s tech and Agile community, he also considers himself about the luckiest person around.

Stan Grant

Stan Grant

Indigenous Affairs Editor, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Special advisor to the Prime Minister on Indigenous constitutional recognition
AgileAus 10th Anniversary Dinner speaker only

Stan Grant is the Indigenous Affairs Editor for the ABC and special advisor to the Prime Minister on Indigenous constitutional recognition.

His appointment to the role of special advisor to the Prime Minister in 2016 came soon after he made a speech on racism that went viral and then reduced the Prime Minister to tears during an exclusive interview with The Point when speaking about Indigenous issues.

Stan spent most of his childhood on the road living in small towns and Aboriginal communities across outback NSW. His father was an itinerant saw-miller who worked when and where he could. Stan moved so often he attended 12 different schools before he was in his teens.

After attending University, Stan won a cadetship with the Macquarie Radio Network, launching a career in journalism that has spanned more than 30 years and more than 70 countries. In that time Stan has travelled the world covering the major stories of our time from the release of Nelson Mandela, the troubles in Northern Island, the death of Princess Diana, war in Iraq, the second Palestinian intifada, the war on terror, the South Asia Tsunami, the Pakistan Earthquake and the rise of China.

Stan has hosted major news and current affairs programs on Australian commercial and public T.V. He has been a political correspondent for the ABC, a Europe correspondent for the Seven Network based in London and a senior international correspondent for the international broadcaster CNN based in Hong Kong and Beijing.

Stan has won many major awards including an Australian T.V Logie, a Columbia University Du-Pont Award (the broadcast equivalent of the Pullitzer Prize), and the prestigious U.S Peabody Award. He is a four-time winner of the highly prized Asia TV Awards including reporter of the year.

Stan has written The Tears of Strangers and Talking To My Country (Harper Collins), and has published numerous articles and opinion pieces for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian.

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Lambros Kallianiotis

Head of Digital Engineering, Digital Delivery Centre, Australia Post

Lambros Kallianiotis is a senior technology leader skilled at managing change in complex environments with experience leading Agile teams for delivery of digital technology solutions. Most recently, Lambros has been driving the delivery of Digital iD™ within the Digital Delivery Centre of Australia Post. Prior to this Lambros focused on building passionate Agile teams at ANZ where he led the mobile technology team.

Alyce Katsanos

Alyce Katsanos

Scrum Master, Program Coach, Lead Consultant, Elabor8
Sponsored by Elabor8

A Lead Consultant at Elabor8, Alyce Katsanos has spent the last 12 months working in the Insurance and Financial Services sectors. Her admittedly unusual career trajectory, from piano teacher, to technical writer, to Agile practitioner, brings a unique perspective and set of skills to coaching.

Pragmatic in her approach, it’s Alyce’s honesty, passion and ability to deliver successful outcomes in the most unlikely of situations that simultaneously keeps her teams happy and stakeholders trusting. What makes Alyce tick is her ability to find fluid, collaborative and effective ways to work in constrained environments that sometimes make people feel like they’re drowning in a sea of red tape.

Known by everyone she works with for always having a cup of coffee in her hand, she’s established a reputation for finding solutions that give people, teams and organisations the freedom to move.

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Wai Ling Ko

Wai Ling Ko

Scrum Master, Liberty Financial
Activate Agile speaker

Wai Ling Ko has been working in and around software delivery teams for over 15 years.
Her passion is growing teams that create software that makes a difference.
She believes that building amazing teams starts with growing individuals by developing their strengths, talents & passion and loves using games to teach concepts.

Peter Moran

Stuart Mitchell

Certified Scrum Trainer, Certified Team Coach, Agile360
Sponsored by PM-Partners

Stuart Mitchell CST, CTC, is an award winning international presenter, author, and Agile thought leader and one of the most experienced coaches and trainers in Australasia and Europe. As a former global head of Agile at one of the world’s largest banks, a senior Coach to over 300 teams and a trainer of more than 3000 people, he aims to share a wealth of real world ‘war stories’ delivered with a shot of Scottish humour.

Peter Moran

Peter Moran

Engineering Manager, REA Group

As an Engineering Manager at REA, Peter Moran helps lead the teams building the realestate.com.au mobile apps and the personalised services that power them. Peter has been in software development long enough to remember some of the first XP projects in Australia, and has been developing, architecting or leading software delivery teams since. Prior to joining REA, Peter worked in software consulting before joining Jetstar to help build the Hooroo online hotels business. He is passionate about unlocking the potential of great teams and technical leaders.

Leisa Reichelt

Leandro Pinter

Head of Software Engineering – Digital & Data, Tyro

Leandro Pinter has been leading product & engineering teams and helping organisations be more Agile over the last 15 years. He is passionate about helping organisations to improve the way they work by creating a culture of high alignment and autonomy.

Pat Reed

Pat Reed

Executive Coach and Transformation Leader, SoftEd

Pat Reed is an experienced Agile executive, coach, transformational leader and Adjunct Professor. She has proven success transforming large Agile organisations and developing world class enterprise Agile practices (including accounting, PMO, portfolio management, strategy, release, DevOps, change, performance management and adaptive career processes and practices).

Pat has 40+ years of experience in leveraging cutting edge technology, delivery and project management methods to solve challenging business problems. Her experience encompasses 15 years as Executive Director at the Walt Disney Company and Walt Disney Pictures & Television, five years at Universal Studios Motion Picture Group, a year as CIO at GameWorks, and leading delivery management services as an Executive at Gap Inc. for eight years.

Pat’s unique skills include transformational leadership, connecting strategy to delivery and solving impossible business challenges by leveraging deep domain knowledge of human behaviour, patterns and design thinking, and empirical (scientific) methods with a razor-like focus on value.

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Pat Reed

Jerome Reid

Group Captain, RAAF

Group Captain Jerome Reid is the Air Force’s designated disruptor; currently posted as one of the two Directors of Plan Jericho, also known as the Jericho Twins.

Jerome has enjoyed a diverse career across a range of work environments, most often working in positions underpinned by a focus on enterprise level transformations, capability innovations, people development and organisational change. Until mid last year, Jerome was an Australian Army Infantry Officer. In that capacity, he has led teams in operational planning, combat operations, disaster relief and other humanitarian missions.

Jerome also holds a secondary specialisation in military industrial relations. He has overseen significant transformations in remuneration and industrial relations, as well as whole-of-workforce system innovations and reforms in the Australian Defence Force.

Jerome was appointed to his current role in the Royal Australian Air Force in order to bring his transformation experience and expertise to Plan Jericho, which is the Chief of Air Force’s seminal capability transformational project. Jerome’s role on Plan Jericho is to focus on thinking about complex problems. Additionally, he is responsible for designing and delivering innovative improvements to the Air Force’s internal disruption capability, so that the Air Force can realise its future vision.

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Leisa Reichelt

James Ross

CTO, Envato

James Ross has been around in Agile circles long enough to remember when suggesting working in an Agile way was a career limiting move. Now that it’s a career limiting move if you don’t profess unwavering loyalty to everything Agile, James finds himself frequently spending the opportunities he gets to use a microphone to call out some of the many ways we might be getting agility wrong.

James is currently the CTO at Envato. He is a popular speaker at various conferences, including Agile India, Agile Australia, Building Business Capability and the Lean, Agile and Systems Thinking (LAST) Conference. He is the co-author of what he thinks is the only book that takes a test-driven approach to the teaching of fundamental computer algorithms. He hopes it’s not the only one because it’s not a very good idea 🙂

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Scott Shaw

Scott Shaw

Head of Technology, ThoughtWorks

As the Head of Technology for ThoughtWorks in Australia, Scott Shaw divides his time between professional services leadership and consulting. As a consultant, he helps enterprise customers shape their technology to align with 21st century practices like cloud, continuous delivery, microservices and lean governance. As a lifelong programmer and technology professional, Scott has designed and worked on distributed systems of every imaginable size and shape. When he’s not in meetings, Scott enjoys writing Clojure code.

Victoria Schiffer

Victoria Schiffer

Delivery Manager, SEEK
Activate Agile speaker

Victoria Schiffer is an Agile mind based in Melbourne, Australia, with over 12 years of experience in Digital and Technology in Germany and Australia. Her passion lies in building thriving teams and innovative leadership who collaboratively drive towards positive business outcomes. She’s a proud mum of an #agileBaby and an #agileToddler who keep her Agile mind positively challenged.

Scott Shaw

John Sullivan

CEO, Elabor8

John Sullivan is CEO at Elabor8, the first ever at the consultancy company, where he leads the team to help customers transform and adapt to meet the increasing demands of the Disruptive Digital and Agile world of today to gain clarity and insight into their environment; building coherence and adaptability into their processes; and developing the capabilities they need to succeed.

Prior to this role, John was the CTO at Vicinity Centres responsible for the creation and initial delivery of a Digital strategy, The Product Delivery Manager for MYOB SME products where he was responsible for the delivery teams that built, maintained and extended those products. John has also been responsible for the establishment of the technical delivery group that built a new lean startup business for the Qantas/Jetstar group called “Hooroo”. He has also led an Agile transformation at Sensis, within the Online Directories and search division.

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Brett Wakeman

Brett Wakeman

Iteration Manager – Digital iD, Australia Post

With over 25 years experience working in the software industry, across roles in customer service, training, programming, technical writing and project management, Brett Wakeman has seen many different ways that teams work and software is built.

The move to working in an Agile way, during his time at carsales.com, was the biggest change of all, and came as a breath of fresh air.

Brett is now an Iteration Manager at Australia Post and is always looking for ways to build high-performing teams, explore different Agile practices and encourage people to embrace Agile thinking.

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Brett Wakeman

Sally Warhaft

Sally Warhaft is a Melbourne anthropologist, broadcaster and former editor of The Monthly magazine. She is the author of the best-selling book Well May We Say: The Speeches that Made Australia and is a regular host and commentator on the ABC. Sally has a Phd in Anthropology and did her fieldwork in Mumbai, India. Her work has focused on the question ‘What makes community strong?’

Piers Warmers

Piers Warmers

Technology Manager, THE ICONIC

As a Technology Manager for THE ICONIC, Piers Warmers has half a cerebral hemisphere in code and another half in team dynamics. As software engineer, Piers is passionate about building systems that are lean, flexible and scalable. As a team leader it’s pretty much the same thing – encouraging transformation based on best practice, the ‘right’ cadence and the unique qualities he believes that every team has.

When he’s not working, Piers splits his time between being a father of two and dabbling in hobby farming.

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Sylvia Yanto

Sylvia Yanto

Senior Business Analyst & Scrum Master, Digital, CBA (Commonwealth Bank of Australia)

Sylvia Yanto is a versatile, passionate and high performing Agile practitioner who has gained experience as a Business Analyst, Scrum Master and more recently Product Owner. As part of the innovation team, Sylvia is leading the practice of developing fast failing experiments to validate transformative business models. Her unique lens to how teams can deliver value to the end customer and business, has contributed to the success of the Commbank mobile app which supports over 4 million Australians each month.

Her experience extends to not-for-profit organisations such as Ozharvest where she leads the implementation of Agile Ways of Working, enabling them to continuously build innovative solutions to combat food waste across Australia.

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Chen Zhu

Chen Zhu

IoT Director, ThoughtWorks
Sponsored by ThoughtWorks

Chen Zhu is the IoT Director at ThoughtWorks, China. Before he entered IoT the domain, he worked as a User Experience Designer, Business Analyst and Project Manager on lots of software delivery projects. As a result, he’s accumulated lots of experience in Agile methodology and currently applies it to both software and hardware development to handle the risk of innovation.