Speakers

Ellen Broad

Associate Professor, School of Cybernetics, Australian National University
Ellen Broad is an Associate Professor with the School of Cybernetics, founded by Distinguished Professor Genevieve Bell at the Australian National University, where she focuses on designing responsible, ethical and sustainable AI. Ellen has spent more than a decade working in the technology sector in Australia, the UK and Europe, in leadership roles spanning engineering, data standards development and policy for organisations including CSIRO’s Data61, the Open Data Institute in the UK and as an adviser to UK Cabinet Minister Elizabeth Truss. She has written for publications including The Guardian, New Scientist, Harper’s Bazaar and Griffith Review and is a regular keynote speaker and commentator on technology issues. She is the author of Made by Humans: the AI Condition (Melbourne University Publishing, 2018) and co-designer of a board game about open data, alongside ODI Vice President Jeni Tennison, called Datopolis that is being played in 19 countries.

Christy Ditchburn

Sustainability Principal, Telstra
Christy Ditchburn is a Sustainability Principal in Telstra’s Sustainability, External Affairs and Legal Services team located in Melbourne. Christy leads a team of sustainability experts focused on Responsible Business and Digital Inclusion.

Christy has extensive experience in both the telecommunications and power sectors, both in Australia and Asia. Prior to her role in the Sustainability team, Christy was a senior lawyer in Telstra’s legal team supporting the Wholesale, Enterprise, Retail and Operations business units. Prior to working for Telstra in Melbourne, Christy supported Telstra’s international operations in Hong Kong where she advised the Asia team on all aspects of the operation, including contracting, anti-bribery and corruption, risk, corporate governance and privacy. Prior to working for Telstra, Christy worked for the China Light & Power (CLP) Group (in Hong Kong) as Senior Corporate Lawyer in CLP’s Group Transactions team. Christy advised on the legal implications for Hong Kong, Australian and international transactions (including India, Vietnam and Thailand), IPOs, as well as sustainability, environmental, climate change and carbon trading issues. Christy was also the Company Secretary of all of the TRUenergy group subsidiaries.

Christy began her career at Mallesons Stephen Jaques (now King & Wood Mallesons) and holds a Bachelor of Science (Chemistry)/Laws (Hons) from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Katrina Donaghy

CEO and Co-Founder, Civic Ledger

Katrina Donaghy began her career in the public sector and held senior project coordination and management roles with the Brisbane City Council, Queensland Urban Utilities, and the Queensland Government.

Katrina recognised the potential for governments and industry to apply blockchain technology to create new markets and economies of the future and co-founded Civic Ledger in late September 2016. She was the founding organiser of the Brisbane Women in Blockchain Meetup, an Industry Mentor at RMIT Online, Australia’s top provider of university on-line educational courses in blockchain technology, a past Director on the Blockchain Australia Board.

In 2018 and 2019, Katrina was recognised as a Female Fintech Leader Finalist and Female Blockchain Leader Finalist by her Industry peers and was appointed as an Australian Blockchain Fellow in recognition for her contribution to the responsible adoption of blockchain technology both in Australia and globally. In 2020, Katrina was included in the 101 Women in Blockchain

Julian Elliott

Co-Founder & CEO, Covidence
Professor Julian Elliott is one of the world’s leading innovators in the way society uses science for decision-making, and the Co-Founder and CEO of Covidence, a non-profit technology company providing the most widely used software for summarising science. He developed the Living Evidence model: trustworthy summaries of science that are kept up to date with the latest research. This model dramatically improves the currency of high-quality scientific evidence and is now being adopted worldwide, including by the World Health Organization.

Julian was the founding Chair of the Australian Living Evidence Consortium and established the Australian National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce, both based at Cochrane Australia within Monash University’s School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine.

Bridgette Engeler

Senior Lecturer, Swinburne School of Business, Law and Entrepreneurship

Bridgette Engeler is a pracademic working across entrepreneurship, design-led innovation, strategic foresight and culture. Prior to joining Swinburne, she worked in brand, design and innovation strategy for over 20 years. Her PhD investigates the intersection of design and foresight, and ways to bring futures literacy into design praxis to curtail the dominant discourse of short-termism, normativity and material culture. She’s interested in the potential of post-growth innovation and futures-led design to tackle the many challenges ahead. Recent projects include collaborating with a global consortium of women futurists to design a feminist futures framework for IWDA, public participatory futures installations in Melbourne and Hong Kong, researching viability of VR and AR wearables for people with early-onset dementia, investigating the challenges of self-sovereign identity, and exploring ways to use technology and new materials in designing condoms and other devices to support sexual and reproductive health.

Scott Farrell

Partner, King & Wood Mallesons
Scott Farrell is a senior Partner of King & Wood Mallesons with more than 20 years’ experience in the law relating to financial services, markets, systems and technology. Scott has given many years of service to the public and private sector in advising on, and guiding, regulatory and legal change, including in connection with advances in financial technology, the digital economy and data sharing frameworks. Scott led the two inquiries for the Australian Government which designed, and developed, the framework for Australia’s Consumer Data Right and recently chaired the review into the regulatory architecture of Australia’s payments system.

Joe Glesta

Co-founder & CEO, Climasens
Joe Glesta is helping build climate resilience in our world through technological innovation. He is a passionate sustainability and technology professional with a diverse array of skills focused on digital innovation, service design, stakeholder engagement and business strategy. Over the past decade, he has worked in a multitude of positions that have allowed him to work in the climate sector and technology, enabling him to understand what it takes for these two megatrends to combine and improve the planet.

Bruce Grady

Business Development & Partnerships Manager, FloodMapp
Bruce Grady, Business Development and Partnerships Manager at FloodMapp, is a forward-thinking executive with over 30 years of senior-level experience in business, risk, and disaster management. Over the last decade as a consultant, Bruce specialised in analysis and reviews for organisational, strategic, and operational change and improvement. Specifically, in the areas of risk, crisis management, governance, and digital transformation. As Assistant Director-General for Emergency Management Queensland, Bruce managed 310 permanent staff and a volunteer force of 6,000 (State Emergency Service). Bruce was accountable for all elements of a highly effective All-Agencies, All-Hazards, comprehensive approach to disaster management across Queensland. This is a large, geographically, and demographically diverse state and is Australia’s most disaster impacted state exposed to a diverse, complex and high-frequency hazard profile.

Josh Hallwright

Humanitarian Lead & Blockchain Advisor, Oxfam Australia

Josh Hallwright is a humanitarian specialist with over twelve years working in international and domestic (Australian) humanitarian settings. Josh is currently the Humanitarian Lead for Oxfam Australia, managing its humanitarian profile. Josh is also Oxfam’s Blockchain Advisor, supporting the use of the technology in the humanitarian sector. He is in the final year of his PhD research, investigating how power is expressed in the financial systems used to fund disaster responses. Josh has worked with most of the major actors in the humanitarian system (UN, Red Cross, AusAID/DFAT, INGOs, academia) in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Oceania, and South America.

Penny Harrison

Chief of Staff, Australian Red Cross
With nearly 25 years’ experience in executive and leadership roles in the humanitarian sector, both in Australia and Internationally, Penny Harrison is known for being curious, constantly looking at futures trends and working out what this means for today such as the future of volunteering and how people take action for good, harnessing the transformational power of frontier technologies to solve complex humanitarian issues, and the value of social innovation.

Drawing from her breadth of experience in Australia and internationally, along with good doses of passion and optimism, Penny strives to build collaborations across sectors including academic, business and not for profit with individuals and communities knowing that this is what it takes to effect system and social change.

Pete Horsley

Founder, Remarkable
Peter Horsley is the Founder of Remarkable, the global startup venture arm of Cerebral Palsy Alliance and Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Foundation, whose mission is to harness tech and innovation to enable (all) human potential. Peter is a catalytic leader for global change on disability inclusion and is one of the Co-founders of +N Inclusive Innovation Network, a global ecosystem of partners who shape future technologies that lower barriers to disability inclusion. He has more than 15 years’ experience in the disability sector across a variety of roles. Peter started his career as a landscape architect and sees the potential for design and innovation to create positive systemic change.

Megan Kelleher

Vice Chancellor’s Indigenous Pre-Doctoral Fellow, RMIT University
Megan Kelleher is a PhD candidate and one of RMIT’s Vice Chancellor’s Indigenous Pre‑Doctoral Fellows in the School of Media and Communication. The title of her thesis is Blockchain Mapping and Indigenous Knowledge Systems: Observations at the interface between distributed consensus technology and Indigenous governance. Megan is investigating whether the affordances of blockchain technology are culturally appropriate for Indigenous governance.

Grounded in her Barada / Baradha and Gabalbara / Kapalbara heritage, the research will be approached from an Indigenous standpoint, contributing to the field from an important Australian research perspective.

Previous to RMIT Megan was at Creative Victoria in Indigenous Partnerships, and in the Department of Premier and Cabinet’s Strategic Communication and Protocol Branch.

Emma Koster

Founder, Good Hood
Emma Koster is the founder of Good Hood, an organisation developing tech-driven projects for a fairer, safer world. Through Good Hood, Emma has led the development of initiatives such as Hello Cass, an SMS-enabled chatbot for those affected by family and sexual violence, and Solinary, a multilingual health communication platform, with a mission to enable safe, simple and equitable access to good health.

With a dual-disciplinary background in technology and community development, Emma’s work aims to embed a culture of fairness, simplicity and community advocacy throughout all phases of strategic and product development.

Emma is a proud member of local and International communities of practice, including the Dhelk Dja North Metropolitan Action Group Safe Pathways to Healing, ICDP’s PacificConnect, and Thailand Institute of Justice – Justice Innovation GBV Technology working group.

Through Good Hood, Emma’s work has been recognised by the Sidney Myer Innovation Fellowship (2018), and impact innovation programs MAP (2019), CivVic Labs (2020) and Humanitech’s inaugural cohort (2021-2).

Natalie Kyriacou OAM

CEO, My Green World
Natalie Kyriacou OAM is an award winning social entrepreneur, Board Advisor, writer and public speaker passionate about exploring the intersection of environmental, community and social equity issues. She is the CEO of My Green World, a Board Committee Member at CARE Australia, and PwC’s National Business Development Lead for Environmental and Social Growth at PwC.

Natalie was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for her services to wildlife and environmental conservation in 2018. She is a Forbes 30 Under 30 (2018) honouree in recognition of her Social Entrepreneurship and a UNEP Young Champion of the Earth Finalist.

She is the Creator of World of the Wild mobile game app, a former Board Member for the University of Melbourne’s Animal Ethics Committee and the former Australian Director of Sri Lankan-based aid organisation NGO, Dogstar Foundation.

Chrisanta Muli

CEO, One Girl Australia
Chrisanta Muli is the Chief Executive Officer at One Girl Australia, an organisation that works with communities and local partners to break down the barriers faced by young women and girls in accessing quality education. As a feminist and an impact-driven gender equality specialist, Chrisanta has over 12 years’ experience leading complex participatory action research and evaluations in Australia, Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. Chrisanta also has extensive experience as a senior lecturer at Australian universities, and is passionate about gender justice, women’s and girl’s rights.

Kelsie Nabben

Researcher, RMIT University
Kelsie Nabben is a qualitative researcher in decentralised technology communities. She is particularly interested in resilience and the human outcomes of digital infrastructure.

Kelsie is a recipient of a PhD scholarship at the RMIT University Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society, and a researcher in the Blockchain Innovation Hub and Digital Ethnography Research Centre. She has advised Federal and multilateral government agencies on cybersecurity and “Decentralised Autonomous Organisations”, works with complex system R&D firm BlockScience and contributes to open-source research network Metagov.

Andy Nolan

Director Emerging Technologies, Thoughtworks
Andy Nolan has over 20 years of experience applying emerging technologies to real-world problems. With a particular interest in applying AI and computer vision in the areas of healthcare, food production and climate change. Experience developing and deploying novel technologies into extremely challenging environments (underwater, drones, livestock) and tightly regulated industries (medical diagnostic devices, aviation).

Lizzie O’Shea

Lawyer, writer & digital rights advocate
Lizzie O’Shea is a lawyer, writer and digital rights advocate. Her commentary is featured regularly on television programs and radio, about law, technology, or human rights. In print, her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, and Sydney Morning Herald, among others.

Lizzie is a Founder and the chair of Digital Rights Watch, which advocates for human rights online. She also sits on the board of Blueprint for Free Speech and the Alliance for Gambling Reform. At the National Justice Project, Lizzie worked with lawyers, journalists and activists to establish a Copwatch program, for which she was a recipient of the Davis Projects for Peace Prize. In June 2019, Lizzie was named a Human Rights Hero by Access Now.

As a lawyer, Lizzie has spent many years working in public interest litigation, on cases brought on behalf of refugees and activists, among others. She represented the Fertility Control Clinic in their battle to stop harassment of their staff and patients by anti abortion fanatics, as well as the Traditional Aboriginal Owners of Muckaty Station, in their successful attempt to stop a nuclear waste dump being built on their land.

Lizzie’s book, Future Histories (Verso, 2019), looks at radical social movements and theorists from history and applies them to debates we have about digital technology today.

John Phillips

Co-founder, Sezoo
John Phillips is an expert in Digital Trust frameworks (including Self-Sovereign Identity), is a co-founder of Sezoo, and leads the 460degrees Ventures, Emerging Technology and Education practices.

John believes that open-standard digital trust technologies such as verifiable credentials and decentralised identifiers provide an opportunity for radically improving digital trust for people, organisations, and things at a personal, social and global scale. He sees the application of these technologies as a disruptive force for improvement, and wants to be a catalyst for that change, helping people and organisations navigate their way to a better future.

Focused on Digital Trust initiatives since 2017, John was one of the global authors invited to contribute to the Self-Sovereign Identity Decentralized digital identity and verifiable credentials book, and wrote the chapter on explaining the value of SSI to business.

Since co-founding Sezoo in 2021, John has worked with the Sezoo team on digital trust projects with Australian Federal and State governments, major financial institutions and scheme operators, and medical data research organisations.

Sarah Pink

Professor of Design and Emerging Technologies, Monash University

Sarah Pink is Professor and founding Director of the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University. She is known globally for her interdisciplinary research and engagement. Her work brings design anthropology into collaboration with other disciplines and partners inside and outside academia to ensure that everyday human and environmental futures are ethically accounted for in the design, application and use of emerging technologies. She has over 20 years experience of working with academic and industry research partners internationally and frequently gives keynote and public lectures in academic and business environments internationally. She has published numerous academic books, peer referred journal articles and book chapters and directed several documentary films.

 

Her research has been funded by research councils in Australia, UK, Sweden, Norway and Spain, and the EU, and through partnerships with industry, public sector and other organisations internationally, including, for example, Volvo Cars (Sweden), Unilever (UK), Samsung (Brazil), City of Melbourne (Australia), Suncorp (Australia), Exemplar Health Consortium (Australia). Current projects investigate future automated mobilities, digital energy futures, transition to net zero, healthcare design.

Sarah’s many books include Doing Visual Ethnography 4th edition (2021), Imagining Personal Data (2019), Uncertainty and Possibility (2018), Making Homes (2017), Anthropologies and Futures (2017), Theoretical Scholarship and Applied Practice(2017), Digital Ethnography (2016), Doing Sensory Ethnography 2nd edition (2015).

Amanda Robinson

Co-founder & Director, Humanitech

Amanda Robinson is Co-founder & Director of Humanitech; a think + do tank, which seeks to shape the future by ensuring technology serves humanity by putting people and society at the centre.

Prior to joining Australian Red Cross, Amanda held senior strategic roles in innovation, digital product development and marketing and is now keenly focused on how social innovation and frontier technologies might help solve complex social problems.

Amanda is also a member of the Industry Advisory Board for the College of Business & Law at RMIT, Chair of the Trust Alliance and Board Member for the Australian Living Evidence Consortium.

Lorenn Ruster

Responsible Tech Collaborator, Centre for Public Impact and PhD Candidate at School of Cybernetics, Australian National University

Lorenn Ruster is a responsible technology collaborator with the Centre for Public Impact, and current PhD student at the Australian National University’s School of Cybernetics. For 10 years, Lorenn was a strategy consultant, most recently a Director focused on Systems Change at PricewaterhouseCooper’s Indigenous Consulting. She’s also an Acumen Global Fellow where she spent a year working with a Ugandan Solar Energy company as their Marketing and Innovation Director and an alumnus of Singularity University’s Global Solutions Program where she prototyped high tech hardware leveraging sensor technology for community-led landmine detection. In addition to her Master in Applied Cybernetics, she holds a Master of International Management specialising in social business where she studied social entrepreneurship at Copenhagen Business School and was a part of a Business & Poverty specialisation, chaired by Muhammad Yunus, at HEC Paris. Her PhD research investigates how entrepreneurial ecosystems could enable the development of dignity-centred artificial intelligence.

Edward Santow

Industry Professor – Responsible Technology, University of Technology Sydney (UTS)

Edward Santow is Industry Professor – Responsible Technology at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Ed leads UTS’s new initiative on building Australia’s capability on ethical artificial intelligence. Ed’s areas of expertise include human rights, technology and regulation, public law and discrimination law.

From 2016-2021, Ed was Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner, where he led the Commission’s work on AI and new technology; refugees and migration; human rights issues affecting LGBTI people; national security; and implementing the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT).

Ed is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law, a Visiting Professorial Fellow at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Human Rights and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and serves on a number of boards and committees.

In 2009, Ed was presented with an Australian Leadership Award, and in 2017, he was recognised as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Ed previously served as chief executive of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre and was a Senior Lecturer at UNSW Law School, a research director at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law and a solicitor in private practice.

Ben Shaw

Head of Community, Infoxchange
For the last decade and a bit, Ben has been managing the scoping, design and delivery of inclusive and accessible products and services across government, education, commercial, and the not for profit sector. Whatever the context or scale, Ben’s focus is always on how to authentically engage with those that will use those products and services, and believes strongly that the best solutions come from building on the strengths and expertise that already exist in our communities.

Ben considers himself extremely privileged to be working at Infoxchange – a not for profit that has pursued “Technology for Social Justice” for over 30 years. As Head of Community Impact, Ben’s main responsibility is to guide and support the development of a number of digital inclusion products and initiatives, including Ask Izzy – a free website that can help anyone find essential services in their local area such as housing, food, health care and counselling. Ask Izzy is used by over 10,000 people across Australia every week, and demand is growing steadily. Working and designing with community was the key to Ask Izzy’s initial success, and a critical part of how decisions are made about Ask Izzy’s ongoing development.

Outside of work, Ben helps out at the Brunswick Tool Library – a place to borrow tools, connect with neighbours and share knowledge and skills, as well as an ever-evolving experiment in community-run sharing economies.

Erica Smith

Technologist-in-Residence, Humanitech
Erica Smith is Technologist-in-Residence at Humanitech, Australian Red Cross. She is an experienced technologist and leader in Australian technology companies, including RedBubble, REA Group and StarRez. She also has experience in the for-purpose technology sector. At Australian Red Cross, Erica led a frontier technology initiative, Traverse, to make it easier for volunteers to work at multiple for-purpose organisations. In her role at Humanitech, Erica is exploring more humane approaches to technology development.

Rahul Soans

Manager, Trust Alliance
Rahul Soans is an Engineer with a Masters in International Business. In another life, he was a project manager in the telecommunications industry. Over the past decade he has immersed himself in the social enterprise and startup world in Melbourne. He has cut his teeth working for startups, founded a consulting company and now runs The Disruptive Business Network – an event series and consulting service that looks at how new ideas and technology are changing business. He was also the co-founder of Balancingact3, a consultancy that equipped purpose-driven businesses and organisations from the human rights and human services sectors with the tools and knowledge to transform, innovate and create services that advance human rights. He was also the Developer Marketing Manager for IBM Australia for 2 years. He is currently the manager of the Trust Alliance – a multi-sector collaboration focused on how technology development can be committed to the shared principles of do no harm, humanity first, open ecosystems, equity, and transparency.

Julian Thomas

Director, ADM+S Centre

Distinguished Professor Julian Thomas is the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. He is a researcher in digital media and the internet, with particular interests in communications and information policy, digital inclusion and inequality, and the history of communications technologies. Julian’s recent work includes the Australian Digital Inclusion Index (2016-2020), Internet on the Outstation (Institute of Network Cultures, 2016), and The Informal Media Economy (Polity, 2015).

Julian is a member of the Council of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, a Board member of the Australian Communications Consumers Action Network (ACCAN), and an Advisory Board member of Humanitech, an initiative of the Australian Red Cross.

Chris Vanstone

Chief Innovation Officer, The Australian Centre for Social Innovation

Chris Vanstone and The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI)’s work aims to bring social innovation practices into the mainstream; so that we’re all better equipped to come together and face today’s challenges whilst building a future we want to live in.

Chris started his career designing biscuits and razors. He was a founding member of the UK Design Council’s RED team (where his first project was the Double Diamond), Participle (where he worked with Hillary Cottam) and then TACSI – where he co-lead the teams that developed Family by Family and Weavers, both winners of Australian International Design Awards.

Chris writes, talks, teaches and advises on building the capabilities, conditions and infrastructure for social purpose innovation. Recently he’s been: running a foundation course in social innovation, developing the idea of People Powered Social R&D, writing about how to start community-led initiatives well, and developing the Seven Thread framework for allyship.

Amal Varghese

Advocacy and Research Manager, Humanitech
Amal Varghese is the Advocacy and Research Manager at Humanitech, Australian Red Cross. He is passionate about using frontier technologies to solve complex societal problems. He has led and contributed to scaling major technology initiatives at Service Victoria and was previously a Policy Adviser to the Federal Minister for Families and Social Services.