Ash Pegram

Ash has over 15 years of deep experience in the domain of CX, HCD and digital marketing in both local and international markets – working for international agencies such as Wunderman Thompson, McCann and VMLY&R. He has successfully led many digital transformation projects including such brands as Google, Huawei, Standard Chartered Bank and the Federal Government.

Gerard Farrell

Gerard is the Chief Executive Officer at Global Reviews a competitive intelligence company that provides holistic, prioritised recommendations for digital acquisition, conversion and retention leaders. In his time at Global Reviews, Gerard has led a successful company transformation rooted in the development and delivery of world leading end to end digital intelligence solutions for tier 1 brands.

With experience founded in the launching multiple businesses in the market research space, all of which were digitally focused, Gerard specialises in developing novel intelligence solutions that drive client bottom line commercial growth. He has an extensive background working across a wide range of industries and brands, globally.

Gerard continues to oversee the development road map of Global Reviews’ solution lifecycle and bringing new propositions to market. Gerard holds a Masters in Science of Advertising, a Diploma in Entrepreneurial Studies, a Diploma in Business Studies and a degree in History and Geography.

Evan Rollins

Evan cares about making digital work for customers by making experiences easier and fun. Having worked in scaling personalisation and analytics with enterprise brands, he now focuses on bringing leading practices to support the wider market. His background in data science means he's no fun at parties, but he loves figuring out cool ways of using data to understand and design for customers, especially diving into moment-to-moment behaviour. 

Clea Baker

Prior to her role as Head of Performance at Bupa, Clea held senior digital marketing and personalisation roles as Growth Manager in the eBay Classifieds Group and Group Account Director at Accordant/Merkle supporting brands such as Kayo, Citibank, Allianz, Suncorp, Lenovo, UNSW, Caltex, Adobe and more. Clea has an MBA from USYD and spent 6 years living and working abroad in Italy, Spain, Germany and the UK.

Frazer Adnam

Frazer is the General Manager at Contentsquare, the leader in Digital Experience Analytics, spearheading the expansion in ANZ. With previous experience at Deliveroo and AfterPay, Frazer brings his years of customer lifecycle automation, owned channel growth, and personalization to help establish Contentsquare as a leader in the ANZ space

Arianne Miller

Arianne Miller has spent the last 17 years of her career helping financial services brand grow market share, improve brand awareness and uplift client experience.

She recently joined Crestone, one of Australia leading providers of advice to high net wealth investors. Prior to this she spent 11 years at NAB, across the online trading, cash management, insurance and JBWere businesses. Her work has been recognised with ADMA and AFA effectiveness awards, and she has held roles both client side and agency side in creative digital and PR.

Carolyn Reid

Carolyn is a highly regarded qualitative research leader combining curiosity, co-creation and empathy with science. She uses brand and communications, strategy and concept testing, NPD and gender research to deliver powerful marketing insights to address everything from customer experience, brand strategy and innovation to creative development and commerce. 

Carolyn brings human understanding to every business challenge, to help transform brands through behaviour change, innovation, ideation and cultural insight. Illuminating the moments that matter, she provides unmatched access to insight about people’s lives, relationships with brands and cultural contexts.

Megan Whiteside

Megan Whiteside is Vice President of Corporate Affairs & Communications for American Express in Australia and New Zealand. In this position Megan is responsible for leading internal and external corporate communications, public relations, and corporate sustainability across the organization.

Megan joined American Express eight years ago from Commonwealth Bank, where she was Senior Manager of the Retail Bank communications function. Prior to this Megan lived in London for six years and worked for the Hilton Hotels Group as Communications Manager for its international markets.

Megan is a graduate of Griffith University with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications, majoring in Film and Television. She cut her teeth in television news production in regional Australia before moving into public relations to explore her passion for creative writing.

Tara Ness

In her 15 years of consulting, Tara has played a critical role in informing insights, strategy and design for Australia's most well-known growth and turnaround case studies (e.g. Jetstar, Optus, Medibank, Zurich to name a few). She has designed and executed large measurement and prioritisation frameworks - advising to C-Suite level working across a range of sectors, particularly in finance services.

Tara has led a CEX practice and countless strategic programs where the primary business objectives are retaining customers, reducing failure demand and cost to serve. Tara makes the complex simple, by turning CEX insights into prioritisation frameworks, her work cuts through and gains traction.

Tara is known for her passion, storytelling and practical takeaways. Most recently, she was invited to deliver the keynote at the Melbourne Australian Loyalty Association gala network dinner (and then invited back again for the Sydney event) sharing "the behavioural science of locked on loyalty" to +200 loyalty professionals.

Rob Warren

Rob is a Risk and Finance professional, with 20 years' experience in the insurance and reinsurance industries. He has worked across the UK, Australian and Asia-Pacific markets in a range of consultancy, multinational and domestic insurance companies, focussing on Risk, Actuarial and Financial roles. Amongst other responsibilities at Open Money, Rob is coordinating the Group's approach to having a Positive Impact for its stakeholders.

Vanessa Liell

Vanessa is a Chief Executive Officer, Non-Executive Director and strategic communications professional with over 25 years' experience in corporate affairs, agency leadership and entrepreneurship. As shareholder and CEO of Herd MSL, Vanessa and her partners led the growth and performance for more than a decade of one of Australia's largest and most awarded independent public relations agency groups (incl. N2N Communications, Fuel Communications and Touch Creative) with 75 professional consultants. In 2017, Herd MSL was fully acquired by Publicis Groupe joining one of the world’s top five advertising networks.

Over her career she has delivered corporate affairs, reputation, executive positioning  and integrated communication campaigns for brands that range from American Express, ING and Westpac to GE, Proctor & Gamble and NBN Co and Facebook, Airbnb and Instagram. She also has extensive public sector experience across state and Federal government.

In 2022 she co-founded corporate advisory firm Orizontas that works with CEOs and Boards to solve business challenges specialising in climate, market, political and reputational risk.

Vanessa is the winner of B&T's Women in Media PR Leadership Award, a Fellow of the Public Relations Institute of Australia and an inaugural Walkley Foundation Women in Media mentor. She is an active Non Executive Director and Casual Academic at UTS Sydney's School of Communications. 

Qualifications: Masters of Business Administration (MGSM), BA Communications (CSU-Mitchell).

Karina Keisler

Karina Keisler is on the Board of the Alcohol and Drug Foundation and the UN Women’s Committee for IWD. She runs her own business providing counsel to executives and Boards on reputation management including Australian Golf where she is Interim Executive for Public Affairs and Marketing. Karina has more than 20 years experience in managing reputation recoveries for some of Australia’s best known brand crises including Cricket Australia, NBNCo and Vodafone Australia. She spent a decade at Telstra in corporate affairs while undertaking her Masters in Communications.

Sweta Mehra

Sweta Mehra is the Chief Marketing Officer at ANZ and leads development and delivery of the ANZ brand strategy, communication and digital sales and personalisation – all in service of deepening customer relationships, improving ANZ brand reputation and accelerating revenue growth.

Sweta has a unique blend of 25 years’ experience in consumer research and analytics, marketing and brand management expertise.

Sweta spent more than 17 years with Procter & Gamble in Singapore, focusing on brand management across a range of categories and countries in developed and developing markets. She also led the P&G consumer research function in a number of global and regional roles.

Sweta has a passion for brand building and creating breakthrough innovation leveraging technology.  She combines her analytical skills with a deep understanding of consumer and market needs across different geographies.

Sweta holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management and a Bachelor of Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, India.

Kate Browne

Kate Browne is the head of Yahoo Finance Australia’s editorial strategy and team. Browne holds over a decade of experience in journalism, broadcast media, and corporate communications. She was previously a TV Presenter & Writer at the ABC, and has appeared regularly as a finance expert across various shows including Sunrise, Seven News, Today, Nine News, The Project, SBS world news and ABC Breakfast.

Zoe Cocker

Zoe heads up Yahoo’s branded content studio, the only creative agency to sit at the intersection of creativity, technology, trusted editorial brands and massive scale. She is a Marketing Academy scholar with over 15 years experience working with companies that prioritise creativity and technology.

Zoe has played an instrumental role in establishing Yahoo Creative Studios as a metaverse pioneer, helping make it tangible for brands today. She is behind immersive campaigns for some of Australia's biggest brands including Officeworks, BIG W and Optus.

Victoria Berry

Victoria Berry is Head of Strategy at FutureBrand Australia and she is passionate about creating and transforming brands through the local team’s bespoke strategy offering. In her role, Victoria leads the strategy team to work alongside FutureBrand’s clients and develop rigorous but simple solutions that impact real change for clients to help their businesses grow.

Her 15-year career has taken her all over the world, from Sydney to Dubai then New York and now Melbourne. In that time, she was also the lead strategist on the FutureBrand Country Index, FutureBrand’s annual report measuring the strength of perception of the World Bank’s top 75 countries. Victoria has a BA Psychology & Gender Studies and lives in Melbourne with her husband and two young children. 

Melody Townsend

Melody is the General Manager - Retail Marketing at BOQ Group, responsible for marketing communications across Bank of Queensland, Virgin Money and ME. A senior marketer,

Melody has worked with local and global brands in automotive, freight and logistics, e-commerce and banking.

Logan Walsh

With experience in the New Zealand and Australian research industries, Logan has worked closely on NPS, CX and market metrics for Australia’s largest financial services brands. His passion is taking a step further to uncover what really makes customers tick.

In his role as Media Products Manager at DBM, he works with retail banking and insurance clients to maximise acquisition and retention strategies.

Sonia Marine

With over 20 years of experience in the media industry, Sonia has worked in a variety of media and research agency roles across a diverse client base including the Retail Banking, Telecommunications, Auto, QSR and CPG categories.

In her current role at Nielsen, Sonia looks after their Consumer & Media View service and has a passion for collaborating with brands, their agencies and publishers to unlock data-driven consumer insights that improve marketing investment decisions in today’s evolving media landscape.

Gary Nissim

Gary Nissim is Indago Digital’s Managing Director and a sought-after digital marketing commentator.

His area of expertise is customer acquisition strategy and given search marketing is still the best acquisition media out there, paid media and SEO are his specialist areas. Gary has spent decades growing digital marketing ventures across any-to-all digital channels for a range of agency groups and brands in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, and he’s a trainer for Google Squared Online, Australian Institute of Management, ADMA and the IAB.

His agency, Indago Digital, is an independent search marketing and Google Premier Partner agency that provides specialist SEO, paid media, data insights and consulting services to organisations across the finance segment.

Peter Dimakidis

Peter (Dimo) Dimakidis is Indago Digital’s Chief Technical and SEO Officer. He’s worked with the country’s largest brands and evolved over his 20+ year career into a sought-after pioneer of new and innovative approaches to the technical and data-driven elements of digital strategy.

His insights and strategies are used across organisations to drive conversions, boost customer satisfaction, become more efficient, discover new revenue streams and, generally, make informed strategic decisions.

Nigel Roberts

Nigel is a Director in EY’s Digital and Emerging Technology team, where he supports clients in aligning brand purpose with building exceptional digital and technology experiences.

Having spent nearly 20 years working in financial services marketing and CX and brand experience strategy and execution, he most recently was managing partner of financial services CX and creative agency Yell Creative. Nigel continues his track record of opening the Finance Marketing Summit by presenting topical and targeted research, this year from EY’s Future Consumer Index, highlighting the continued impacts of COVID and now the cost of living on Australian financial consumer behaviour.

Peter Thomas

Peter joined Smartpay in September 2016. Peter possesses a strong background in marketing and change management assisting with transformations of large organisations, having worked previously for the National Broadband Network, Tenix and QBE Insurance.

At Smartpay, he is accountable for building the strategy for the People & Customer Experience across Australia and New Zealand, including leading the Australian-based marketing team.

Deborah Kytic

Deborah is a highly experienced, highly skilled, award-winning marketing and business leader with a strong track record of achieving impact within fast-paced environments.

At Prospa, she leads the marketing team to develop advertising, communication and engagement programs to drive sales outcomes, brand awareness and consideration.

Jane Betschel

Jane’s is a passionate product and marketing leader with a bias for leading change through people and technology.

As the Head of Marketing & Digital at MYOB, she leads 70 teams across ANZ focused on driving awareness, marketing qualified leads, website sales, utilisation, and advocacy of MYOB’s leading SaaS Accounting and Business Management solutions for SMEs, Accountants, bookkeepers as well as larger mid-market enterprises.

Andrew Siwka

Andrew is the founder and managing partner at The Royals, an independent Australian creative agency with offices in Melbourne and Sydney.

Andrew has a wealth of B2B experience across a range of clients that most recently includes MYOB, Sensis, Mercedes Commercial Vehicles and Google Work, to name just a few.

Kate Wilson

Kate Wilson is Global Head of Consumer Credit, Deposits and Payments, for data-driven strategic insights provider, RFI Global.

Kate joined RFI in 2012 in the research team and has worked in RFI’s Sydney and London offices. Kate is responsible for managing RFI’s consumer research globally. On a daily basis Kate working closely with clients to answer key business questions and presents to global and local stakeholders on topics including payments, fintech, open banking, lending, deposits and BNPL.

Kate is a regular speaker at conferences and events across Australia and New Zealand and co-hosts RFi’s Global Digital Banker Podcast.
Kate has a Bachelor of International and Global Studies from the University of Sydney.

Justin Hind

Justin joined CHEP Network in 2021 after a decade and a half as a successful independent agency CEO, co-founder, and entrepreneur. He has led and invested in two highly awarded and successful agency start-ups to M&A exits.

When Justin joined CHEP, it marked a return to the Clemenger Group almost 20 years after he started at Clemenger Proximity in Brisbane.

Justin is passionate about data, technology, and creativity as well as the future of our constantly evolving industry. He holds a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Queensland along with postgraduate studies in commerce and e-commerce.

Justin’s client experience includes Qantas, CBA Group, Fairfax Media, Pfizer, Optus, Ford, IBM, Telstra, Microsoft, Canon, BMW, Suncorp Group and Pacific Brands/Bonds.

Hamish Cargill

Hamish is the Director of XXVI, a brand language consultancy. It’s his job to guide brands through the entire process of creating their unique tone of voice, from the first workshop through to implementation and training.

With brand voice projects for major Australian brands like Qantas, Aussie, AAMI and Optus under his belt, Hamish is well prepared for the challenges that go with changing the language of big (and small) businesses.

Alana Burnside

Alana has worked in marketing and advertising for around 20 years. Her marketing experience spans across superannuation, retail, automotive, not-for profit, events and behaviour change initiatives.

She has held roles on both client and agency sides and for the past ten years has worked at Industry Super Australia where she is currently the Director of Marketing, responsible for leading the strategic development of the Industry Super Funds Joint Marketing campaign.

Her passion is in understanding consumer insights that will drive change in behaviour and perception.

John Powell

John Powell is a Managing Director at Neu Capital.

Before joining Neu Capital, John was the General Manager of ME Bank. John has extensive wide-ranging experience across balance sheets spanning several billion dollars. This includes experience in structured finance, securitisation, financial markets, balance sheet risk management, M&A, strategy and retail/wholesale banking.

John has worked at several organisations over his 30 year career including Adelaide Bank, Rismark, SAFA and ME Bank in Group Executive roles.

John’s primary role at Neu Capital is to focus on structured finance facilities for non-bank lenders, notably in the $20m-$250m size, and providing these lenders with solutions which align with their growth aspirations. John brings unique experience to this role having worked as both an investor/lender and borrower at various stages in his career.