GLOBAL KEYNOTE

Srishti Narayan

Srishti Narayan is a marketing expert with over 10 years of experience working on local and global brands across. She combines strong creative instinct with strategic business capability to deliver sustained growth and is a huge believer in the power of creative to deliver brand relevance. She has worked in New Zealand and Malaysia and held senior marketing roles across a range of industries including finance, advertising, and media. She grew up in New Zealand and was thrilled to move back to her birthplace of Fiji in 2022, to take up her current role at Tourism Fiji.

Louise Rathbone

Louise Rathbone is the Regional Head of Marketing, South West Pacific, for Cathay Pacific. Currently based in Sydney, Australia, she has over 22 years of experience in marketing.

Prior to joining Cathay Pacific in 2018, Louise held various positions across a broad range of industry sectors, both agency and client-side, with roles at Tabcorp, Qantas, DHL and creative agency Banjo (now known as Bastion Creative).

With a love for aviation, Louise has led the marketing team for Cathay Pacific in Australia and New Zealand for almost five years. In her current role, she oversees all cross-channel campaign activity, both B2B and B2C, across the business sectors of travel, lifestyle and cargo.

Andrew Waddel

Carly Povey

Carly Povey is Chief Commercial Officer at Bonza, ambassador for all things customer and responsible for Bonza’s brand; marketing; communications and customer channels; commercial partnerships (e.g., airports and government relations); network and scheduling; product; and pricing. She's known internally amongst the Bonza legends as 'Chief Purple Officer'!

Carly brings with her extensive global low-cost carrier (LCC) experience across Australia and Europe. She has held senior roles in LCC brands, including easyJet and Jetstar, and is well versed in Australian companies who exist to connect Australia, most recently during her time as General Manager at Australia Post.

Carly’s experience as a member of the start-up team at UK low-cost carrier Jet2.com is especially relevant. During her time there she was pivotal in their successful bid to launch from UK regions, creating a low-cost alternative that stimulated demand, whilst delivering an exceptional customer experience. Carly started her career, rather fittingly, at a UK regional airport and has seen firsthand the positive difference LCC’s can make to local communities.

Toni Ambler

Kerrie McCallum

Kerrie McCallum is the Editorial Director, Premium Food, Travel and Health at News Corp. She oversees the editorial direction of the travel network, and is the editor-in-chief of Escape, the leading travel media brand in Australia. She is also the Editorial Director of delicious., the leading premium food and lifestyle brand in the Australian market, Travel + Luxury, The Australian’s glossy travel magazine, and Body & Soul, Australia’s leading health media brand. 

Kara Glamore

Kara Glamore is the Vice President of Carnival Cruise Line ANZ. Kara is responsible for commercial operations and business performance. Kara has been at Carnival Cruise Line since 2019, joining six months before the Covid-19 pandemic. Carnival Cruise Line is the number one cruise line in the world, with over 1 million guests in ANZ alone.  

Kara has extensive career experience in leadership roles including FMCG, Energy, and Travel sectors.  She has worked with many of the largest global companies (and brands), including Expedia, Nestle and Kraft Foods. Key priorities for Kara include driving business growth through strategic and effective communications, while fostering a commitment to cross-collaboration. 

Kara led Carnival Cruise Line ANZ through the challenging Covid pandemic period to have it emerge as a stronger operation despite the substantial obstacles.  This experience has provided Kara with invaluable experience in managing adversity and fostering resilience within her team.    

Athan Didaskalou

A leading regular commentator on consumer trends, business strategy and innovation, Athan Didaskalou is an Australian entrepreneur and the co-founder of direct-to-consumer lifestyle brand July. 

With a background in brand strategy, Athan co-founded July in early 2019 with Richard Li to create a brand that people have affinity with at every consumer touchpoint. Launching with a single luggage product, the Carry-On, the brand has since grown to include a multitude of travel accessories. 

Athan is also the ex-founder of Australia’s largest online specialty coffee retailer, Thieves Coffee. Founded in 2013 with the mission to help more people discover Australian artisan coffee roasters, Thieves now delivers coffee experiences to over 70,000 people globally each month.

Prior, Athan developed deep expertise in business strategy, brand development and innovation through roles at global advertising agency Ogilvy as Strategy Director. Athan helped guide Australia’s largest businesses in developing their strategic roadmaps across all verticals and touchpoints to deliver to customer needs. His clients included Google, Honda, NAB and more. 

Athan’s extensive experience in strategy, business growth and management, startups and consumer-led innovation make him an appealing speaker in the Australian startup, business and technology events. His speaker experience includes brand strategy, customer acquisition, direct-to-consumer brands, building a brand people love and disruptive business models. 

Sophia Wilcox

With over 16 years of experience in the publishing realm, Soph has a strong record of success in developing strategic partnerships that pay off. A consummate leader, she has worked in various executive positions across the media landscape, using her unique and innovative approach to diversifying both traditional and non-traditional business opportunities to take multiple brands to new heights. As Head of Brand & Culture at Urban List, Soph develops and executes plans that ensure it maintains its position as the leading independent media brand and the #1 lifestyle publisher across Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, a role that includes heading up their internal research and insights arm. Previously at Fairfax Media, as the former General Manager of Traveller and traveller.com, Soph took charge of the innovation and diversification of their travel portfolio by developing long-term customer centric strategies to drive new, non-traditional revenues. She credits her ability to foster enduring relationships with senior stakeholders from global corporations for her ever-growing reputation as a leader and influencer in the media industry.

Dan Krigstein

Dan is a consumer strategy & analytics leader with global experience across retail, consumer goods, digital & media industries.  He spends his professional life obsessing over consumer & cultural trends, and representing the consumer where business decisions are made.Dan currently leads News Corps Growth Intelligence Centre - advising publishers, brands, and industries across the country in the development of their growth strategies; through unapologetic customer-led thinking and data-based foresight. Prior to News Corp, Dan has spent over a decade building transformative insights capabilities to help organisations orient towards true customer-centricity.

Chris Jeffares

Chris Jeffares is a partner in SAFARI, a specialist tourism, adventure and lifestyle content production company. Launched to capture the global movement and to embrace ‘experience culture’ they have grown rapidly, working for the likes of Visit Victoria, Destination NSW, Anaconda, Mountain Designs, Great Ocean Road Tourism, Wanaka, Ford, NZ Warriors and Accolade Wines (Global). And delivered content projects that have spanned the globe from all parts of Australia to Tokyo, Oregon, India, China, Italy, Niseko, Queenstown and even Las Vegas.

CJ is a digital-native and brings over 20 years of experience working in AsiaPac roles for WPP/Wunderman and as CEO of Cummins&Partners where he led them to 20 x Agency of the Year awards, a #11 global independent agency ranking and was nominated as Agency Leader of the Year and Champion of Change on multiple occasions. And had the honour to work with brilliant brands including Tourism WA, Jeep, Ford, AFL, Tennis Australia (AO), ICC T20 World Cup, Crown Resorts and Asahi.

Richard Johnson

After graduating with a degree in film production and journalism, Richard worked around the world as a travel writer and videographer. This was punctuated with stints as a magazine editor, university tutor, adventure tour guide, surf instructor and freelance journalist. In the early 2000's he co-founded the travel rewards company Roamfree which was later acquired by Tony Smith (BreakFree) as part of an ambitious online travel platform created for the Australian market.

After exiting Roamfree Richard relocated to Bali where he built and operated a boutique hotel as well as writing and publishing guidebooks for the adventure and wellness travel sectors. In 2011 he co-founded TripADeal with good mate Norm Black, which went on to become one of Australia’s largest OTA’s, specialising in package touring for the outbound market. In 2022 they sold a 50% stake to Qantas in a deal helping to consolidate them as a major player in the Australian Travel Industry.

Zoë Manderson

Zoë Manderson is the Founder of Alpaca - a mapping toolkit for content creators, helping the tourism industry unlock their content, and transform it into stories that engage and get people moving.

Started in 2016, Zoë identified that the tourism industry and travel related brands were still relying on static content to share the experiences in their region. Alpaca is a content tool that makes it easy to create interactive, rich-media content in minutes, and this content can be published, shared or taken anywhere. More recently, Alpaca has launched AI-powered capabilities, giving content creators incredible new superpowers never seen before.

Alpaca is currently being used by tourism organisations and global travel brands around the world to power their content.

Anna Thairs

Anna is an award-winning Group Strategy Director at TBWA\Sydney whose career spans a decade across Australia, the UK and Singapore, supporting global brands and working with clients including Kraft Heinz, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Sony, Mondelez, The Pinnacle Foundation and TNSW.

Her specialist subjects are travel and behavioural science – she's constantly on the lookout for new trends and consumer behaviours, and in her spare time loves to make short films about her trips. She's a keen scuba diver, class-taker and experience junkie, treating her move to Australia as the opportunity to be on permanent vacation. 

Luke Spano

Luke Spano is the Founder & Managing Director at Avid Collective, Australia's home of native content. Avid Collective makes high-quality native content easy through greater access, impact and scale. Avid Collective has emerged as a prominent player in the advertising industry under Luke's leadership. The business has seen exponential growth since its inception in 2021, on the back of developing a highly powerful solution to a complex problem - connecting over 140 digital publishers with hundreds of advertisers with a platform. Luke has a set of valuable skills and interests including strategic planning, business development, marketing strategy, and business process improvement.

Michael Lamprell

Michael is the Founder and CEO of CABN, a leader in nature-based tourism with the clear intention to provide spaces for people to relax, rediscover nature and reconnect with each other. Following a career that included managing his own business representing key retail brands for 18 years, in 2016 Michael realised stress and anxiety were affecting all areas of his life and vowed something had to change. He went on a study trip to the US that included a leadership course at Harvard, and while on the trip he read a book called The Minimalist which resonated with his journey on many levels.  The idea of living a simple and authentic lifestyle appealed to him, as did the opportunity to create a sustainable, off-grid experience. Having grown up spending so much time outdoors and living an adventurous life, he reflected that every happy childhood memory involved outdoor, nature and travelling with the important people in his life. It made Michael want to make this an everyday reality for as many people as possible, understanding that even a short break in nature is enough to recharge. 

Michael set out to bring the concept to life and CABN was born. Starting with one cabin in 2017, CABN's sustainable, nature-based accommodation experiences can now be found across seven different sites in South Australia and includes luxury CABN X experiences in the McLaren Vale, Barossa and on Kangaroo Island. With an Intrepid Travel partnership announced in 2022, and other landowner partnerships, there has been collective investment of $11m into regional South Australia. Looking to 2024, Michael and the team will be delivery new projects in Queensland, Victoria and South Australia with more on the horizon. 

Jessica Small

Based in Sydney, Australia, Jessica is currently Head of Media at Tripadvisor, where she oversees the South Pacific region including Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.
Jessica’s role focuses on developing and managing strategic partnerships to help promote brands and destinations to Tripadvisor’s vast consumer audience. With a deep understanding of how to leverage data, insights and trends to drive successful and impactful campaigns, Jessica works closely with Tripadvisor’s creative solutions team to ensure clients are reaching the right audience, the right way.

With over 15 years’ experience in the travel sector, Jessica’s career in tourism began at the Australian Tourism Export Council, the peak industry body for the inbound tourism sector. In 2012, Jessica moved to Amsterdam, Netherlands to join the World Youth Student Educational Travel Confederation as the Events Coordinator, an association dedicated to promoting and developing opportunities for the youth, student and educational travel industry. Jessica was involved in assisting with the global portfolio of events in countries such as the USA, Australia, UK, Ireland, Italy and Hungary. With a passion for the promotion and development of the Pacific Asia Region, Jessica moved to Thailand and joined the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), where she began a role in Marketing and Communications before joining Tripadvisor.

During close to a decade of working with Tripadvisor, Jessica has witnessed the ongoing evolution of the travel sector, from a media lens. From the emergence of new technologies to the impact of global pandemic, she is adept at helping brands tap into new trends and keep up with changing traveller behaviours. As an experienced keynote speaker and panellist, Jessica is passionate about sharing her unique knowledge and the wider travel industry.

Nick Ingate

While setting out on his own 12-month sabbatical, it was during a silent vipassana retreat in Joshua Tree when Nicholas Ingate suddenly realised what he was going to do next. While he’d been researching his own journey, he discovered there was no one source where he could find all the information he needed. No single place that could offer advice on the kinds of trips you could take or places you could go to recharge yourself. A lightbulb went off in his mind: Ingate decided he’d do it himself. That idea became Sabbatical.Travel. While most people are familiar with travelling for business or pleasure, the platform offers something entirely new: travelling for purpose. It is a place where you can get all the information you need to step away from the noise – whether for three weeks or three months – and start a curated journey that will help unlock your full potential. Sabbatical.Travel is a resource for those who find themselves at a crossroads in their career and want to make a change, but it’s also a lot more than that. It’s a movement, a community of like-minded individuals. It is the future of travel.

Charlie Hales

Charlie has worked in the technology sector for nearly 20 years. During this time, she received a degree in Aerospace Engineering and was involved in coding for Black Hawk helicopters.

As Managing Director of Waterstons Australia, Charlie has been based in Australia since early 2020 and now leads a team of 18. She is known for being an innovative, empathic leader who is focussed on continuing to build the Australian team through the ongoing development of staff by harnessing their synergy and implementing training, mentoring and culture programs, while guiding the business into its next phase of growth with the lens solidly trained on customer needs.

Passionate about all things tech, Charlie has deep experience in cyber security. Her sector strengths include Architecture, Engineering and Construction, Mergers and Acquisitions, Government and Manufacturing.

Having joined Waterstons UK as a consultant in 2013, Charlie moved with her family to Australia in early 2020 to help establish the business here. In 2021, she won the British Business Network's Member of The Year as she is fiercely dedicated to the communities she participates in.

An excellent public speaker with an endless wealth of current tech knowledge, Charlie is able to communicate complicated tech insights and concepts with simple clarity and can streamline this knowledge according to her audience.

Charlie continues to be inspired by the warp speed and pioneering nature of tech and is keen to share her knowledge and experience with the next generation of tech enthusiasts by growing her presence in the thought leadership space across the Australian tech industry.

Mathew Ratty

Mathew Ratty is the Co-Founder and current Chief Executive Officer of Adveritas and TrafficGuard since 2018.

Prior to this Mathew co-founded MC Management Group Pty Ltd, a venture capital firm operating in domestic and international debt and equity markets, who are also substantial shareholders in the Company. At MC Management, Mathew held the role of Head of Investment and was responsible for asset allocation. 

He holds a degree from Curtin University where he majored in Finance and Property with first class honours in finance. 

Lightbulb Moment for TrafficGuard

Mathew funded and became part of an ad network that ran user acquisition for global companies like Uber, EA Games, Bookings.com and thousands of others. The Company was rapidly scaling, growing revenue from $0 to $37.5m over the space of 4 years but then fell victim to ad fraud. The Company had a structural issue and in order to fix it, the Company needed to combat ad fraud which was starting to be a pandemic. Having tried all solutions out in market, the team felt that ad fraud was still an issue and set out to solve it themselves. 

The management team hired the necessary personnel across data science, engineering and data analysts to try and first detect this fraud which was really version 1.0 and then try to put measures in place to prevent it (version 2.0). This internal project was called TrafficGuard.

Originally TrafficGuard was just for internal use however when the Company implemented it, they could see very clearly that they were solving the issue. At that moment when Mathew realised it was working internally, it gave him the confidence to pivot the business and commercialise TrafficGuard - this was when TrafficGuard was truly born.

Having no clients at the time of the pivot and being 4 weeks away from bankruptcy, Mathew’s friends, family and active technology investors that followed this pivot decided to support the Company’s efforts and raised $3m to support both the commercialisation and technology development. The Company has since gained major support from the public markets to the tune of around $25m and now counts Fortune 500 companies as clients of TrafficGuard. 

“When I realised the technology worked, I felt I had a duty to the industry to provide a world-class solution to solve this $100b+ problem. Ad fraud has a major impact on growth, marketing efficiency, innovation and employment so we all feel proud of what we have built. We have gained Fortune 500 companies as clients, amazing technology investors and we are scaling globally across most continents. I’m proud to have done this out of Australia where some really talented individuals have dedicated the last 5 years of their lives with me on this journey.” Mathew Ratty

Michael Serratore

There hasn’t been a moment in Michael’s 10-year career across agency and ad tech where he wasn’t involved in the planning and execution of campaigns for travel partners. He started out promoting the journey across the Bass Strait with Spirit of Tasmania before expanding to international airline travel, working with the likes of Jetstar, Air New Zealand and Singapore Airlines to achieve their personalisation goals through Flashtalking’s suite of digital creative solutions.   

It hasn’t gained him any status credits or travel perks yet, but it has provided him with a decent grasp on the communication objectives and operational needs of brands in the vertical to be able to reach their customers in the moments that matter.  

Flashtalking are flying him up from Melbourne to present at the summit though, so maybe that counts as a travel perk.  

Catherine Rushton

Catherine Rushton is a world-class strategic thinker, team builder and leader, speaker, mentor and advocate for the power of media to shape better futures for her clients and their audiences.

Catherine has been responsible for award winning and business changing media and communications strategies for some of Australia and the world’s leading brands including Unilever, NAB, Tourism New Zealand, Volvo, Kimberly Clark, Foxtel, Chanel, NRMA and HSBC.

Her passion and drive come from building high performing teams. Coaching and developing those around her to achieve their best, while enjoying what they do.

Caitlin Huskins

Caitlin Huskins is the Commercial Director of Azerion JAPAC, a global digital entertainment and media platform.  Caitlin is responsible for the commercial strategy that brings attention grabbing creativity with ad tech targeting from high quality publishers and gaming environments. Delivering entertaining experiences to audiences and consistently exceeding expectations across all touchpoints is of paramount importance to brands, and Caitlin’s expertise in the convergence of online advertising and attention dynamics serves as a driving force to elevate brand reputations and build ongoing, trusting relationships.

Caitlin has spent more than 13 years in the digital advertising industry expanding client portfolios in the Asia Pacific region in her digital investment tenures at media agencies Havas and Mindshare, fuelling a passion for fostering collaborative growth in multiple markets. Caitlin most recently served as the Group Marketplace Director at EssenceMediacom, where she was responsible for driving digital growth and building strong client relationships across a global portfolio of brands including FMCG and Retail Categories.

Chloe Jones

Chloe Jones is a passionate travel fanatic and cruise afficionado. Having worked with Princess since 2014, she has held several roles within the business across retail, trade and brand marketing. Leading the team since 2018, Chloe has been responsible for the development and implementation of award-winning content series such as Grand Designs Australia: Offshore (Mumbrella Travel Awards 2019) and TV Integration such as The Real Love Boat Australia (Travel Daily Editors Choice Awards 2022). Her favourite cruise destinations include New Zealand, Japan and Papua New Guinea – all with Princess of course! Chloe’s travel goal is to tick off her 7^th continent of Africa in the next 12 months.