Before entering Parliament, Paul was Director, Corporate and Regulatory Affairs, at Optus for eight years; established a consulting firm serving the communications sector; and in 2009 his book about broadband, Wired Brown Land was published by UNSW Press. Earlier in his career Paul was Chief of Staff to the Minister for Communications in the Howard Government, Senator Richard Alston. He has dual first class honours degrees in law and economics from The University of Sydney and an MBA from Columbia University in New York where he was a Fulbright Scholar. Paul has been a member of the Liberal Party since he was 16 and was active in student politics at Sydney University. He was a champion university debater, twice reaching the finals of the World Universities Debating Championship.

Richard Lord is the Regional Chief Information Officer for HSB Commercial Bank in Asia Pacific. He and his team are responsible for the operational infrastructure and delivery of market-leading technology innovation for the bank.

Richard has more than 30 years of experience, including global technology leadership roles in the advertising industry, and 17 years as an entrepreneur and business owner.

Richard is an active advocate of diversity and addressing bias and discrimination in the workplace.

Ms Taylor was appointed as Chief Information Officer on 2 January 2019, following her five-year tenure as Executive General Manager of Technology Design and Delivery. She is accountable for leading the digital transformation of nbn and ensure the successful architecture, design and delivery of all IT and first of type network equipment as well as the operational performance of the IT systems. Ms Taylor has more than 30 years of experience in the Technology and Telecommunications industries, holding leadership roles at PwC and Vodafone where she has led teams to successfully deliver large and complex IT and Network transformation projects enabling and driving significant business change and benefits. Ms Taylor has a Bachelor of Science degree from the State University of New York in Albany with a double major in Finance and Management Information Systems, a minor in computer science and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Bob Hennessy was appointed Group CIO of Lendlease in June 2015 and is based in Sydney, Australia.

Bob has over 40 years’ experience in technology across a range of industries, including steel manufacturing, transport, financial services, telecommunications and consulting.

Prior to joining Lendlease, Bob was CEO of Pactera’s Australian and NZ business having sold his privately-owned consulting firm to them in 2012. Pactera was a NASDAQ listed entity at the time of the sale.

Previous roles include at Westpac (1998-2002) leading the technology stream supporting the integration of BT, Rothschild and Westpac Financial Services, which saw him appointed CIO of the integrated company (BT FG). At TNT (1988-98) Bob was CIO of the Asia Pacific region driving the integration of the Australian business from 1996 to 1998 following the acquisition of TNT by the Dutch PTT.

As a consultant, Bob conducted reviews of transformation programs in telecommunications, health and retail fuel. He has sat on client steering committees for major transformation programs in banking, manufacturing & distribution and transport.

Bob’s experience as an executive in industrial sectors and volatile business conditions lends him a rare combination of experiences invaluable for companies on the cusp of significant change. His combination of client-side and sell-side roles, coupled with his entrepreneurial experience brings an appreciation of a range of business perspectives.

Dr. Fawad Nazir is an experienced Chief Technology Officer with a demonstrated track record in technology architecture, strategy, innovation and transformation. He is currently working for Telstra as a customer CTO for the largest bank in Australia. He is very proud of the fact that his everyday work positively impacts 55%+ of Australians in terms of their communication and financial needs.
He previously served as Principle Enterprise Architect in Telstra and was responsible for Telstra’s strategic IT and Network architecture and strategic technology roadmap. Prior to this, Fawad was responsible for designing and managing the network that helps make Australian’s safe and it’s used by Police, Fire and Rescue and Ambulance at NSW Telco Authority.
Fawad Nazir started his career as a software engineer in Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre (SLAC), Stanford University, US. Where he wrote algorithms to manage one of world most extensive networks and data from the particle accelerator. He still loves programming, building robots, data analytics and distributed algorithms.
Most recently he was an author in a patent on blockchain and working very hard to bring 5G to Australia in the most meaningful and useful ways.

Bettina is the Chief Operating Officer of the Australian Digital Health Agency.  She is responsible for ensuring delivery of the Agency’s work program, operating efficiency and cultural improvement.  Bettina’s division engages with the technology industry, healthcare sector, professional organisations and governments to deliver the National Digital Health Strategy and drive adoption and usability of technology in heath.

Prior to commencing with the Agency, Bettina held senior executive roles with the National E-Health Transition Authority over 7 years.  Bettina has also held senior management roles in the Commonwealth Government including anti-money laundering agency AUSTRAC, counter terrorism agency the Office of Transport Security, and the national IT standards setting body, the Australian Government Information Office.  She commenced her career working for the NSW Environment Protection Authority delivering technology projects to support regulatory reform.

Bettina has a Bachelor of Arts, Diploma of Education, Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance, Master of Public Policy, and Master of Business in IT Management.

As Chief Information Officer, Sami is responsible for delivering high-quality, reliable and performance-enhancing technology services across Bupa. Having joined Bupa more than 12 years ago, Sami has held a number of technical and senior leadership roles across various Information Services teams, where he has driven significant performance and service improvements for the business, our customers and our people. Since becoming CIO in February 2016, Sami has led the transformation of Information Services to become more customer-focused, agile, collaborative and efficient, which has improved the colleague and customer experience as reflected by significant improvements in employee and colleague Net Promoter Scores. Sami was recently recognised externally for his track record as a transformational leader making a significant business impact, when he was placed in the Top 3 CIOs in Australia, as judged by CIO50. In addition to more than 30 years of information technology experience at a variety of industries spanning multiple continents, Sami’s qualifications include a Bachelor of Computer Engineering, a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Quality Management.

Tanya is a Business Transformation Executive with a demonstrated ability to develop new business ideas and successfully implement them across a business. She is a leader who is enthusiastic about driving change and organisational growth. Having been in senior roles for over twenty years, she has experience working with Board Directors, Executive teams and regulators, to drive change across industries including Pharmaceutical, Financial Services, Technology, Retail and Property, Federal Government and Utilities. Tanya is currently the Chief Transformation Officer at Alinta Energy, overseeing an enterprise wide transformation to scale up the business to meet ambitious growth targets whilst also meeting evolving regulatory requirements and intense market competition. Prior to Alinta, Tanya developed the digital and data strategy for Austrade as their Chief Digital Officer.   Tanya holds an MBA from Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM), is a graduate of the Company Directors course, Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD) and is a member of the Institute of Engineering & Technology (IET).

David Hackshall is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Cochlear Ltd, a leader in cochlea implant technology that supports over 500,000 people with hearing loss around the world. Since commencing his role in July 2015, David has overseen the organisation’s global IT capability with a focus on innovating technology to further improve the Cochlear recipient’s journey. Based in Sydney, David operates in a global capacity with operations throughout Asia, Europe and the US. Under David’s supervision the Cochlear technology function has undertaken a material restructure whilst delivering a number of customer facing and internal cornerstone applications. David was also recently selected by his peers to be included in the top 10 CIOs across Australia and New Zealand. David has over 20 years’ of experience in driving technological transformation spanning differing industry sectors. He has worked in some of Australia’s leading companies including logistics, financial services and now medical devices. David holds both a Master of Information Technology Management and MBA from Macquarie University.

Daminda Kumara is an experienced cybersecurity leader who now works as the Head of Cybersecurity and Risk for Wesfarmers Industrial Safety. With more than 20 years of experience in information technology, he has worked with global organisations across manufacturing, supply chain, construction and safety industries to help operate and implement mission-critical technology services. The current role of his capacity he is driving cybersecurity strategy, operation and risk management through innovation for five leading Australian companies under Wesfarmers banner.

Kshira Saagar (Shee-Rah Sa-Ga) has been with the Analytics/Decision Sciences industry for almost a decade now having worked across Americas, Asia, Europe and more importantly Australia. The bulk of his work has been focussed on developing solutions for the Data Science and Analytics problem spaces of the Retail, Telecom and Insurance marketing departments at some of the leading Fortune 100 clients. In his other roles, he has also enabled decision making through data for clients from the Media, Healthcare, Aviation, Logistics and FMCG organisations. Kshira believes in making data everyone’s job at an organisation and not have it just as a specialty role.

In his current role at Global Fashion Group (the parent company of THE ICONIC), as the Director of Analytics and Data Science, he’s responsible for enabling data driven smart-decision making across 14 different countries within the fashion e-commerce space. Previously at Datalicious & prior to that at Fairfax, he was responsible for institutionalising data-driven analytics across the company’s core competencies and building new-age analytical products for the organisation.

Dan Chesterman was appointed Chief Information Officer (CIO) in July 2017. Dan is responsible for defining ASX’s technology strategy, delivery of projects, building and managing ASX’s technology infrastructure and creating and operating systems and processes that optimise the use of ASX resources and keep the organisation safe. Dan has extensive financial services technology experience over 20+ years. Prior to ASX, Dan was CIO for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s CommSec and Private Bank, led the technology team for CBA’s International Financial Services businesses in Asia, and worked as a management consultant with Accenture and Whittman Hart. Dan has extensive international experience holding senior roles in China, Indonesia, Singapore, France, USA, UK, Germany and New Zealand.

Angela Goodsir is a highly experienced executive with a proven track record in transformative industry and business change with a deep understanding of strategic and commercial drivers. She is a well-respected media technologist, operations executive and thought leader.  Her domain knowledge extends across the media, data, technology and health sectors.  In 2018 she was recognised as one of the Top 50 CIO’s in Australia.

Throughout her career, she has delivered several large and complex business technology transformations to the Australian media sector. Today, she works in her own strategic consultancy business. The focus is on assisting companies with strategies for innovation, business scalability and growth, digital transformation and large-scale technology and operations transformation initiatives.

Angela is known for her leadership capability, broad strategic mindset, resilience, inquisitiveness and ability to agitate for change and thinking outside the box. She is passionate about leading business transformation towards a digital future.

Angela supports the Harding Miller Education Foundation as a mentor where she supports and encourages academically gifted girls from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds to continue their education and studies and reach their potential.