As Head of Next Practice Innovation for The Google School for Leaders, Ciela directs projects related to the future of leadership. Her work informs how Google develops future-ready leaders. She shares her thinking at conferences across the globe. Prior to joining Google, she was an organizational development consultant for a number of tech organizations and served as the global lead for organization development at Qualcomm. With a doctorate in Culture and Human Behavior Psychology, Ciela has a passion for anthropology and traveling the world. Ciela is a yogi, enjoys a good dinner party and is a proud introvert. She lives in San Francisco with her husband.

Rupert was appointed as Government Chief People Officer on 1 January 2016, joining the Civil Service from Lloyds Banking Group, where he was Group HR Director. As Government Chief People Officer, Rupert is responsible for delivery of the Civil Service Workforce Plan, which sets out what the Civil Service needs to do to attract the most capable and public-spirited people, and build a culture and ways of working that are as good, if not better, than anything on offer anywhere else. He provides leadership on the full range of people issues including talent, capability, inclusion, capacity, leadership, pay and employee deal, performance, employee relations, culture and behaviours. Rupert is also Director General for Government Shared Services. Rupert reports directly to John Manzoni, the Chief Executive of the Civil Service and Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary and is a member of the People Board and Senior Talent Forum. Rupert attended secondary school in Aberdeen, and graduated in Politics and Philosophy from St. Catherine’s College, Oxford. During his undergraduate degree he spent a semester interning at the US Senate. He attended Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program in 2010. Rupert began his career at the Confederation of British Industry before becoming a partner in Arthur Andersen and Deloitte. Since then he has worked for Barclays Bank plc, first as Executive Management Director and then as the HR Director for Global, Retail and Commercial Banking, and at Aviva where he was UK HR Director and then HR Centre of Expertise Director. Rupert is married with two children.

Dean leads global HR, Finance, and Legal teams for Patagonia reporting directly to the CEO, Rose Marcario.  He also currently serves as an Independent Director on the Board of Directors for two boards; Cornerstone on Demand (CSOD:NASDAQ), a publicly traded Cloud-based HR tech platform, and Griffith Foods, a high-growth Chicago-based privately held sustainable food company.  Prior to Patagonia, Dean brings a combined 15 years of experience as a CHRO for Sears Holdings Corporation as well as Fossil, Inc. Leading up to his time at Fossil, he served in variety of progressive HR and Management roles for Pier 1 Imports, Pearle Vision and Procter & Gamble.

During his career, Dean’s perspectives on the opportunities with HR, culture and the employee experience have been featured in The Economist, NBC Nightly News, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, NPR Morning Edition, NPR Marketplace, The Wall Street Journal and various other books and national publications. The work of his HR teams has led to Brandon Hall’s Gold Award for Innovation in HR as well as SHRM’s prestigious HRM Impact Award.

Dean earned his undergraduate degree from The University of Texas at Austin and currently serves as a Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law Workforce Science Fellow.

In August 2016, Alexandra Badenoch re-joined Telstra to take up the role of Group Executive Human Resources where she was responsible for providing strategic advice and support to the Human Resources arm of the business. In 2018 Alex’s role expanded to include leading the delivery office of Telstra’s company-wide T22 transformation strategy, an ambitious program to lead the Australian market by simplifying its operations and product set, improving customer experience and reducing its cost base. This is in addition to her responsibility for simplifying the business structure and transforming how Telstra works to become more customer focussed, agile and collaborative. Prior to this, she was Director of Human Resources, Corporate Affairs and Customer at Asciano, Australia’s largest rail and ports operator, and brings a wealth of experience dealing with a highly diversified and international workforce. Before joining Asciano, Alex worked at Telstra for more than five years as Executive Director Organisational Development & Talent and Executive Director HR for Telstra’s Consumer business, including BigPond and Telstra Country Wide. Known for her change management skills and ability to deliver strong commercial outcomes, Alex has designed and implemented key initiatives to drive successful change across multiple organisations, including Novell Inc. and Coles Myer.

JRD served as WeWork’s chief people officer for two years helping the company’s start-up culture thrive as it scaled four-fold into new markets across the globe. Together with WeWork co-founder, Miguel McKelvey, JRD created the “culture operating system” or “cultureOS,” which is the subject a Harvard Business School case study taught in Jeffrey Rayport’s Scaling Tech Ventures class. As SVP, Culture, JRD now uses the cultureOS as part of WeWork’s efforts to help enterprises and entrepreneurs build and evolve great cultures.

JRD previously served as chief people officer at Dun & Bradstreet from 2014 to 2016, where the human resources portfolio included real estate and workplace strategy, and at AOL from 2011 to 2013. He joined AOL from Thomson Reuters, where he led human resources for Thomson Reuters Markets. Prior to that, he held senior human resources
roles at Reuters in New York and London.

An expert in leadership, talent, and organisational culture and change, JRD has led a number of initiatives that have received industry awards and been featured as best practice in publications such as Stephen Bungay, The Art of Action (2011); Jeff DeGraff and Shawn Quinn, Leading Innovation (2006); and Simon Barrow and Richard Moseley, The Employer Brand (2005).

Kathryn van der Merwe joined ANZ as Group Executive Talent and Culture on 1 May 2017. Prior to joining ANZ, Kathryn worked for Bain & Company where her 14 year career has been focused on leading business transformations. This includes strengthening organisational culture and capability, and the development and delivery of change strategies to improve performance and facilitate sustainable growth. Most recently she was Expert Vice President for Bain’s Results Delivery Practice in the Asia Pacific. Kathryn holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of New South Wales.

Melissa is the General Manager of People & Culture at Medibank, whose remit has included culture, employee engagement, capability, leadership development, learning, diversity and employee communications.

Mel is passionate about creating exceptional experiences for employees, customers and communities; supporting people to feel engaged, purpose-driven and able to bring their whole selves to work. A strong advocate for the role of leadership in shaping experience and culture, Mel has devoted a large part of her career to the design and implementation of leadership initiatives across a range of organisations.

Prior to joining Medibank, Mel was part of the HR team at NAB, led the Professional Services consulting team at SHL (now CEB) and has a background in Organisational Psychology.

Born to Joy in the harsh Manchester Winter of 77, Dominic has a career that has reached far and wide through Europe, US and Asia PAC.

Dom has responsibilities spanning 7 global R&D centres, and is our in house “Team Doctor” helping Atlassian scale by being ruthlessly efficient and effective, with one eye on the future. Dom helped pioneer our Team Playbook and has personally run hundreds of sessions with our teams globally.

He has previously been the GM Program Management for a global gaming company and a Director of Deloitte.

Dom is proud to work at Atlassian, the home of the most intelligent t-shirt wearers in business, as the Work Futurist.

A keen traveller, Dom has traversed over 50 countries so far, but after 15 years on these shores, he calls Australia home.

Mrs Colleen Harris commenced with Ramsay Health Care on 8 January 2018 in the role of Group Chief People Officer.

In this role, Colleen is responsible for the talent strategy for the Group including mapping of where key expertise will be needed in the future, talent development and succession planning for the most senior leaders across our organisation.

Colleen is a successful Human Resources (HR) executive with more than 20 years’ experience across a variety of industries where she was responsible for designing and implementing talent, diversity, performance and reward programs linked to both individual and business performance outcomes. She has served in several senior executive HR positions reporting to the Group CEOs of National Australia Bank, Federation Centres and MyState Limited. She has also held senior HR positions at Crown Ltd and Yellow Pages.

She holds a Bachelor of Education (Science) from the University of Melbourne, is a Member of the AICD and a Fellow of the Australian Human Resources Institute.

Nicholle is passionate about people with over 20 years’ experience as a human resources professional with a history of success in large, multi-faceted organisations. Prior to joining the team at Optus, Nicholle led the Human Resources function at Queensland Rail, a complex, customer centric organisation playing a key role in leading culture change and transformation. Nicholle’s career experience includes strategic and operational Human Resources positions in major organisations such as Suncorp, Rio Tinto and Tourism Queensland. As the VP (Acting) Human Resources, Nicholle is responsible for providing strategic leadership to all Optus divisions nationally. She leads a team of professionals across a range of functions including Organisational Capability, Internal Communications, Rewards, Business Partnering, Talent Acquisition, HR Consulting, Employee Relations, Safety, Health & Wellbeing, and Employee Experience. Nicholle holds a Graduate Certificate in Business Administration from Griffith University.

Believing that “no peak is too high”, Anish reflects this value in both his personal and professional life, hailing from a humble background in a small town in East India. He currently leads the HR team at Unilever Australia & New Zealand which employs 1200+ employees. Anish has been with Unilever for 12+ years, starting his Unilever career in India. He has performed a variety of roles including HR Director for Marketing and the Unilever International business, HR Director – Learning & Organisational Development and other HR business partnering roles across India and Singapore. Anish’s experience spans across local, regional and global roles. Prior to Unilever, Anish also worked across the Financial Services sector, performing roles in people development, employer branding, recruitment, performance management, HR business partnering and leading change management.

Darren Fewster is the Executive Director of Telstra’s Employee Relations & Health, Safety, Wellbeing & Environment team. Darren is responsible for Employee Relations, Global Case Management, Health, Safety, Wellbeing & Environment, HR Technology and Workplace Analytics.

Darren joined Telstra in 2004 as a Senior Lawyer and was promoted to the role of General Counsel in 2006, leading the Telstra employment law team. He moved from Legal to HR in 2007 and commenced in his current role in 2011.

Prior to Telstra, Darren worked as a lawyer and also spent 8 years engaged in strategic intelligence roles, leading teams investigating organised and white collar crime across Australia.

Darren studied at the University of Western Australia and was awarded degrees in Law (with First Class Honours) and Psychology (with Honours).

Dr Jill Charker is the Deputy Secretary, Enabling Services at the Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business.

Prior to her current role, Jill was the Deputy Secretary, Programme Design, at the Department of Human Services.  Jill has also held senior positions with the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, ComSuper and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Jill holds a PhD from Griffith University, and a First Class Honours degree in Psychology, majoring in Statistics. In addition, she has completed an Executive Masters degree in Public Administration through the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). She is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and a Level 2 qualified executive coach through the Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership.

Nicolette is the Head of Human Resources for Siemens in the Australia Pacific region and also the Human Resources regional speaker for Siemens in ASEAN-Pacific. Nicolette began her career in HR in 1994. She joined Siemens in July 2001 in South Africa where she held various HR functions including Head of HR for Africa. She relocated to join Siemens Australia in June 2011.  During her tenure at Siemens she has implemented multiple local and international best practice projects, in various disciplines within the HR value chain. Nicolette has been instrumental in the implementation of Australia’s first Industry 4.0 digital Apprenticeship in collaboration with Swinburne University and Ai Group. This first-of-its-kind apprenticeship has, amongst other accolades, has won the National Australian Training Awards. Nicolette is also leading Siemens’ co-creation of Swinburne University’s Master of Human Resources Management course.

Craig Taylor leads the HR team at Mondelez International (Cadbury/Oreo/BelVita/Pascall) across Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Over the last seven years, Craig has built a team of professionals that are acknowledged as best in their field by the major retailers in Australia. Using his over 20 years’ experience as a lawyer, industrial relations specialist and HR practitioner, Craig has successfully led multiple large business transformations and change projects, with a balance of delivering business outcomes whilst actively demonstrating care for individuals.

Michelle Phipps is currently Group Head of Talent, Learning and Inclusion at Coca-Cola Amatil, an ASX Top 100 company. She also serves as a member of the Australian Human Resources Institute D&I Advisory Committee. Before joining Amatil, Michelle was Vice President HR Asia Pacific for Brown-Forman Global Spirits. She was on the Board of the Australian Drinks Association and Committee Member for its Women in Drinks and HRD Forum and also served as an NED on the Board of AusDance NSW. Before Brown-Forman, Michelle was HR Director ANZ for the Kellogg Company, HR GM for Coles Supermarkets NSW and spent nine years early on in her career in Retail Sales and Store Management at David Jones. Michelle has a PhD in Culture and Identity, a Masters in HR Management and is a Fellow of the Australian Human Resources Institute. She lives in Sydney with her husband and two children.