Speakers

After 18 years in advertising as an Art Director, Sarah made a tree-change to Sunday Creek, 80kms north of Melbourne. Over the commute, she applied for a role in Mitchell Shire Council’s Communications and Improvement Team as a Digital specialist. Four years later, she had launched Mitchell Shire’s corporate social media presence, enewsletter platform, rebuilt their website and managed their digital channels through fire and flood events.

In 2016 Sarah joined City of Melbourne as Team Leader Digital Communications, responsible for their online corporate and marketing platforms and advising on all digital projects for over two years. Interested in data and CX, she took a secondment leading City of Melbourne’s Customer Service Strategy team. In 2019 she returned to Mitchell Shire as Manager Information and Business Transformation, to head up their ICT and growing Transformation portfolio. Always customer-focused, Sarah loves a challenge and building great teams. She is now leading significant transformation projects at pace despite having access to limited resources.

Carmel has worked in Local Government for the past 10 years in senior management positions and is currently in the role of Group Manager Corporate Services.

Prior to working in local government, Carmel worked with a private firm for five years as a Property Valuer, and previous to that role worked in a State government land management/development role for seven years.

Carmel is a registered Valuer with a postgraduate degree in Urban Estate Management and Master's Degrees in Planning and Property Development. Carmel is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and an Associate of the Australian Property Institute.

The Corporate Services Group comprises Human Resources, Finance, Business Systems Support (ICT, Spatial Services, Records/Data Management and Business Improvements) and Property Services. Additionally,

Crown and Council owned Holiday Parks and a substantial investment portfolio and development land bank are managed within the Property Services Section of Corporate Services.

Carmel has a focus on business development and financial management developed through experience in her previous roles. She enjoys working closely with the community to set the strategic directions for the organisation but also enjoys being able to deliver internal services that enable the Council to achieve sustainability and provide the committed objectives to the community.

Mustafa has more than 20 years experience across various industries in five different countries. Mustafa’s experience includes operational excellence, project management and change management. Mustafa joined Willoughby City Council as Head of Business Improvement in October 2015. He now also leads Customer Experience function.

Prior to this Mustafa worked for Insurance Australia Group (IAG) as a Business Improvement Manager.

Mustafa’s current role is varied including hands on leadership of business improvement initiatives, building automation capability, and aligning organisational improvements to ‘Voice of Customer’ using change management approaches. Willoughby City Council business improvement program led by Mustafa has won Local Government Professionals Award 2017.

Martin over 19 years’ experience in the IT industry working for both private sector and local government organisations. The past four years have been spent in local government. First with Mornington Peninsula Shire where he was responsible for redesigning the IT environment and implementing innovative technologies to improve customer service through to his current position at Baw Baw Shire were he leads the customer service, IT and business information teams.

David Jackson is the Information Services Manager at Cardinia Shire Council. David got involved in IT to be the “translator” between technologists and business users. With a mantra “Technology shouldn’t be a solution looking for a problem”, David subscribes to addressing problems holistically with an eye on the benefits to be gained through innovation.

Senior IT Manager with 9 years in IT management and 5 years as member of executive leadership teams. Designed and executed enterprise IT strategies and roadmaps, exceeding SLAs and delivering cloud transitions, digital transformations and business process automation.

Lalitha is the IT Manager for Moorabool Shire Council. He is a client focused and trusted business advisor, with an instinct for knowing when to listen and how to contribute. His strength lies in recommending and delivering high-impact, low-risk solutions that achieve consistent and positive outcomes for the council and community.

Lalitha provides those around him with the tools and education that they need to access and manage information.. He believes that IT is not systems and networks alone, rather it is an innovative tool that drives business change.

Ingrid is a passionate believer that the combination of people, processes, data and technology can enable not just business, but it has the power to change governments, organisations and entire economies. She is a leader focused on achieving great outcomes while, constantly fostering a positive client experience. Ingrid is the Chief Digital and Information Officer at Wollongong City Council and although relatively new to Local Government, Ingrid has extensive experience in similar roles in NSW Government across a number of different portfolios including the health, justice, human services and the utilities sectors. Ingrid has Masters degrees in both business and IT.

Shay is the General Manager of Customer Strategy at Collective Campus. He has over 10 years of experience working across a wide range of projects focusing on customer experience, design thinking, innovation and startup partnerships. He has gained his experience across several consulting firms including Ernst & Young, Capgemini and Accenture.

A regular facilitator/speaker, Shay has worked with and provided advice to leading Australian and Global organisations including NAB, ASIC, Westpac, Qantas, Coca-Cola, Clifford Chance and BNP Paribas. Shay has also supported several local councils on their innovation journeys, working with the likes of the City of Casey, City of Whittlesea and Ballarat City Council.

Shay developed and launched the 'Springboard' program with three councils in Victoria. The program offers innovators and entrepreneurs from not only Australia but all over the world, the chance to share their innovative solutions to address high priority community challenges.

Over the last 20+ years, Rick has held key leadership roles in enterprise scale technology-based transformation initiatives.  He began his career in New Zealand with the computerization of the phone network and then moved on to leading to projects in the Middle East, Caribbean and USA.  While in the USA, he delivered large scale online and eCommerce driven transformation initiatives for companies such as Ford Vehicles, Anheuser Busch, and MasterCard.

After repatriating to NZ and delivering various custom application solutions for clients within NZ, Rick joined Hutt City Council.  In his role as the Business Transformation Manager, his team is responsible for delivering the Technology and process re-engineering solutions associated with digital transformation initiatives across Council. A key foundational step for Hutt City’s transformation journey was moving the core TechOne applications from On-Premise to SaaS.

Mr Raines has been in the IT field for over 30 years working at all levels of Government Internationally.
He has worked as a uniformed soldier in the Canadian Forces, and as a civilian in the Outbreak division of the Public Health Agency of Canada.  In the past 8 years he has been working for Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council as the Manager of IT and Business Analysis Unit. Most recently he has undertaken the role of Strategic Digital Strategy finding new and better ways to increase connectivity and work with other agencies such as Service NSW in strategic delivery.

David Roulston FAIPM CPPE is in the position of Chief Information Officer and Executive Branch Manager Portfolio Management Office with Transport Canberra and City Services, ACT Government.  David has a passion for the practice and profession of project management, especially linked to the development and delivery of IT/Digital systems.  He completed 21 years in the Royal Australian Navy, a career that he undertook from the age of 16.  David transitioned to what was the Defence Materiel Organisation, now known as Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG) and ignited his passion for IT and Communications project management and growing the culture of project management as a recognised profession.  David was involved in major joint projects such as the High Frequency Modernisation Project (JP2043), the Military Satellite Capability (JP2008) project and the Satellite Systems Program Office (SSPO).  In 2009 he transferred to the ACT Government where he had the challenge of implementing a project management framework and culture within the organisation. The resulted in not only a project management framework but a very active Project Management Community of Practice.   In his spare time David provides support and mentoring for Project Managers and Mentoring for Veterans transitioning from the Defence environment to other areas and careers.  He has dedicated many years to the support of Project Managers and the Australian Institute of Project Management. He has had several different roles including member, Chapter member, Chapter President and Project Management Achievement Awards Judge.  He has a love for family, his grandkids, fishing, and is looking forward to one day caravanning around this fantastic country of ours.

Nabil Saleh is Chief Information Officer at Woollahra Municipal Council and have 28 years experience in IT and Local Government. Nabil’s management portfolio includes the Council’s Information Technology, Telecommunications, Information Management and Customer Service groups. Nabil holds an MBA majoring in Information Technology and Financial Management from MGSM (Macquarie Graduate School of Management). Much of Nabil’s focus is on ensuring best customer service delivery and improving the organisational efficiency through digital transformation and value based investments in IT  projects and infrastructure services. Nabil Chair’s the Civica Sydney Metropolitan User Group which is focused on a local government software used\shared by many Australian and New Zealand councils. Nabil has presented at various IT and government conferences and is pleased to present at the Digitech.local.gov Summit.

Over the last two decades, Amit has lead strategic work programs within large, complex environments that includes both business and digital transformations. Amit has demonstrated capability in providing innovative but practical solutions, successfully delivered by utilizing his strong stakeholder and vendor management skills.

Leading Digital and Data Transformation at Yarra Ranges Council, Victoria Hyma Vulpala is a proven digital and data transformation leader with strong cross-sector experience and operational success in driving Omnichannel customer-centric digital, data, smart city transformation.

An innovator with a profound hold of technology, change management, digital, data transformation, Omnichannel operations and team-building across Australia, India, New Zealand and the USA.

Hyma is currently serving as an Executive committee member of MAV Technology, Australian Smart Communities Association (Future Governance, Innovation) and Notting Hill Neighbourhood House. She is also part of LG Pro, Leadership Victoria mentoring group to support the future workforce.

For more than 20 years, Anthony has built, scaled and run mid-market companies in the Internet and cloud services space. By helping businesses to understand how to use technology to transform and develop strategic initiatives, he has converted new market opportunities into leading businesses as a CEO, executive director and entrepreneur.

Anthony’s career path has led him to be part of innovative companies that forged new ground for businesses wanting to use technology to serve their customers better. Some of the highlights include:

• Founding Zip World in 1995, creating a market-leading retail and wholesale Internet provider, which was sold to NASDAQ listed Pacific Internet (now Telstra) in 1999
• Founding Bulletproof in 2000, which grew to be the leading end-to-end Cloud Services provider in A/NZ, and he took the company public through a listing on the ASX in 2014, leading to almost $50m annual revenues until its acquisition by AC3 in 2018
• A mentor of a number of startup businesses, including as a contributor to the Macquarie University Incubator and UNSW Founders program

Conversant in a wide range of leading-edge technology and business operating environments, Anthony understands how to identify business-level customer pain points and then turn transformative technologies into value-add business propositions that solve them with a unique blend of broad technical knowledge and business management experience.

Anthony’s passion is the power of technology in enabling businesses to serve their customers better. Accelera Group, which drives meaningful business outcomes from Digital Transformation for medium sized enterprises across Australia and New Zealand, is the latest chapter in this life-long mission.