Matthew Luhn is an accomplished storyteller, instructor, motivational keynote speaker, and story consultant, with over 20 years’ experience creating stories and characters at Pixar Animation Studios. Alongside his story work in Hollywood, Matthew works with Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurs, and other professionals how to craft and tell stories that bridge the gap between business and heart to build stronger brands and business communication.

Shara Evans shows organisations how to take advantage of the opportunities underpinned by emerging technologies. As one of the world’s top female futurists, Shara is one of those rare individuals who merge incredible technical skills with an innate understanding of the social and economic impact of new technologies.

Regarded as a leading expert on emerging technologies, cyber security, digital privacy and the future of health, humanity and work, Shara is regularly featured on broadcast television. She’s appeared on ABC’s Q&A, The Project, Sky News, Weekend Sunrise, Lateline, and more and is routinely interviewed by radio, print and online media.

David Stillman is not new to the generational conversation. For over twenty years he has been called on by business executives, politicians and the media to share his expertise on how best to bridge generational gaps. David has appeared on CNN, CNBC, and the TODAY Show as well as NPR and in Fast Company, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal.

Jonah Stillman graduated from high school in 2017 and is pursuing a life as an entrepreneur. Growing up, for 10-years Jonah competed on the national US circuit in snowboarding. He was ranked in the top 5 in the US before hanging up his helmet to pursue working with his Dad in the generational field.

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 companies; 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.  Dean brings almost 20 years of experience as CHRO across his tenure at Patagonia, Sears Holdings, and 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 within 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. 

Daniel Shapero is the Vice President of Global Solutions at LinkedIn. Dan is responsible for leading LinkedIn’s field organization globally to help transform the way over 50,000 organizations hire, market, sell and learn. Since joining LinkedIn in 2008, Dan has led the growth of LinkedIn’s Talent businesses from ~$40M in 2009 to over $4B today in roles encompassing both go-to-market and product management. Prior to LinkedIn Dan was a manager at Bain & Company, and he founded his first startup at 19, which he sold at 21. Dan holds an MBS from Harvard Business School, and a BS in Applied Math from Johns Hopkins.

Eric Owski leads Global Product Marketing for LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions business. Eric joined LinkedIn four years ago in Product Management, leading the development and launch of LinkedIn Talent Insights and LinkedIn’s Talent Brand products. Prior to LinkedIn, Eric held a variety of leadership roles at CareerBuilder, was a member of the executive team at Bright (acquired by LinkedIn) and was the CEO and Founder of Heirloom, through which he joined LinkedIn in 2014. Eric has been a frequent speaker at industry events like SHRM and HRTech.

Dorothy Hisgrove is PwC Australia’s Chief People Officer. As a partner and member of the Global Human Capital Leadership team, she heads up the people practice for PwC Australia’s 8,000+ employees, leading the redesign of the people function including the digital transformation of the workforce. Dorothy has held senior leadership positions across a range of sectors and organisations, focusing on the development and implementation of transformation growth programs in large and complex businesses. She’s led brand and marketing, customer experience, market development, people and culture portfolios at the Australian Football League, Australia Post, National Australia Bank and BHP Billiton. As a strong advocate for diversity in the workplace, Dorothy is a recognised leader in building inclusive and open workplace cultures. Dorothy is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and, in her spare time, is a director of Golf Victoria and a director of Teach for Australia.

David Johansson is the Head of People Strategy & Analytics at AMP. His role is to work across the Group in support of the People Agenda, Transformation, and support the continued development of HR Analytics. David is an experienced people leader and management consultant, having supported small and large organisations through transformation, and shaped change programs to deliver sustainable performance culture. He has led business operations, specialist support teams, and strategic programs of work. He brings established strengths in strategy, human resources, business transformation, organisational change management, workforce management, and communications. David is passionate about the future of work, and influencing how people, organisations and communities come together to create ethical and workable outcomes.

Maree Howard is known for being a commercial and pragmatic Human Resources leader with vast experience in blue chip organisations across a range of industries: banking, insurance, telecommunications, retail, construction and investment. She has strong career as a strategic Business Partner and has also lead transformations for Talent, Performance Management, Learning and Leadership Development functions. She has a reputation for delivering through changing circumstances and across challenging business environments. She is currently working with Lendlease as Global Head of Learning – driving improvements in what and how Lendlease learners engage in development.

Zoey Banks is the Head of Talent Attraction & Diversity for the Commonwealth Bank Group. As the strategic lead for Talent Attraction and Diversity for one of Australia’s biggest employers, her team’s core focus is to drive candidate engagement with their Employer Brand and optimise hiring for business critical talent segments such as D&I target demographics, Campus and priority job families in an ever-evolving, highly-competitive market. To deliver these outcomes, she relies on a team of amazing subject matter experts, a dash of fairy dust and best intentions, as well as her personal commercial, consulting and strategy-setting experience gained across recruitment agency, RPO and large corporate internal functions.

Lil Gordon is acting Head of Aboriginal Affairs NSW. Lil a proud Aboriginal Woman from the vibrant community of Brewarrina – Ngiyampaa (Ngemba) country in Northern NSW.

As a trained teacher, Lil brings over 30 years of experience in education whilst working alongside Aboriginal communities. She brings the wisdom of years of experience across a range of environments including as a Director within TAFE NSW, the CEO of the Barang Regional Alliance and as a teacher in high schools, Juvenile Justice and Correctional Centres.

More recently, Lil has been leading Aboriginal Affairs NSW’s Sydney/Newcastle Regional Teams, leading the establishment of the Kimberwalli (Aboriginal Centre of Excellence) in Western Sydney. In this role she also oversaw the progression of the NSW Aboriginal Languages Act 2017, the establishment of an Aboriginal Languages Trust and a strategic plan to invest in activities intended to reawaken, grow, nurture, promote or raise awareness of Aboriginal Languages.

Jason is a proud Badu Island man from the Torres Strait Islands and an accomplished Indigenous engagement professional who has provided strategic advice to some of the largest organisations in Australia including Lion, Accor, Google, Westpac and Lendlease

Most recently Jason held the position of Deputy CEO at Supply Nation, Australia’s premier supplier diversity organisation, advocating for Indigenous
businesses. 

Before this role, Jason headed up Qantas’ Indigenous Engagement Strategy authoring the fourth edition of their Reconciliation Action Plan at the Elevate level, the highest endorsement from Reconciliation Australia.

Jason is now a co-Founder and co-Director of a consultancy firm called Two Point Co specialising in Indigenous engagement through strategy design, facilitation, community consultation and social impact assessment. 

Topaz McAuliffe has been working in Indigenous affairs for 10 years, beginning with Indigenous employment where she successfully created and implemented a sustainable employment model at Coles. Coles is now Australia’s largest private-sector employer of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, employing in excess of 4,000 team members.

McAuliffe’s Torres Strait Islander heritage has always driven her passion for all things food, which has shaped the next stage of her career. She is now guiding Coles’ strategy to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander farmers to increase commercial opportunities for supplying fresh produce and native bush food. Coles is the largest seller of native bush foods and is committed to growing its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander supply chain.

Dan is the Talent Acquisition Manager at the National Rugby League (NRL) and is responsible for attraction and recruitment of all NRL employees nationally. He was the first Talent specialist employed by the NRL and was responsible for building the internal talent capability from scratch. Having worked on the agency side of the fence for 15 years prior to joining the NRL, Dan has spent the last 3 years transforming the technological landscape and reinventing the employee experience at the NRL. Key achievements in this time has been achieving a record number of Indigenous employees (9.1%) as part of the NRL’s Reconciliation Action Plan, hiring over 500 staff (without a team and limited agency use), ensuring a 50/50 gender split on all recruitment, designing and facilitating a new 3 day National Induction Program and reducing agency spend by $5million. He is also a certified Gallup Strengths Coach and uses this to not only identify the right Talent, but to make sure the talent is nurtured and strengthened at the NRL.

In her 20 years as an award-winning public affairs journalist, Ellen Fanning has interviewed every Australian Prime Minister from Sir John Grey Gorton to Malcolm Turnbull. She has reported politics from Canberra to the White House while her broader career has taken her to locations as diverse as the North Pole, an airline refuelling fighter jets over Bosnia and a Collins Class submarine deep in the Indian Ocean. She spent the first ten years of her career at the ABC where she presented both the AM and PM current affairs radio programs. She also served as the ABC’s Washington correspondent. She was later a reporter on the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes and the last presenter of Nine’s Sunday program. Ellen co-presents ABC TV’s “The Drum” and is regularly seen and heard on ABC TV’s 730 and on ABC Radio around Australia.