iAwards Tips and Traps

COLLINS REX is owner of ideas generator and actuator, Rex Ideas, and a Director of the Global Trade Professionals Alliance (GTPA).

Collins has owned and operated highly successful communications and consultancy businesses on two continents, and in her professional capacity assists clients across a range of international training, marketing, product development and communications areas, where she leverages her background as an award-winning radio announcer to hone businesses’ pitching and presentation skills. She numbers governments, trade organisations, industry associations and not-for-profits amongst her clients, and she is regularly called upon to speak at international events.

Collins has for some 20 years been involved in the Australian ICT industry, through associations with Australian technology firms and various ICT industry clusters (several of which she initiated and managed). And she understands the value of services and technology in an increasingly connected world. As a self-confessed “AI tragic” and agtech enthusiast, Collins is passionate about the intersection of technology, business and art, and acknowledges the role technology and digitisation play in business growth.

Collins sits on the international advisory board of the Netherlands-based eCommerce Foundation, and she is a member of the World Customs Organisation’s Working Group on eCommerce. She has for some 13 years served as a member of the AIIA’s iAwards judging panel and Judges’ Council, and also as an international judge at APICTA, the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards.

For well over three decades now, Collins she has worked as an international business specialist, consulting to and upskilling individual companies and organisations wanting to expand their horizons. Amongst other things, she has developed training materials and delivered courses in international business across a range of subject areas, from sales skills and pitching for success, to basic export skills and Free Trade Agreement utilisation. And she has delivered this training in markets as diverse as Australia, South Africa and Peru, and online to hundreds of people in dozens of countries. She has also delivered three highly successful Australia Awards: Women Trading Globally programmes to women entrepreneurs from across the Pacific and South Asia, and she continues to mentor these women on an ongoing basis.

Collins is currently (on behalf of the Global Trade Professionals Alliance) delivering an Australian government-funded project to build support services for small business in six Asia-Pacific countries. Working with stakeholders in these markets, she is developing a range of tools, online training courses and business disaster recovery guides, aimed at helping MSMEs in those markets recover and grow post-COVID-19.

With degrees in English, Psychology and Sociology, Collins is keenly interested in the human condition.