Canberra Manager’s Forum celebrating International Women’s Day with Abigail Bradshaw

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Welcoming our guests to a luncheon celebrating International Women’s Day (IWD).

March Forward is the theme for International Women’s Day 2025, commemorating 30 years since the United Nation’s Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action achieving gender equality. March Forward reminds us to take decisive steps to turn our commitment into action and continue to drive change and ensure a truly equal future for all women and girls.

Join us for this luncheon with Abigail Bradshaw, Director-General of the Australian Signals Directorate who will share her journey to ICT leadership from a women’s perspective.

Keynote speaker

Abigail Bradshaw

Director General

Australian Signals Directorate

Abigail Bradshaw was appointed the Director-General of the Australian Signals Directorate in September 2024. 

Abigail previously served as Deputy Director-General ASD and Head of ASD’s Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), responsible for leading Australian Government’s operational advice and assistance to improve cyber security for Australians and Australian entities.

Abigail led ASD’s response to nationally significant cyber security incidents and spearheaded the Government’s cyber security partnership with industry, forging critical partnerships, which underpin Australia’s national resilience. She has held key national security roles where she has lead whole of government operations, as well as policy and international roles, focussing on advancing Australia’s national security agenda domestically and offshore.

Abigail has held senior appointments within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C), the Department of Home Affairs, and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. Abigail began her career in the Royal Australian Navy and was awarded the Conspicuous Service Cross in 2005. She holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Asian Studies.

Panellists

Carrie Graf AM

Director of Sport

University of Canberra

Carrie Graf, Order of Australia (AM) member and esteemed Basketball Australia Hall-of Famer, is one of the country’s most successful forces in high-performance sport, with a career spanning more than three decades.

Carrie is a Triple Olympian as an Australian Olympic Basketball Coach, including Head Coach at London 2012 and has been part of three medal winning Olympic campaigns. Carrie’s international experience includes coaching in the USA professional league (WNBA) across seven seasons. Recognised as one of WNBL’s most successful and decorated Coaches, Carrie has led teams to 7 championships as Head Coach and has taken teams to the WNBL playoffs 15 times.

Carrie’s influence extends to Government, having spent several years as a High-Performance Facilitator, working with Departments including Health, Education, and the Department of Foreign Affairs, just to name a few. In recognition of her contribution and impact to the ACT, Carrie was presented the keys to the city by the Chief Minister.

Carrie holds a Bachelor of Applied Science (Physical Education) from RMIT (Melbourne), has served as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra, and is a recent graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) Company Directors Course. When she’s not delivering in her current role as Director of Sport at the University of Canberra, you can find Carrie at home in Canberra with her three children.

Casey Coleman

VP Global Public Sector

ServiceNow

Casey Coleman is Vice President for Global Public Sector at ServiceNow, where she and her team help officials around the globe modernize their citizen/customer service delivery and mission operations using AI and the NOW platform.

Casey is an experienced government executive, CIO and large-scale transformation leader. She previously led the Salesforce GPS Digital Transformation program for the last seven years.

Before joining Salesforce, Casey served as chief information officer at the U.S. General Services Administration, where she led several modernization initiatives, including the first agency-wide move to cloud platforms. Casey chaired the Federal CIO Council’s Cloud First committee that developed the FedRAMP standard for cloud cybersecurity.

Casey began her career as a software engineer and has held sales, consulting and management roles at several technology startups focused on the enterprise IT space.

Casey has been recognized with numerous honours and awards and is a four-time winner of the FCW Federal 100 Award and recipient of the 2022 Eagle Award. She holds an MBA in Finance and International Business from the University of Texas at Arlington, and a B.S. in Computer Science from Texas A&M University.

Dr Georgina Fuller

Assistant Director General, Active Cyber Defence

Australian Signals Directorate

Georgina is the Assistant Director General, Active Cyber Defence within the Australian Signals Directorate’s (ASD) Australian Cyber Security Centre. In this role, she is responsible for the delivery of Australia’s national cyber defence plans, national exercise program, and Active Cyber Defence capabilities.

Prior to this, Georgina led ASD’s Counter Cybercrime mission, working closely with law enforcement and other Government partners to proactively disrupt and respond to top tier, offshore, cybercriminal threats and their enabling entities. She has over 15 years’ experience in the Commonwealth Public service and the National Intelligence Community, including: as a senior researcher with the Australian Institute of Criminology; leading intelligence teams countering cybercrime and transnational and serious organised crime; and, most recently, a secondment to Prime Minister and Cabinet to support the 2024 Independent Intelligence Review.

Georgina has a PhD. in Criminology from Griffith University and a Bachelor of Science (Psychology) from the Australian National University.

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