AIIA @ Open State

Minister for Employment; Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation; Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation; Minister for Automotive Transformation; Minister for Science and Information Technology

Kyam grew up in country South Australia, initially in Littlehampton in the Adelaide Hills and then in Mount Gambier in the South East of the State. He graduated from Adelaide University with Law and Economics degrees before practicing law for the Crown Solicitor’s Office in South Australia.

When Labor won State Government in 2002 Kyam took on the role of Chief of Staff to Minister Terry Roberts who held the portfolios of Regional Affairs, Aboriginal Affairs and Correctional Services. Kyam then went on to serve as the State Secretary of the Labor Party in South Australia before entering the Legislative Council in 2012.

Upon the re-election of the Labor Government in 2014 Kyam took on the role of Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries. As of February 2015 he was elevated to the Cabinet and is currently the Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation, Automotive Transformation and Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation in the South Australian Government. In January 2016 Kyam took on additional roles of Minister for Employment and Minister for Science and information Economy.

Kyam is particularly passionate about ensuring that all South Australians are afforded the dignity that good, meaningful jobs provide, and that all South Australians are able to share in the opportunities and benefits this State offers. He has spoken on a wide range of issues including Aboriginal Affairs, equality, the importance of science in society, and the challenges facing regional and country communities.

Kyam and his wife Carmel have three primary school aged boys, six chooks and two cats and enjoy spending time in regional South Australia.

Dean of Indigenous Research & Education, The University of Adelaide

Professor Shane Hearn is a Noongar man born in Esperance, Western Australia.

Shane is a thought leader and systems thinker with over 20 years of experience in Aboriginal affairs across policy, education, health, and employment in both public and private sectors.

Shane has led numerous high level, evidence-based strategic initiatives that have contributed to institutional change, resulting in a whole-of-university responsibility towards Indigenous education and career development. Key initiatives include the delivery of Reconciliation Action Plans (RAPS) and green papers, and implementing university-wide employment and development strategies including cadetships, internships, and an international research exchange program.

Today, Shane is the driving force behind a range of innovative higher education strategies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students at The University of Adelaide. Through his new flagship Karnkanthi Indigenous Education Program, these strategies tap into students’ existing cultural and personal strengths, foster their academic skills and university aspirations, and create opportunities for career excellence through individually tailored development programs and streamlined pathways from school to university and beyond.

Shane is committed to unlocking the inherent capabilities and transforming the lives of young Indigenous people through higher education and career-relevant experience, to produce high quality, work-ready graduates.

National Skills Program Lead & State Director SA, Microsoft

Dr Eva Balan-Vnuk is State Director for Microsoft in South Australia and National Skills Program Lead where her role is to lead Microsoft Australia’s initiatives to help build Australia’s future-ready workforce with skills and capabilities for the digital economy. This includes a very specific focus to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers are equipped to benefit from new opportunities created by technology advancements.

Eva spent nine years working for Microsoft in a variety of sales, marketing and strategy roles across Europe, the Middle East and Asia before coming back to Adelaide with her family to complete a PhD in innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Adelaide.

Eva has a clear bias for action, is a firm believer in being proactive and continues to work on her growth mindset. Eva is a Director for Novita, Trustee for the History Trust of South Australia, co-deputy chair of the AIIA SA Council, and a member of SA Government’s Chiefs for Gender Equity convened by the Equal Opportunity Commissioner.

Jay Weatherill is South Australia’s 45th Premier.

Jay was born and educated in Adelaide’s western suburbs, completing his secondary education at Henley High School. He is a lawyer with an economics degree. He established his own law firm in 1995 and practised until he was elected as the Member for Cheltenham in 2002.

Jay was subsequently re-elected as Member for Cheltenham in 2006, 2010 and 2014. He has previously held a range of senior Cabinet portfolios including Education, Early Childhood Development, Environment & Conservation, Aboriginal Affairs & Reconciliation, Minister Assisting the Premier in Cabinet Business & Public Sector Management, Families & Communities, Housing, Ageing, Disability, Urban Development & Planning, Administrative Services, Local Government and Gambling.

Jay held additional portfolio responsibilities including Treasury, from January 2013 until the March 2014 election. Following the successful 2014 election, he was sworn in as Premier of South Australia on 26 March 2014.

Jay and his wife Melissa have two young daughters, Lucinda and Alice.

Co-founder and Director of GovLab, and former Deputy CTO with the White House

The Jerry Hultin Global Network Professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and the Florence Rogatz Visiting Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Beth Simone Noveck is Co-Founder and Director of The GovLab and its MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance. Beth focuses her research, teaching and activism on the impact of technology on public institutions and solving public problems. The GovLab strives to improve people’s lives by changing how we govern. It designs and tests technology, policy and strategies for fostering more open and collaborative approaches to strengthen the ability of people and institutions to work together to solve problems, make decisions, resolve conflict and govern themselves more effectively and legitimately.

Beth served in the White House as the first United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer and director of the White House Open Government Initiative (2009-2011). UK Prime Minister David Cameron appointed her senior advisor for Open Government, and she served on the Obama-Biden transition team. Among projects she’s designed or collaborated on are the Network of Innovators, Unchat, The Do Tank, Peer To Patent, Data.gov, Challenge.gov and the GovLab Academy.

A graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School, she is chairing the 2017 Collective Intelligence Conference. She is a member of the Advisory Boards of the Center for Open Science, the Open Contracting Partnership and the EPSRC Centre for Precision Healthcare at Imperial College. She is also a Program Committee Member of the 2016 Conferences on International Open Data, Open Data Research, Data Science for Government, and the Data for Good Exchange.

She was named one of the “Foreign Policy 100″ by Foreign Policy, one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company and one of the “Top Women in Technology” by Huffington Post. She has also been honoured by both the National Democratic Institute and Public Knowledge for her work in civic technology. Beth is the author of Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing (Harvard University Press, 2015), which will appear in Spanish and Russian in 2016; Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger and Citizens More Powerful (Brookings, 2009), which has also appeared in Arabic, Russian, Chinese and in an audio edition, and co-editor of The State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds (NYU Press, 2005).

Allyson Hewitt is Senior Fellow, Social Innovation MaRS, Toronto, Canada. She has developed and helps lead the social innovation programs at the highly respected MaRS. She has assisted hundreds of social ventures to become economically sustainable and increase their social impact and has had significant impact on public policy.

She is currently leading an initiative to develop a pro bono marketplace for Canada. Allyson is visiting Adelaide as the primary Thinker in Residence for the Don Dunstan Foundation’s Social Capital Residencies

Futurist, inventor, writer, entrepreneur, educator and broadcaster

In 1994, Mark co-invented VRML, a 3D interface to the World Wide Web, with Tony Parisi and Gavin Andresen.

Pesce brings his skills as a futurist to diverse sectors of the economy, including financial institutions ranging from Westpac, World Bank, HSBC and SWIFT, and regularly facilitates and mentors hackathons on topics as diverse as fintech, blockchain, virtual reality, and education.

A sought-after speaker, for seven years Pesce was a panelist and judge on the ABC’s hit series The New Inventors, celebrating Australia’s newest inventions and inventors. He writes a fortnightly column for the internationally respected tech publication The Register, and hosts two podcasts: This Week in Startups Australia – exploring a rapidly-growing tech sector; The Next Billion Seconds connects the work of today’s brightest thinkers with the world of tomorrow.

Pesce has written six books, including The Playful World, which used toys such as Furby and LEGO Mindstorms to illuminate the interactive world of the 21st century.

As an educator, Pesce founded graduate programs in interactive media at both the University of Southern California’s world-famous Cinema School and the Australian Film, Radio and Television School. Pesce currently holds appointments as Honorary Associate in the University of Sydney’s Digital Cultures Program, and Honorary Adjunct at UTS’s new Animal Logic Academy.

Regional Vice President, Ecosystem & Platform Innovation, Asia Pacific, Salesforce

Robert Wickham leads Salesforce’s efforts to help companies experiment and validate new business ideas in partnership with some of the local incubators. Robert is also responsible for Salesforce’s Platform Innovation Specialists across Asia Pacific. He is a highly sort after public speaker and media contributor. Recent appearances include Sky News, Boss Magazine, Australian Institute for Company Directors and CloudAsia.

Prior to joining Salesforce, Robert led the Engineered Systems business at Oracle across Australia and New Zealand. He joined Oracle through acquisition in 2008 and initially ran Oracle’s System Management business in North America.

Prior to his tenure at Oracle, Robert held multiple marketing, product management and sales leadership positions at Empirix Web Test Division (which Oracle acquired in 2008). Prior to Empirix, Robert was a cofounder of Go Fly Limited (a low cost European airline that was eventually sold to easyJet) and a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group.

He holds a Bachelor and Master’s Degree in Aeronautical Engineering from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as well as an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Robert was a member of the MIT Board of Trustees from 1996-2001 and the MIT Alumni Board from 2002-2004. He is a recipient of the MIT Bronze Beaver for distinguished service. He is an avid squash player, golfer and cricket fan. Fun Fact: Robert played for the Trinidad & Tobago under-19 cricket team captained by his classmate Brian Lara.

Principal, Urban Mind

Trish Hansen is a strategic consultant and Founding Principal of Urban Mind; leading purpose driven system change for positive impact – for people and the planet, through collaborative and creative design disruption.  Urban Mind exists to understand, build and strengthen the state of being of the places we work, learn and live.

From health, wellbeing, creative cities, public art and urban life, Trish has initiated, led and managed social enterprises, projects and programs in the tertiary adult and paediatric health, urban, arts and cultural sectors. Trish is currently the President of the Australian Institute of Urban Studies – SA.

Rob Fitzpatrick is a passionate technology advocate, and has been so for much of the past three decades. His career spans research and advocacy at the Property Council of Australia, corporate strategy, sales & marketing at McKinsey & Company, telecommunications at SingTel Optus, technology innovation at shopfast.com.au, commercialisation of early stage research at Data61, foundation investor in technology-based startups and company director influencing technology adoption in traditional businesses.

As CEO of the Australian Information Industry Association, Rob helps shape Australia’s innovation agenda, connecting members with public and private sector organisations as the nation embraces disruption to improve our economy and society. AIIA’s members – from large ‘born global’ Australian companies, to talented small and medium businesses, to entrepreneurial startups and the incubators that nourish their journeys, to global players making a difference in our society – are the digital leaders helping Australian industry embrace disruption to grow wealth, stake out globally relevant leadership and remove friction from our economy.

Rob has Economics and Law degrees from the University of Sydney and a Master in Business Administration from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Rob is an active family man, avid traveller, ocean swimmer and surfer.

Executive Director of the Australia & New Zealand Driverless Vehicle Initiative (ADVI) Centre of Excellence (COE)

Rita Excell is the Executive Director of the Australia and New Zealand Driverless Vehicle Initiative (ADVI) Centre of Excellence (COE). This national initiative, formed in July 2015, is arguably the fastest growing collaboration of like-minded organisations with a shared vision to accelerate the safe and successful introduction of driverless vehicles onto Australian and New Zealand roads. With the ADVI COE centred in Adelaide, Rita leads the collaboration of over 100 partners across Australia and the globe.  Rita is also the key spokesperson for ADVI.

Rita’s prior roles has included working as the Regional Manager of Australian Road Research Board’s South Australian office being responsible for translating the research into practice with member authorities. She was also responsible for managing key strategic policy projects for State Road Authorities across Australia and for organisations that manage public and private road infrastructure in Australia.

Her high degree of personal and professional integrity is evidenced by repeated nominations to strategic state, national and international committees and working groups dealing with sensitive and critical information.

Rita is a qualified Civil Engineer with over 20 years’ experience which commenced in Local Government and provided her with the foundation of how important it is to work with the community at the grass roots level. Rita then moved into road safety and public policy working with the South Australia Automobile Association (RAA SA), where she was responsible for establishing the organisation’s strategic transport planning, road safety and advocacy activities, including producing long term vision documents for enhanced transport and safety solutions for the membership.

Rita is currently the President of the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia (IPWEA), South Australian Division and is a director on the Australasian board of IPWEA. She is also an independent member of the Port Adelaide Enfield Development Assessment Panel a statutory approval authority for development in a major metropolitan council. Rita is also a member of South Australia’s Development Assessment Commission – Port Adelaide (PADAC), where she provides expert advice in relation to development approvals in the historic regional centre of Port Adelaide in South Australia, when required.