Managing Millennials Event

David Leahy

Great People Inside (Australia)

David is the Founder and Managing Director of Great People Inside (Australia), an award-wining, world first, fully customisable behavioural and 360′ assessment platform.

He has an excellent track record of building businesses and developing high performing teams having worked for more than 25 years with multinationals and SME’s.

His industry experience is diverse and includes Healthcare, IT, Professional Services, FMCG, Finance and Manufacturing. He has held senior leadership roles with organisations in both Europe and Australia.

David is a qualified Organisational Coach through the Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership, Australia and is accredited on a range of assessment instruments. He has coached at CEO, Partner Director and Senior Executive level in the USA, South America, Europe and Australia. An engaging speaker, he has presented around the world on Leadership, High Performing Teams, Coaching and People Management.

Robert Briffa

Synergy People

Robert has an Honours degree in Science from the University of Sydney. After a successful management career in the chemical industry, Robert made the transition to the CEO of his family owned Recruitment business in 2007. Robert has lead the business through substantial growth. Now having three locations. Synergy People is now a professional services company. Synergy optimises business performance through people. Synergy People are the leading experts in staff selection and performance management systems and tools for medium to large businesses using the unique Synergy Jobfit program.

Rebecca Doherty

Phocas Software

Rebecca Doherty helps people to bring their best each day as the People & Culture Manager for Phocas Software. In 2019, Phocas won a Culture Transformation Award from Human Synergistics or its constructive and positive culture.
Phocas have a team of 170 people located across the UK, Europe, Asia, Australia and North America that live by their company values: “fun, fulfilling, forever.” They foster a culture where people feel good coming into work every day, and to feel like they make a difference in the lives and business of our customers.
From an early age, Rebecca had a deep passion for helping people and being curious on how things work/connect. Rebecca has for over 12 years’ been successfully working across the full remit of Human Resources, mostly within the technology industry, at both a global and local level, to build and foster happy and successful workplaces through growing, coaching and nurturing people so they can be their best every day.

As a strong believer in continuous development and improvement, Rebecca relishes in tackling current and future workplace challenges by learning about and evolving her capabilities in new HR trends, practices, or initiatives. Additionally, she has been instrumental in leading numerous transformational projects across systems and people initiatives to enhance business capabilities.
During her spare time, Rebecca likes keeping fit and you may also come across her in an aisle at Bunnings where she is conjuring up ideas for her next renovation project.

Kerrie Sheaves

Foundational Business

Kerrie has worked with micro and small business owners helping them grow their businesses for over 10 years as a the owner of Foundational Business and senior business consultant for our service divisions.Prior to starting her own business, her career in large corporates included senior management roles for PwC Australia, MCI WorldCom, AAPT and Optus.

Kerrie is passionate about business and community connection, she is actively involved in local Business Chambers, BNI and other networking groups, and serves on the board of Sydney Hills Business Chamber, the Home Based Base Council of Australia, and several charity and advisory boards.

Her key business driver is to increase the effectiveness of small businesses, reducing the rate of failure by providing practical and achievable help to small business owners, to empower and equip them to succeed.

Ashley Fell

McCrindle

Ashley Fell is a Social Researcher, Author, TEDx Speaker and Director of Communications at the internationally recognised McCrindle. From topics including future trends, business insights, leadership and communication skills, Ashley delivers over 50 visually engaging, tailored, and research-based presentations annually for corporate, government and not-for-profit clients in Australia and overseas. Her expertise is in training and equipping leaders and teams on how to lead across generational divides; particularly Gen Y (popularly known as millennials), Gen Z and now the newest generation, Generation Alpha.

With academic qualifications in communications and as a generational expert, Ashley understands that leaders need to inspire and engage employees and consumers, and connect them with the organisation’s purpose and vision.

From Ashley’s experience in creating engaging research-based content, strategising public relations and coordinating industry events, she is well positioned to advise on how to achieve cut through in these message-saturated times.
In addition to delivering informative keynote presentations with splashes of humour at conferences, boardroom briefings, and PD Days, Ashley is regularly interviewed for print media, TV programs, radio and podcasts.

Dominic Nair

Talent Multipliers

Dominic is the CEO of Talent Multipliers. He is a HR transformation expert with 25 years corporate experience working with reputed international companies in senior HR Management roles with Emirates Airline, Du, UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Desert Group and Yusen Logistics. He has worked extensively in Australia, the Middle East, USA, Asia, the Far East, Europe and Africa, Industry experience includes government, across multiple sectors including financial services, retail, construction, manufacturing, aviation, tourism, transport & logistics, education, food and drink, pharma, horticulture and other sectors.

With a diverse industry background and experience in start-ups and mergers and acquisitions, Dominic brings a wealth of commercial HR knowledge where he has partnered with boards and executives to drive sustainable outcomes, performance and growth.

Dominic holds an MBA and is a certified business coach with extensive experience in large scale program and project management. In 2018, Dominic established his own business, Talent Multipliers, providing specialist HR consulting, transformation and recruitment services to start-up and mid-size Australian companies. The business helps organisations maximise value through an integrated approach that is practical, fit-for-purpose and sustainable. The business also actively supports charitable organisations and provides pro-bono support to the community.

Dominic is a board member with the Parramatta Chamber of Commerce.

Karen Lawson

Former MD of Spotify & CEO of CareerOne

Karen Lawson is an award winning business executive and leader in the digital, technology and startup industry. She uses her experience in driving reinvention and transformation to help the world’s biggest brands to stay ahead of disruption.

Karen was formerly the MD of Spotify Australia & New Zealand, a global audio streaming business reaching 271m listerners in 79 countires and launched podcasting to the Australian market including a new format podcast ‘Your Daily Drive’. Prior to that, roles included being the acting CEO for a new venture founded by a ANZ and advisory board director to the Sydney Startup Hub. Karen provides corporates and start-ups with commercial growth, product and transformation expertise through her own consultancy along with board roles at Save The Children Fund to oversee investments from their fund into fast growth startups.

As CEO of Slingshot, she grew the business to become the #1 corporate accelerator in Australia, having accelerated more startups and run more corporate programs than any other other provider. Driving the total market capitalisation of its alumni to over $507m having accelerated over 151 businesses. The $15m Slingshot Venture Fund has invested into early stage founders driving economic growth and employment. Slingshot worked across different industries from fintech, health, membertech, future of work, media, fuels, retail and travel with leading organisations such as Qantas, Lion, SEEK, NewsCorp, HCF, Caltex along with state and federal governments.

Under Karen’s leadership she launched a new disruptive SaaS busness, CoVentured providing a global platform to connect corporates and startups for mutual growth. It launched late 2017 with an operating at $1m run rate joined by corporates such as West Pac, Australia Post and Woolworths and over 70% of Australian startups.

Karen also served as CEO of CareerOne, a joint venture between News Limited and Monster Worldwide. With a remit to forge a new digital strategy, Karen reinvented the traditional job board into a leading targeting and digital business offering media, employer branding, SaaS and sourcing solutions. CareerOne went on to be awarded a spot in the coveted BRW ‘Top 50 most innovative companies’ list for 2014 and was sold for over $50m two years later.

She also served as General Manager at Yahoo!7 where she held full commercial and operational responsibility for business development, data, advertising, channel, publishing, technology, search, mobile and strategic partnerships, including the Microsoft Bing alliance.

With experience leading through change; motivating and developing cross functional teams to peak performance, Karen is extremely passionate about delivering great results and helping others achieve their true potential.

She is also a prolific networker, experienced media commentator and guest speaker, with appearances on TV, radio in print and digital, as well as industry forums. Her commitment to not only driving innovation and disruption but also to promoting D&I resulted in Karen being selected as UN ambassador for Women’s Entrepreneurship Day, Rare Birds Speaker, Nominee for Telstra Woman of the Year, Pledge 1%’s Women Who Lead, Australian Growth Company Awards, Women’s Agenda finalist 2017 and Smart Company Women in Tech 2018.

Karen is also a huge ‘foodie’ and has been a food and luxury travel journalist for over thirteen years, writing for a diverse range of publishers. She doesn’t have holidays, but has research and writing trips! To balance this out she is an avid runner having completed both New York and London Marathons, though these days she is more likely to be seen jogging around Blackwattle Bay at a much more sedate pace!