AWS Summit Sydney Speakers

Rianne van Veldhuizen is the Managing Director for Amazon Web Services in Australia and New Zealand. Rianne is passionate about helping our customers grow and innovate quickly, using cloud solutions to meet their business and digital ambitions. Rianne was previously the Head of SMB, Asia Pacific and Japan for AWS. Prior to her appointment at AWS Rianne held various leadership roles at IBM, both in Asia Pacific and Europe.

Dave Brown is the Vice President of AWS Compute and Networking. In this role he is responsible for building all AWS Compute and Networking services, including Amazon EC2, Amazon Container Services, AWS Lambda, and Amazon VPC. These services are used by all AWS customers but also underpin most of AWS’s internal Amazon applications. He also leads newer solutions, such as AWS Outposts, that bring AWS services into customers’ private data centers. Dave joined AWS in 2007 as a Software Development Engineer based in Cape Town, South Africa, where he worked on the early development of Amazon EC2. In 2012, he relocated to Seattle, and continued to work in the broader Amazon EC2 organization. Over the last 11 years, he has taken on larger leadership roles as more of the AWS compute and networking products have become part of his organization. Prior to joining Amazon, Dave worked as a Software Developer at a financial industry startup. He holds a Computer Science & Economics degree from the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

Jessie Hughes is an internationally-recognised new media artist, technologist, scholar and screenwriter, her works having exhibited most notably at Sundance, SXSW, Cannes and the Tate Modern. She’s collaborated with the likes of Meta, Oculus and Adobe, in a decade of leading imaginative emerging technologies. Jessie Hughes is the Head Creative Technologist and Artist-In-Residence at generative AI leader, Leonardo.Ai, pioneering tools for a new era for human creativity.

Genevieve Bell was appointed the 13th Vice-Chancellor of ANU in January 2024. Genevieve is the University’s first female Vice-Chancellor. The Vice-Chancellor and President is the leader and chief executive officer of ANU. The Vice-Chancellor provides executive leadership to the University and takes overall responsibility for delivering the ANU Strategy. She chairs key management committees including the University Senior Management Group and the ANU Executive, and is also a member of the ANU governing body, the Council. The Vice-Chancellor is the University's primary representative to government and wider society, and to national and international organisations. Genevieve holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Stanford University and is a renowned anthropologist, technologist, and futurist, having spent more than two decades in Silicon Valley helping guide Intel's product development and social science and design research capabilities. She is best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice and technology development and for being an important voice in the global debates around artificial intelligence and human society.

Jess Corones is an experienced sport scientist with a deep understanding of performance for the coach and athlete. For Jess, data is not just about numbers, equations, computations or algorithms: it is about understanding … and this understanding unlocking performance. She’s worked in the Australian sporting system in a number of different high-performance roles from biomechanics and performance analyst to talent identification and development to the elite level performance. Jess has implemented and driven a number of innovation and technology projects in the Australian Swim Team and led the performance support team of the Dolphins that dominated at the World Championships in Fukuoka, and also helped lead the Olympic Swim Team to their most successful Olympic performance in Tokyo. Her world’s best-practice skills were acknowledged at AIS Sport Performance Awards in 2023, where Jess was awarded the Leadership Award at the premier awards’ night on the sporting calendar, this national award takes into account all codes on the Australian sporting landscape.

Bronwyn Dodd is a proud Ngarrindjeri woman from South Australia, striving to make a difference for her people and the wider community. Currently holding the role of National General Manager for Indigenous Banking at Westpac and is an active community member as a non-executive director on the boards of the Cancer Council SA and Indigenous Business Australia’s Investment board. Bronwyn has an extensive background in leading large front-line distribution, with over 10 years banking experience across SME, Commercial and Agribusiness, driving strategy for customer and revenue growth. Prior to her returning appointment to the Westpac Group, Bronwyn was the Executive Director, Customers and Services for the South Australian Housing Authority, where she led the execution and operational delivery of the Authority's housing and tenant management agenda. Preceding this, Bronwyn spent over a decade within the Public and Private Health Sector, leading corporate finance and HR functions across medical and operational functions. Bronwyn holds an MBA from the University of Adelaide, has completed the Australian Company Directors course and is currently undertaking a Graduate Diploma of Psychology which she intends to utilise by giving back to her community.

Professor Carolyn Hogg has been working on the conservation of threatened species for over twenty-five years both in Australia and overseas. She is the Science Lead & Chair of the national Threatened Species Initiative, a program generating genomic resources for Australia's threatened species, the co-lead of the Australasian Wildlife Genomics Group in the Faculty of Science, and the Deputy Director for the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney. Professor Hogg has been working with the Save the Tasmanian Devil Program for the past 14 years; in addition to other species such as orange-bellied parrots, koalas, bilbies and woylies. Working closely with both her academic and conservation management partners her vision is to create a conservation legacy for Australia by changing the way we integrate science, management and policy; to proactively promote species’ resilience in the face of a changing world. This is being achieved by developing better tools and technologies to integrate molecular genetics into real-time conservation management decisions.

Olivier Klein is a hands-on technologist working for AWS across APAC and Europe to help customers build resilient, scalable, secure and cost-effective applications and create innovative and data driven business models. Prior to AWS, Olivier ran the digital product strategy for an American multinational publishing and education company across Asia and led engineering and R&D efforts to build a virtualised web service platform for a Luxembourgish Internet Service Provider pre-cloud era. Olivier has a Bachelor of Science with a Major in Computer Science from the University of Applied Sciences Trier and a Masters Degree in Software Engineering from the National University of Singapore.

Born to Joy in the harsh Manchester Winter of 1977, Dominic has a career that has reached far and wide through Europe, US and Asia Pacific. An accomplished TED speaker, Dom is proud to work at Atlassian, where he’s spent 10 years helping teams unleash their potential in how they work. As their resident Work Futurist. Dom is Atlassians in house “Team Doctor” helping distributed teams at Atlassian scale by being ruthlessly efficient and effective. He also spends over half his time helping our customers navigate transformation, agility, leadership, and the future of work. Dom has a deep passion for elite human performance, highly effective distributed teams, and building thriving businesses. A keen traveller, Dom has traversed over 53 countries so far, but after 20 years on these shores, he calls Australia home.

Tom serves as an AWS Enterprise Strategist helping and coaching executive customers with their transformation and innovation strategies and actions. From 2020-2023, he created and built the worldwide Chief Technologist team for AWS Public Sector, responsible for identifying emerging technology trends, helping solve complex technical problems at scale, and advising public sector executive CTOs and AWS leaders. Soderstrom served as the IT Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from 2006-2020, where he helped define, support, and implement innovative Space missions, emerging IT trends, and mentor the next generation of IT and Space explorers.

Christopher stands at the helm as the Co-founder and Managing Director of exci, a company deeply rooted in early fire detection through the lens of AI. His commitment extends beyond corporate boundaries; it's a passionate drive to mitigate the impact of climate change. A volunteer firefighter since his early twenties, Christopher's dedication to community service is evident. With a rich tapestry of over three decades in international business, Christopher has navigated the senior management landscape. In the realm of exci, authenticity is not just a value; it's the essence that fuels Christopher's journey toward a safer, more resilient world.

Kate is the Global Head of Industrial Transition and Clean Fuels in Macquarie Asset Management’s specialist Green Investments team. In her role, she oversees the deployment of capital globally and management of investments to accelerate the decarbonisation of traditional industries, sitting on the board of portfolio companies with projects underway in a number of markets.Kate also leads the development of MAM Green Investments’ strategy beyond traditional renewable energy through products such as renewable hydrogen, green ammonia, sustainable aviation fuel and technologies such as carbon capture and storage. She also undertakes a variety of governance and leadership functions across Macquarie Group, including as the Chair of the Macquarie Group Climate Solutions Taskforce, a cross divisional group of leaders aimed at fostering global collaboration in the development of strategy, products and client solutions to accelerate the energy transition and decarbonisation.Kate is a Member of the Australian Clean Energy Regulator Board which oversees the body responsible for measuring, managing, reducing or offsetting Australia's carbon emissions.