Angela Nash, General Manager, Data, AA Insurance (recent past CIO NZ Rugby) CIO of the Year 2023
Angela has recently joined AA Insurance after several years at NZ Rugby as CIO. Angela is a seasoned career IT professional with broad experience in both the public and private sector, with companies such as IBM, Datacom, Spark & REANNZ. Angela was recently awarded CIO of the Year 2023.
Steve Wiggins, Chief Executive Officer, Payments NZ
Steve has a strong track record of technology innovation and is driving transformation to ensure a collaborative, innovative and open payments network, working closely with stakeholders and the wider payments eco-system to make the industry future fit, enabling the trusted transfer of value.
Roger Jones, Chief Technology Officer, Auckland Transport
Roger has led the implementation of a digital approach within Auckland Transport including the establishment of a customer-centric innovation hub for the organisation incorporating an integrated approach to digital, Intelligent Transport Systems, and traditional IT. Roger has seen the execution of several Safe Cities initiatives in Auckland, utilising the latest CCTV and analytics technology.
James Bergin, Executive General Manager, Technology Strategy & Integration at Xero
James uses his significant experience in enterprise architecture, software engineering, technical strategy, innovation management and leading high-performing teams to help small businesses thrive. Combining his deep industry and technical expertise with the ability to motivate the team around him James has a strong track record of transforming business models for a digital future.
Nicholas Fourie, Chief Information Officer, Fisher and Paykel, Healthcare
Nicholas has been with Fisher & Paykel Healthcare since 2007, and in that time has held various systems engineering and IT management roles. Prior to joining Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, he worked for the South African division of BHP Billiton. Nicholas holds a Diploma in Computer Engineering from Damelin School of Information Technology in South Africa.
Jan Sheppard, Chief Data & Analytics Officer, ESR, Science for Communities
Jan Sheppard is the Chief Data and Analytics Officer for ESR – Science for Communities. She has taken organisations on the journey they need to go on to realise their goals, for example implementing a start-up structure within an organisation to embed a new way of working and change mind sets. She has also enabled systems to evolve into ecosystems through sharing data and analytics with futurists and influencers who shape the system as well as those who make the system work.
Fiona Hewitt, Deputy CEO, Stats NZ
With a career spanning over 20 years in senior management, consulting and executive roles working for and with a variety of high-profile New Zealand organisations, she has honed her skills in strategy, business performance, transformation, customer and people experience, supporting her passion in enabling high performance cultures and environments for a fast moving and competitive marketplace.
Neville Richardson, Chief Information Officer, Gallagher
Named one of New Zealand’s top 50 CIO’s in 2021, Neville operates as a business leader, technology evangelist and change agent with over 25 years Information Systems and business experience. In his current role as CIO, he oversees the Global IS function of one of New Zealand’s most customer centric and innovative technology businesses. By leveraging world class governance and innovative business delivery techniques, he actively sets technology strategy supporting the company’s growth objectives and driving continuous improvement across the entire organisation.
Matt Haigh, Head of AI & Machine Learning, Westpac
Matt leads a dynamic team that investigates how novel technologies can build amazing experiences for Westpac customers. Among key focuses is the application of Machine Learning (ML) and understanding the working of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques.
He is passionate about future-ready innovations that impact strategic business outcomes and draws on his past extensive in open data, application programming interfaces (APIs) and managing innovation to plan, lead and execute projects that challenge established norms.
Madeline Newman, Executive Director, AI Forum
Madeline joined the AI Forum as Executive Director in 2022 and is using her extensive experience in strategy and transformational change to help people to see the potential that innovative technologies can bring. Through her work with the AI Forum Madeline is expanding the AI community in New Zealand.
Paul Duignan, Work & Social Strategist
Paul is often called up on for his expert advice on how busy people can make sense of what is happening in advancements in technology. As AI impacts our society Paul helps organisations plan and strategize to use new tools for maximum impact. Paul has provided his expert advice to the NZ Institute of Company Directors and has worked with government on how to digitize interactions with citizens. He regularly engages with Boards and senior leaders on AI strategies.
Christopher Mende, Head of Technology, Google Cloud New Zealand
Christopher leads a team of technologists in New Zealand focused on solving industry and customer challenges using Cloud capabilities. He’s closely involved with local businesses creating a pathway for their journey to Cloud and AI.
A facilitator in the Google Innovation Labs team, he works to bring concepts to life using a methodology heavily focused on customer empathy. His efforts involve joining the best of Google tech with market shaping concepts to move the needle on an organisation’s innovation journey.
He is also passionate about the beneficial application of AI in industry and New Zealand. He is a member of Google’s Principles Pioneers, a community of advisers who identify fairness, harms, and bias concerns in line with Google’s AI Principles, and an Executive Council Member for the New Zealand AI Forum.
Luka Topic, Director - Unstructured Data Solutions, ANZ, Dell Technologies
As a 19-year Dell Technologies veteran, Luka has worked in various roles across Core sales, BU sales and Channel Management in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Luka uses his deep experience to understand customer visions, goals and challenges. Currently leading the Dell Unstructured Data Solutions Team (UDS) across Australia and New Zealand, Luka’s focus is to support the customer base with Dell’s market leading data management, multi-cloud integration and cyber protection solutions across the file and object portfolio
Angela Fox, Senior Vice President & Managing Director ANZ, Dell Technologies
Angela joined Dell in 2006 and currently leads the strategy and direction of the business while maintaining a commitment to keeping customers at the core of what Dell Technologies does. Angela has held executive responsibilities across Australia, New Zealand and the Asia Pacific and Japan region. Drawing on her solutions and services experience, Angela helps customers achieve their goals and under her leadership, her team has delivered market leading results for large and medium sized organisations across private and public sectors. Angela has a passion for leadership and is a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion.
Ed Knott, VP Australia & New Zealand, DocuSign
Ed is the Area Vice President for ANZ at DocuSign. Ed leads all aspects of the Sales and GTM functions and is passionate about technology transformation and partnering with customers to deliver seamless digital experiences. Ed brings over 20 years of experience in technology and leadership to his current role at DocuSign. Prior to this Ed was Head of Sales at Google Cloud, a business he started back in 2014 and held multiple executive leadership roles at Oracle. Ed has been recognised for his customer focus and is an advocate for equality in the workplace, having recently judged the Gender Equality Awards.
Kallol Dutta, Group Lead for Data and Automation, Spark Business Group
As the Spark Group Data and Automation Leader at Spark New Zealand, Kallol leads the strategy, governance, and enterprise adoption of data, AI, ERP, and automation capabilities across the group. With over 20 years of experience in leading consulting, IT, digital, and data teams, Kallol has a proven track record of developing and implementing IT and digital strategies that generate commercial and customer value, while evolving Spark into a data-driven organisation.
Kallol’s focus is delivering data-driven initiatives that use AI responsibly across the Enterprise to deliver the “data driven everywhere” strategy of Spark. Kallol’s mission is to enable digital innovation and transformation through data and automation, and to empower his team, partners, and customers to achieve their goals
Helius Guimaraes, Chief Digital Officer, Fonterra
Helius’ career began in a start-up company driving digital transformation using Computer Aided Design. After graduating as a geologist, he implemented technologies for a state government in Brazil.
With data, digital and transformation roles across South America, South Africa, the UK, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, Helius has broad experience with AI techniques and over the years has delivered tangible business value through the use of AI technologies, including supervised and unsupervised learning, machine learning, natural language processing and more recently, is passionate the opportunities of leveraging generative AI.
He joined Fonterra as Chief Data Officer in 2022.
Michelle Hannan-Brown, Senior Executive, Data & Analytics, Air New Zealand
Michelle has a history of leading projects that straddle the divide between technology and business departments within New Zealand organisations and was involved in one of New Zealands first deployments of Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Michelle has helped build the RPA capability within a range of organisations and she currently leads the RPA Centre of Excellence for Air New Zealand.
Kari Jones, Chief Data Officer, Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand (commencing role in coming weeks)
Kari has led some of the largest data and analytics practices in New Zealand. A highly driven outcome-oriented strategist and leader who is committed to improving the performance of New Zealand organisations through the increased adoption and application of emerging technology, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence. A passion for advanced technology matched with experience in business strategy enables Kari to deliver outcomes in challenging environments to deliver on big goals. Kari is taking up her next challenge with Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand in the coming weeks.
Tiffany Bloomquist, Country Manager, Amazon Web Services
Tiffany is an experienced leader focused on driving customer business outcomes, transformation, innovative strategy and leveraging partnerships to achieve growth.
With a career spanning Europe, Asia and the US, Tiffany has been responsible for deployments of internal business applications, design and launch of start-up organizations and programs, sales strategy and business development, orchestration of worldwide and time zone level strategy and leadership of large people organizations. Currently the country manager for AWS in New Zealand, Tiffany leads the commercial sales team across large enterprise, Software as a Service providers, small to medium businesses and start-ups. Over the last 8 years AWS has been helping New Zealand organizations to innovate, succeed, and grow globally.
Summer Collins, Head of Data & Growth capability, One NZ
Summer has dedicated her career to better understanding what customers want and need. As One New Zealand’s Head of Data & Growth Capability, she leads a multi-discipline team that are laser focused on enhancing customer experience and driving commercial success, by applying the latest thinking in Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to real life strategies and scenarios.Summer brings a wealth of senior leadership experience to her role, having previously driven product, customer, and data teams at Spark, BNZ, Vodafone Group and Orange, as well as launching the now widely used Status Points and Seats to Suit customer innovations at Air New Zealand.A life-long learner, Summer has recently returned from University of Oxford where she has achieved an Executive Diploma in Artificial Intelligence for Business from their Said Business School, and alongside her team of data scientists, marketing experts and data engineers, is committed to creating a culture of excellence in this growing field.
Alistair Vickers, Chief Information Officer, Horizon Energy Group
Alistair has over 20 years’ global experience working in IT, including roles as CIO for Horizon Energy Group, Tū Ora Compass Health, MetService, and Wellington Water, IT Manager for Plunket, CTO for Parliamentary Service, and Technology Manager, Metering for Vector.
A champion of using innovative technology to drive new opportunities for service improvement and benefits realization for organizations and their customers, he was an early champion for and adopter of Cloud Computing, Smart Metering, and the Internet of Things in New Zealand.
Most recently, in his role at Tū Ora, Alistair has made the Top 50 CIO list for the last 2 years and in November was recognised as CIO of the Year for 2022.