The people behind the programme.

Annie Liao is the founder and CEO of Build Club, the company behind Solaris, an AI adoption platform helping enterprises become AI-native. What started as a global community of 70,000+ AI builders across 60+ cities has evolved into a platform for enterprise AI transformation, combining diagnostics, upskilling, champion programs and ROI tracking. Annie was named in Forbes Australia 30 Under 30 for her work making AI more accessible.

Bridget has extensive experience in marketing, advertising and tech to drive growth for major businesses. She is passionate about leveraging technology to achieve better outcomes, and simplifying the complex in brand science, data, tech, team building and life.

Dave King is co-founder of Radical Intelligence, an AI-native transformation company that builds radical AI capability inside organisations across Australia and APAC. He has been building AI products and systems since 2017, working across creative industries, legal, finance, property and more. Prior to Radical Intelligence, Dave founded The Royals, an independent creative agency with clients including Spotify, Qantas, Mercedes-Benz and AustralianSuper. He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Deakin University and has spoken at TEDx, SXSW and Vivid Sydney and others.

Jeremy Somers is the founder of Not Content, an AI creative agency working at the frontier of what AI makes possible in brand and creative work. Before that, he founded We Are Handsome, the cult Australian fashion label that pioneered digital-first fashion globally, and spent years as a creative at agencies. Jeremy brings a rare combination of founder instinct, creative craft and first-hand experience building with AI tools — making him one of the most practical and provocative voices on what AI actually means for creative work.

Joana Barros is a senior marketing executive who has been building brands and driving commercial outcomes across listed and high-growth digital-first businesses for more than two decades.

She has held global and regional leadership roles in e-commerce, travel tech and consumer lifestyle spanning Temple & Webster, Expedia, Orbitz Worldwide and TouchNote. Joana has built a reputation for developing modern marketing systems that integrate brand and growth, powered by creativity and marketing science. Most recently as Chief Marketing Officer at Temple & Webster, she led marketing through the company’s growth into the ASX200.

Joana brings an operator’s perspective on how AI is reshaping marketing drawn from leading brands and digital businesses through transformation and scale.

Karen Powell is a commercial and operational leader who partners with founders of tech, SaaS and creative services businesses to turn complexity into investable growth. Over 20+ years she has helped scale B2B and media‑adjacent companies across APAC, integrating acquisitions, rebuilding revenue engines and preparing businesses for capital events. She founded Omnipresence, a GTM and Sales AI advisory, and previously built and exited an AI‑enabled sales platform developed in collaboration with major cloud ecosystems. Karen is also a cotutelle PhD candidate researching AI‑mediated B2B buying and how AI reshapes the relationships between agencies, platforms, publishers and brands. She spoke at humAIn 2024 on trust, deepfakes and “AI as media’s extinction‑level event”, and now serves on the humAIn Advisory Panel.

Springboards helps keep creative people in the creative equation by using AI to spark ideas, not replace them. Its proprietary model, Flint, is the worlds only divergence model and designed to push AI beyond predictable outputs into more original, unexpected thinking. With 15+ years across advertising, media, and marketing, Pip is focused on building tools that keep people at the centre of the creative process.

Tea Uglow is a Peabody-winning creative director & brand strategist, a non-executive director, and CMO who spent 18 years building Google’s Creative Lab working with global brands and orgs. She currently mentors creatives online & consults for clients, agencies, cultural orgs and creative leaders on AI innovation and strategy and how to bring their workforce with them on that journey.