The full lineup.
Every speaker taking the humAIn stage — marketers, builders, founders, leaders, creatives and critics. More to be announced.
Arum Nixon
Chapter Lead, Ad Net Zero Australia
Arum leads Ad Net Zero in Australia, a global sustainability program to help the advertising industry decarbonise operations and accurately promote more sustainable products, services and behaviours. Prior to this, Arum spent over 20 years in media agencies, across investment, client leadership, strategy and planning roles.
Ashlea Vallance
Founder, Screen Swap by The Screenery
Ashlea Vallance is a marketing director and creative strategist with two decades of experience across tech, consumer electronics, and the creative industries. A recent graduate of an AI product management certification, she founded Screen Swap as a direct response to one of the defining tensions of our time: as AI reshapes what creativity means, the things only humans can make, by hand, imperfectly, together, matter more than ever. At humAIn, she invites participants to swap their digital screen for a printmaking screen and make something real with their hands.
Ben Cooper
Founder, Brainstrust
Ben Cooper is an innovation and creative leader who has spent his career exploring what happens when technology changes the rules. He is the founder of Brainstrust, where he helps organisations turn emerging technology into practical advantage, and Last Friday, a community bringing together people working at the edges of creativity, technology and entrepreneurship. Previously, Ben led AI Products at R/GA and innovation at M&C Saatchi, creating new products, ventures and capabilities for organisations including Uber, Lexus, Google, NRMA and Optus. His work includes the Cannes Lions Titanium-winning Clever Buoy and NRMA Fireblanket, and has been recognised by D&AD, Cannes Lions and the Australian Financial Review. Ben also leads research into AI and creativity with D&AD, examining how artificial intelligence is changing creative work, judgement and leadership - and what humans need to protect as the technology gets better. His current work asks a simple question: as AI removes friction from making things, where does human judgement get built?
Bridget Cleary
Co-founder and CEO, BRX
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.
Celia Harding
Founder, LEOPRD
Celia Harding is the Founder of LEOPRD, the world's first agency helping brands understand and influence how they show up in AI - building reputation, driving recommendation and unlocking growth. Launching in April 2025, LEOPRD works with brands locally and internationally, including Amazon, TUI, ODEON Cinemas Group, and National Dental Care. With 20 years of PR and communications experience, Celia is known for her sharp cultural instincts and commercial focus. She has launched Series A funding rounds, promoted global music collaborations, produced record-breaking live streams, and has led social and political movements that shaped public conversation. Previously, Celia founded PR Shed, a subscription PR platform that democratised publicity for startups and scaleups. Through LEOPRD, she helps brands be the answer - found, featured, and talked about by both humans and machines. LEOPRD is Provoke Media's Best New Agency Asia-Pacific 2026, and Celia is Mumbrella's PR Professional of the Year and B&T's Women Leading Tech Winner 2026.
Hilary Badger
Executive Creative Director, Leo Australia
Hilary is an AWARD committee member and was a judge and mentor on the AWARD Lab GenAI sprint in 2026. She is ECD at Leo in Melbourne, with 20 years’ experience as a writer and creative leader. Outside of advertising, Hilary is a best-selling children’s author and Substack writer. Her best-known series, Zac Power, will be released as an animated feature in 2027.
James Caldwell
Regional GTM Director, ByteDance
With nearly 20 years of experience shaping the tech landscape, James is a strategic leader driving regional commercial strategy for BytePlus at ByteDance. Armed with an MBA from Melbourne Business School, he specialises in bridging the gap between complex AI and go-to-market execution. James is passionate about helping organisations pioneer the responsible use of emerging technologies to deliver measurably better customer experiences.
Julia Vargiu
Director, Australia – SI Global · Founder & MD – New Business Methodology
Julia Vargiu is Director, Australia at SI Global and Founder & MD of New Business Methodology. She helps agency and tech leaders scale, grow and maximise value, ensuring they are fit for scale and fit for sale. Born in Silicon Valley, sharpened in New York, now a proud Sydneysider, Julia brings 25 years’ experience advising creative, marketing and tech businesses across Australia, APAC and the US on strategic growth and exit readiness.
Kent Boswell
Co-Founder, Head of Production, AiCandy
With over 20 years across advertising, television, and film, Kent has led high-end productions at the intersection of storytelling and craft, partnering with leading global agencies to deliver award-winning work across multiple platforms. His career spans three continents and a wide range of formats, consistently exploring new ways to bring ambitious ideas to life. He is now focused on the future of AI film production, helping define a new model of filmmaking where emerging tools make it possible to produce ideas that were previously impossible to make, while maintaining the highest standards of cinematic craft. He has also served on international award juries including Cannes Lions, London International Awards, Effie Awards, Adfest, The Webby's, New York Festivals, and Spikes Asia, where he was Jury President.
Lauren Joyce
Founder, Gun For Hire
Lauren Joyce is the founder of Gun For Hire, an executive growth consultancy that primarily helps CEOs and CMOs at consumer brands operate like media companies. She spent two decades leading media and creative agencies, most recently as Chief Audience & Content Officer at ARN, where she ran content strategy, podcasting and audience growth across the network's national portfolio. At humAIn, Lauren presents AdLab on behalf of Abe's Audio: and shows how AI is transforming commercial audio production without losing the creative talent behind it.
Lou Compagnone
Director of AI, Datacom
Lou Compagnone is the Director of AI at Datacom, where she leads the company's internal AI transformation and helps enterprises move from just adopting AI tools to adapting the way they operate and deliver value. She combines experience in emerging technology, strategy, service design, and futures thinking to help organisations create, shape, and prepare for their AI-driven future. For the past two decades, Lou has worked in New Zealand, Australia and the UK to solve a diverse range of challenges – from helping citizens access better services to helping singles find their someone. With a deep commitment to using AI for good, she focuses on creating meaningful solutions that solve genuine problems, elevate experiences, and deliver tangible value for both businesses and the people they serve.
Lucinda Barlow
Head of International Marketing, Uber
Lucinda leads Uber's International Marketing team, overseeing over 60 countries across APAC, EMEA, and LATAM. She drives cross-market synergy while strengthening Uber's local presence — scaling go-to-market strategies, elevating global marketing capabilities, and fostering bold creativity and innovation. Prior to this, she was Head of Marketing APAC. Under her leadership, Uber has launched award-winning campaigns, including Tonight I'll Be Eating, Get Almost Almost Anything, and When You've Done Enough. Before Uber, Lucinda led global consumer and product marketing for YouTube in California, helping grow its user base to two billion daily users. She built YouTube's product marketing function, launched its ad-supported original content, and scaled YouTube's Culture & Trends operation worldwide. Prior to that, she spent seven years leading Google's marketing and communications in Australia and NZ, shaping the brand, supporting businesses online, and spearheading key partnerships. With 25+ years of experience across tech, media, internet, and mobile across APAC, Lucinda has held leadership roles at Symbian, where she led global marketing and built the company's first China office. She has also worked in two internet startups and began her career as a mission-critical systems engineer at BHP. Lucinda holds first-class honours degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and an MBA from INSEAD. She now lives in Bronte Beach, Sydney, with her husband and three children.
Mandie van der Merwe
Chief Creative Officer, Saatchi & Saatchi
Mandie brings over 25 years of creative experience. She has transformed brands across three continents with the belief that business and social problems can be solved with great ideas that are executed beautifully. It is this philosophy that has led to her work being recognised over 300 times at the most prestigious local and international award shows.
Marcus Tesoriero
Co-Founder, Head of Creative, AiCandy
Marcus is an award-winning creative leader with extensive experience building brands at some of the world's leading integrated agencies, including Ogilvy, DDB and Dentsu Creative. Beyond filmmaking, his career has spanned a range of specialised marketing disciplines, giving him deep expertise across mobile, social, data, PR, health, commercial architecture and AI. His work has been recognised at every major creative and effectiveness award show globally, including D&AD, One Show, Clio, LIA, the Effies, London IPA for Effectiveness, Spikes and Cannes Lions. As Co-Founder of AiCandy, Marcus now combines creative excellence and craft with commercially-driven thinking to push the frontier of AI filmmaking, making impossible ideas possible for brands of every size.
Marie Conley
Executive Strategy Director, APAC, R/GA
As APAC Executive Director of Strategy at R/GA, Marie sets the direction that helps brands succeed in the age of AI, creating new ways of working for both the company and its clients. Marie has always worked across different strategic disciplines. Prior to joining R/GA, Marie worked at The Pharm, a global WPP shop that wasn't just multi-disciplinary, it was multi-agency. Creative from VML, PR from Ogilvy, tech from Wunderman Thompson and media from EssenceMediacom – all working as one agency for the global health and beauty brand, Walgreens Boots Alliance. Prior to that, Marie was Head of Strategy at TBWA London, where she helped build out the agency's Disruption approach, linking the data studio and design studio to create award-winning work across sport, fashion, technology and gaming. Marie has won both APG and Effie awards, because her ambition has always been strategy that actually works. Before her 20 years as a strategist, Marie started her career as a graphic designer, having graduated from Visual Communication at UTS before completing a Master of Commerce at the University of Sydney.
Marie Dowling
Founder, Gust PR
Marie Dowling is the founder of Gust PR, an AI PR platform for nimble marketing and modern creatives. After a decade in public affairs and PR, she noticed the PR industry kept on automating the wrong thing: more pitches, faster, to more journalists already drowning in slop... She became obsessed with how to use AI for good stories, attention and journalists' sake. Marie also hosts Friday Viibe, an AI community for marketers and comms pro to come experiment with AI. She's based in Sydney.
Marie-Céline Merret
Creative Director, MC&V
Marie-Céline Merret identified the commercial potential of AI in production early and has spent the past two years proving it under real agency conditions. Her career spans experiential design and creative technology at Fake Love NYC (A New York Times Company), delivering global work for Google, Samsung, Lexus and 7Up, co-founding Monks ANZ, and leading AI-native production as Head of Creative Technology & AI at MADE THIS Clemenger BBDO. With a foundation in creative technology, digital production and experiential design, MC brings rare fluency across code and craft. At MC&V, MC leads creative direction and production, curating specialist AI artists globally to deliver emotionally resonant work that ships on time, on budget, and to brand and business objectives.
Matt Jones
humAIn MC · Founder, Think Story · Co-founder, Four Pillars Gin
Matt Jones is obsessed with both the transformative impact of technology and the strategic power of story. He’s a former political speechwriter turned brand strategist who co-founded and sold Australia’s leading spirits business, Four Pillars Gin. Today, Matt is a creative strategist, keynote speaker, writer, host of the podcast StoryWork and founder of the strategic advisory firm Think Story Experience. Matt is also the author of Lessons From Gin. You can follow all Matt’s writing, podcasting and work at matt-jones.com.au
Matt Plant
Head of Behavioural Science and Ai, Thinkerbell
Matt Plant is Thinkerbell's Head of Behavioural Science and Ai. Matt has brought the worlds of Behavioural Science (sociology, anthropology, neuroscience, psychology and behavioural economics) to national and international brands to solve a host of challenging human problems. Including: researching the values of the Australian Psyche, international behaviour change projects across airport operations, and positioning an organisation creating a new approach to scientific research. Matt's experience spans research, brand and comms strategy, CX strategy and behaviour change and now the world of Ai.
Neil Ackland
Founder, Lokol
Neil Ackland is a serial entrepreneur having founded multiple successful companies, most notably Sound Alliance, inthemix and Junkee Media, one of Australia’s most awarded digital publishers, before its sale to ASX-listed oOh!media in 2017. Following the sale, he joined oOh!’s executive team as CMO and launched reo, its retail media arm. His career has been spent helping people discover the things they love, across media, creators, publishers and retail media. He co-founded Lokol in late 2025.
Dr Patrick Aouad
Founder & CEO, CU Health
Dr Patrick Aouad is an internationally published specialist neurologist and the founder and CEO of CU Health, Australia's leading health and wellbeing platform for employees. CU Health was developed to support the increasing demand on employees, and to protect organisations from the negative impact employee mental and physical health can have on culture, performance and engagement. CU Health was recently unveiled as Australia's and NZ's first complete health and wellbeing solution for businesses. Powered by technology, with humans at the centre, it is the "how" to a $200 billion economic problem in Australia alone. Patrick is passionate about improving health outcomes for people through human-centred technology, and is Australia's leading voice on workplace wellbeing and its economic impacts in an era of rapid technological and social change.
Pip Bingemann
Co-Founder, Springboards.ai
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.
Rhys Delios Callanan
Senior Creative, We The People
Rhys’ creative career technically started in primary school, drawing personalised characters for classmates and charging a gold coin a pop. Since then, his experience has stretched from traditional advertising campaigns and social-first work to emerging AI-led production, with a focus on sharp insights, strong ideas, thoughtful craft and finding new ways to bring them to life. His ideas have picked up recognition along the way, including AWARD GenAI Sprint, Cairns Crocodiles Hatchlings and TBWA Disrupt AI Film Festival.
Robin Forbes
Global CEO, R/GA
As the Global CEO, Robin partners with senior clients to help deliver growth and change. Robin is the catalyst for R/GA’s global business vision, working to ensure the agency continuously strives to deliver transformational work. Robin has been with R/GA since 2014. Prior to his current role, he served as the Global Chief Client Officer, the EVP Managing Director of R/GA’s Brand Design and Consulting practice, and the Managing Director of R/GA’s US Region. Prior to that, Robin was the Managing Director of R/GA New York, the agency’s largest office, where he was responsible for growth, operations, and new business development. Robin originally joined R/GA as an SVP, Group Managing Director, leading a multi-disciplinary team focused on building innovative work for clients like Verizon, Shopify, Jet.com, and Samsung. Before joining R/GA, Robin spent 13 years at Blast Radius, was a consultant at Arthur Andersen, and implemented a World Bank initiative in Chile to digitize schools and reform the national pedagogy. Robin is a graduate of the University of British Columbia where he earned his Bachelor of Commerce in international business and the Columbia University Business School Executive Education program.
Ross Colebatch
Executive Producer, Photoplay Photography
As an Executive Producer at Photoplay Photography, Ross works with photographers, filmmakers, agencies and brands to bring creative ideas to life across advertising, digital, television and live experiences. With a background spanning production, digital strategy, marketing and the arts, Ross specialises in turning ambitious creative concepts into practical, deliverable productions. His perspective bridges the gap between creative vision and real-world execution, making him uniquely placed to discuss what it takes to get great ideas over the line, on time, on budget, and without compromising the work.
Sam Turley
Invention Lead, Mindshare
For over 22 years, Sam has dedicated her media career to driving industry change and unlocking growth for the world’s leading brands through innovation across media, technology and culture. With experience spanning Europe and APAC, Sam leads Mindshare Australia’s National Invention and Inclusive Innovation division, where her work has achieved global recognition and earned her a place on the AdNews Top 10 Power List for Industry Changemakers. Sam represents WPP as a member of the Unstereotype Alliance.
Tara Iwamoto
Co-founder, Vibe Coding Lab
Tara Iwamoto is the co-founder of Vibe Coding Lab, a community that teaches women and underrepresented builders to make real things with AI, no coding experience required. At the last event, 30 women shipped working apps in a single afternoon, and the day scored 9.2 out of 10. She brings 12 years of operations and creative leadership to the work. She has led delivery across four APAC markets at Google, run a content studio at POPSUGAR Studios that she scaled from 20 people to over 100, and held senior roles at WPP and oOh!Media. She now runs her own operations consultancy. Her interest in vibe coding grew sharper when she noticed she was usually one of only two women in the room at these workshops. That made her mad enough to do something about it, and Vibe Coding Lab is what she built.
Tea Uglow
CMO and AI consultant
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.
Vinne Schifferstein
Strategy & Partnerships, MC&V
For over two decades, Vinne Schifferstein has built production companies balancing creative ambition with commercial reality. Trained in Marketing, Media Economics, and Law, she's led businesses across four countries from Publicis and Omnicom to startups. At Monks, she co-founded the ANZ operation and delivered global production for BMW across 29 markets. Her AI approach is business-focused: after seeing ChatGPT's client impact, she completed MIT's AI program and built production capabilities at MADE THIS Clemenger BBDO. A former marketer herself, she translates production complexity into business outcomes. At MC&V, Vinne leads strategy, partnerships, and delivery ensuring every project is commercially sound and operationally flawless.
Kate Westgate
Head of Marketing for Home Care, Unilever ANZ
Kate Westgate is Head of Marketing for Home Care at Unilever ANZ, leading brands including OMO, Surf, Comfort and Persil. With more than 12 years of experience at Unilever working across Beauty, Personal Care and Home Care, she has worked on iconic brands including Dove, Lynx, Vaseline, and TRESemme, driving growth through innovation, brand building, and strategic partnerships. Kate is passionate about developing people, building high-performing teams, and creating marketing that delivers meaningful consumer and business impact.