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.
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.
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.
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-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
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.
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.