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Gus BalbontinInvestor, Advisor and Adventurer
Born and bred in wild Patagonia, Gus never allowed his small town and humble beginnings get in the way of his big dreams. A healthy disrespect for authority and a severe case of FOMO (fear of missing out) landed him in Australia at the Young age of 17. |
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Dr Catriona WallaceFounder of Responsible Metaverse Alliance
Catriona is an expert in the field of Artificial Intelligence and the Metaverse and is an Adjunct Professor, keynote speaker and Founder of the Responsible Metaverse Alliance. Catriona is also the co-author of the book Checkmate Humanity: the how and why of Responsible AI. |
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Robert BrittainExpert Consultant in Advertising and Media Efficiency.
Robert Brittain is an Independent marketing consultant and strategic advisor to CMOs. Focused on enabling enterprise-wise marketing effectiveness capability. UA-published writer and speaker in his field, Robert is co-author of the “Advertising Effectiveness Rules” series of reports from the ACA Effectiveness Database with the globally renowned Peter Field. These include “Winning or Losing in a Recession”, “To ESOV and Beyond” and “Attention and Effectiveness”. Prior to becoming an independent marketing consultant Robert spent 20 years in client-side commercial roles including leading Marketing Effectiveness at ANZ Bank Banking Group and Marketing Analytics at Mondelez International across the Asia-Pacific region. |
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Sarla FernandoDirector of Regulatory & Advocacy - ADMA.
Sarla is a globally experienced, digitally-grounded professional passionate about using her legal and commercial skillset to help businesses navigate the sometimes complex world of data governance and Privacy. Sarla is also proficient in developing Digital Marketing strategies, Data compliance frameworks and audience growth strategies for large multi-divisional/ multi-national businesses. With industry experience obtained through a career spanning Privacy, Digital Media, Television, Publishing, Events, Film, Ticketing, Data, Social Media, Sales, FMCG, Education, Hospitality, Marketing and Advertising, Sarla brings a unique perspective to regulatory and advocacy advisory. Sarla has also provided legal, governance, marketing and branding advisory for large-scale projects that cross jurisdictions for businesses in Australia, NZ, Germany, UK, USA, HK and Sri Lanka. |
Balki Raman is an accomplished technology leader with over 14 years of experience specializing in digital transformation, solution architecture, and project management across industries such as e-commerce, telecom, retail, pharma, and banking. Currently serving as Chief Technology Officer at Vinomofo, Sydney, Balki spearheads large-scale digital transformations, leveraging advanced cloud-based architectures and fostering cross-functional collaboration.
Throughout his career, Balki has successfully led multiple high-impact projects. At Vinomofo, he drove the transformation of their e-commerce storefronts. Prior to this, at Scentre Group, he established their GCP Data Engineering Practice, embedding solutions like Cloud Dataflow and DBT, while improving their engineering discipline.
Balki’s expertise extends to building and managing high-performing teams. At The Big Red Group, he led their ecommerce transformation from their in-house platform to Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
His technical acumen spans platform engineering, real-time data architecture (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ), and cloud solutions (AWS, GCP), with a hands-on approach to balancing strategic and tactical solutions. Balki is also a proactive advocate for cost optimization, asynchronous work models, and employee-first leadership.
Driven by a belief in software as both science and art, Balki continues to deliver scalable, resilient, and cost-efficient technology solutions while fostering a collaborative and empathetic work culture.