These are our Keynote Speakers for 2023

AmnaKarra-Hassan

Amna Karra-Hassan

Founder and President of the Auburn Giants Australian Football club

Imagine starting an AFL team with no funding, no coach and no experience. It takes a strong woman who’s not afraid to break all the rules to tackle a task this insurmountable. It takes Amna Karra-Hassan.
The Founder and President of the Auburn Giants Australian Football Club, Amna has pioneered programs for women of minority communities in Western Sydney. As a woman and a Muslim, her road to greatness wasn’t an easy one. But Amna derives her strength from adversity and uses her influence to change the conversation on intersectionality, inclusion and gender parity.
An active leader in the community, she’s also worked for the Australian Federal Police and previously served on numerous government boards. Amna’s presentation style is candid and cheeky - a true inspiration with a wicked sense of humour. She pulls no punches and says it like it is and will engage you at every level, opening your eyes to what can be done when everyone says that it can’t.

 

JessHatzis

 

Jess Hatzis

CMO/Co-Founder Frank Body and Founder of Willow & Blake

Jess Hatzis is the co-founder and CEO of Willow & Blake, an agency that specialises in creating and building brands from scratch.
She is also the co-founder and CMO of the iconic and disruptive global skincare brand, frank body.
 Willow & Blake has played a pivotal role in building some of the world’s best-known start-ups and direct-to-consumer brands and works in a studio capacity with some of the world’s best-known organisations.
 Frank body was born three years later as an experiment to see what could be achieved when they retained full end-to-end control of a brand, enabling them to build a strong and cohesive experience for consumers with a strong focus on language; knowing too well the capacity words and tone have to make or break a brand. The rest as they say is history; frank body now has offices throughout the world and a recent valuation of over $100m.
 Jess is passionate about supporting women in the workplace and proudly sits at the helm of two businesses whose board of directors consists of a minimum 50% female seats. This, to Jess, is crucial to leading a strong, female-led workforce and the next generation of women in leadership.

mark-matthews-bw

 

Mark Mathews

Award Winning Speaker

As a world class big wave surfer, Red Bull Athlete and Surf Contest Director Mark Mathews has become obsessed with the relationship between personal growth, high performance and fulfilment.
Winner of an unprecedented 3 back to back Oakley Big Wave Awards, Mark has cemented himself as one of the best big wave surfers in the world.
As a highly sought after international speaker, Mathews’ surfer chill vibe and magnetic charisma, has graced the stages of leading companies worldwide.
From Google, Sony, Intel, to MasterCard, he instantly captures audiences with his epic tales and spectacular big wave surf vision.
His compelling story offers game changing tips to adapt to stress, harness resilience and perform when it counts. He has deconstructed, fine-tuned, and personalised emotional resilience techniques to successfully strengthen ones mindset and sustain long term performance.

 

Pure Play Marketplace Panel

nimrod kalman lazar emmagarland

Nimrod Ganon
Co-Founder at KG Electronic

Kalman Polak
CEO at MYSALE Group

Lazar Monin
Director of Marketplace at Kogan.com

Emma Garland
Director at The Block Shop

 




Gus Balbontin


Investor-Advisor-Adventurer
Gus Balbontin

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.

By the age of 22, he had dropped out of uni, hitchhiked South America, set up his first business, and landed his dream job at Lonely Planet. Fast forward a few years and he was leading the company globally working with companies such as Google X, Nokia, and Amazon on the latest technology, creative cultures, and high-performing teams. 

Over the last 3 years, Gus has presented around the world. From audiences of 10 to that of 10,000, the simplicity of his message and his counterintuitive way of looking at the world will motivate you to do things differently.

He is involved in the start-up scene as a founder, investor, and advisor and is on the board of Startup Victoria and Director of Above All Human. He currently runs a small Creative Studio and Innovation agency called Roshambo, is the co-founder and partner at Atessa, and is the Entrepreneur in Residence and Executive Director of VU Innovations at Victoria University which keeps him close to large public corporate challenges as well as small business puzzles.