Speaker Profiles

Desley Renton is the Manager of the Community Engagement Program for a City of Melbourne. She brings to this exciting and challenging role a history of working with Local Government and a belief in its potential to lead by example.

Desley's job is to build the capacity and readiness of the organisation to engage its communities as an integral part of the decision making process. Des is well travelled and has had the privilege of experiencing diverse communities and witnessing their engagement practices.

Justin is responsible for the continued implementation of Ready for Tomorrow – A Blueprint for Regional and Rural Victoria, the Victorian Government's $631 million action plan to make Provincial Victoria the best place to live, work, invest and raise a family.

Prior to his appointment at RDV, Justin held senior positions with key metropolitan and regional councils, including as CEO of the City of Yarra and the Rural City of Wangaratta.

Rachel Paterson is the Community Engagement Officer at City of Playford in Adelaide. Previous to her current role, Rachel spent several years as a professional theatre director, followed by roles in community planning and community development. Rachel particularly excels with the challenge of marrying creative processes with policy planning and service implementation.

Dr Craig Cormick is the Manager of Public Awareness and Community Engagement for the Department of Innovation's nanotechnology and biotechnology programs. He is widely published on drivers of public attitudes towards new technologies and using public attitude research to inform strategy development. He has represented Australia at APEC and OECD workshops on public engagement on new technologies.

Piers has participated in the extraordinary growth of the Internet as a communication medium since the mid 90's, holding leadership positions with digital agencies in the United Kingdom and Australia, and recognised by Business Age as one of the Top 50 Entrepreneurs to have made the most significant contribution to the Internet, innovation and wealth creation.

Piers is currently the Managing Director of Community Engine (www.communityengine.com) a position he has held since September 2009. Community Engine provides social media, membership management & community engagement technology, products and services to all types of organisations including business, government and the not-for-profit sectors. Community Engine's social networking technology directly connects businesses to their customers, associations to their members, governments to their citizens, management to their staff, politicians to their constituents and people to their communities.

Mia is the Assistant Secretary for the Digital Economy branch at theDepartment of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. Her role involves the provision of high level policy advice to the Minister, Secretary and senior executive on a range of issues relating to the long-term direction of the Digital Economy. Mia joined the Department shortly upon her return to Australia from 5 years working in Silicon Valley. Her work in Silicon Valley included working at Google as Product Counsel for YouTube and several years as General Counsel for Creative Commons, a non-profit dedicated to enabling the flexible and authorised use of online material.

Kerryn Simmons has twenty years' experience in the public sector in a range of policy, communications, and program management roles. Kerryn currently manages primary prevention and social marketing programs aimed at reducing violence against women, including The Line campaign.

Wendy Russell currently works in the Enabling Technologies – Public Awareness and Community Engagement section of the Commonwealth Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research. Previously she was a senior lecturer at the University of Wollongong, where she researched social aspects of biotechnology, transdisciplinary inquiry, and technology assessment.

Emma Lawson is Executive Director of South Australia's Strategic Plan. She is currently overseeing a significant a broad ranging community engagement processes for the update of the Plan, involving a significant online engagement strategy and 60 face to face consultation sessions involving diverse communities across the state, culminating in a community Summit. Prior to this role Emma headed up a central policy team for three years which was focused on working across government in the development of skills, education and housing policy.

Lynne comes to this new role with a background as a policy analyst and manager who has worked as a consultant and community leader and been an adviser to government at local, state and national levels over the past two and a half decades. Lynne has worked in State and Local government and in the not for profit community sector.

Dare has lived and worked in Canada, Sweden, UK and Australia. For most of the past 25 years, Dare has worked in community development, public policy and community engagement in the government and non-government agencies. Dare holds a Masters in Primary Health Care specialising in public policy and social determinants of health, as well as a post graduate certificate in Community Engagement, Deliberation and Decision making. Prior to specialising in community renewal projects, Dare worked in strategic policy development related to homelessness, and housing systems. Dare is passionate about engaging communities to participate in the decisions that will most affect them.

Kathy joined the City of Melbourne as Chief Executive Officer in April 2008 bringing with her over 20 years' experience in leading service organisations. As CEO, Kathy heads up an organisation responsible for the workings of a dynamic and cosmopolitan 24-hour city that consistently rates top or near top of international surveys on liveability and well-being. Since taking up the position, Kathy has focused on improving the City of Melbourne's operational efficiencies through initiating Toyota's famous "lean" approach to process design and customer satisfaction, and a comprehensive community engagement approach to policy development. Kathy has also launched COM Green, a program of staff-lead sustainability initiatives, and the Future Melbourne Community Plan which saw 15,000 individuals contribute to the vision for Melbourne as a bold, inspirational and sustainable city by 2020.

After over 16 years working in local government, Redland City Council, and Brisbane City Council, Roberta is more convinced than ever that local government can have a huge influence on people's lives, and that a community plan is a positive way of guiding local governments in their role by accurately reflecting the voices of the community. Roberta Bonnin is Manager of the Community and Social Planning Group with Redland City Council, covering social policy and infrastructure, community health, wellbeing, culture, sport and recreation. Given the job of developing a new Redlands community plan, Roberta drew together the multiple intelligences of a cross Council team with experience in strategic planning, creative cultural development, community engagement, finance, information technology and community development. With strong community engagement throughout its development, Redlands 2030 achieved a broad, rich, and deep exploration of Redlands values and visions Redlands 2030 now guides Council's long term planning processes and ongoing planning by other levels of government and the community.

Jodie represents Travellers Aid on the Federal Government's Victoria State Consultative Committee, providing strategic advice on emergency relief issues, is the President of the of the newly incorporated organisation ER (Emergency Relief) Victoria. Jodie was recently appointed to the Victorian Council on Social Service Board, and chairs the Community Services Futures Task Group. Travellers Aid is actively engaged in the transport and tourism sector, to reduce transport disadvantage to enable the community to participate fully in all aspects of civic and private life according to their choices and needs and to influence and improve access, affordability and availability of transport.

Mike Salvaris is Adjunct Professor, Applied Human Rights and Community Wellbeing Research, in the School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. He is also a member of the interim national committee of the Australian National Development Index project and a members of the steering committee for Community Indicators Victoria.

Formerly a community lawyer and political adviser, he has had extensive experience over 30 years in the measurement of progress and wellbeing; democracy and human rights; community engagement and development; and strategic public policy.

Aaron has extensive experience in the design, development and operation of web applications and is the Industry lead for Objective for Community Engagement and Stakeholder Management. With 20 years experience in eCommerce, web media, CRM and Web 2.0, Aaron is a passionate advocate of using web technology to deliver superior outcomes for organisations, the public and government.

In previous lives, Aaron has been a principal consultant, assisting organisations in devising technology and solution strategies to solve business challenges and deliver great outcomes for customers.

Peters specialises in identifying and delivering marketing and web technology solutions to online community engagement.

Peter's career in web and multimedia spans over fifteen years; his experience in a wide variety of roles including animator, developer, running his own engagement-oriented business, and several years at Pearson Education, managing the UK Schools software publishing program, has imbued Peter with a great breadth and depth of real-world experience.

Peter provides a unique perspective from which to help formulate strategies appropriate to broad spectrum engagement with a wide variety of target audiences and groups.

For the past decade, Bob has been engaged in:

• Analysing consumer spending and trends,
• Identifying the drivers underpinning consumer and business behaviour and expenditure,
• Discovering and defining the parameters of optimal locations
• Finding those sites that meet the criteria
• Understanding regional economies and their relationship to retail and commercial property.

Drawing on his broad business and academic background, Bob has prepared economic and market analyses for projects in all states and territories in Australia as well as New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China and the United States. He has advised clients such as David Jones, Coca-Cola, Carnival Cruises, Stockland, AMP, Lend Lease, Caltex, GPT, Borders Books, McDonalds, Toys R Us and Woolworths.

In the public sphere, Bob has been a contributor to the Australian Financial Review and The Australian newspapers. He has presented papers to the annual Conference of Economists and an international seminar on Business Demography. He has made presentations to Property Council forums in Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia as well as to investors in conferences organised by UBS, Citibank, Commonwealth Bank and Morgan Stanley.