Speakers

We are excited to bring back our "Leading Minds" series; experts to educate, inspire and entertain. Our prestigious panel for 2016 includes Peter Switzer, Patria Jafferies and Justin Baird. You can find out more about these three incredibly interesting people below.

Peter Switzer

Peter is one of Australia’s leading business and financial commentators, with his own show on Sky TV. The Switzer Group has grown into three successful companies spanning media and publishing, financial services and business coaching. He’s a former lecturer of Economics at the University of NSW.

Along with his show Switzer on Sky TV, Peter is also:

• A weekly columnist for Yahoo! 7 Finance
• A regular contributor to The Australian newspaper
• Peter was also the former Host of Talking Business for the Qantas in-flight service, Radio Q
• Finance commentator on 2GB

Highly engaging and a master of breaking down complex trends into powerful insights, we know you will benefit greatly from Peter’s presentation.

Patria Jaffries

Founder and former CEO of Dome Coffees. She has served as a small business advisor to the Reserve Bank of Australia, is an associate fellow of the Australian Institute of Management and was the Chair of the Small Business Development Corporation.

Patria formed Dome Coffees in 1990 and in less than 10 years Dome grew to a multi-million dollar international importer, exporter franchiser, retailer and restaurateur with outlets throughout Australia, South East Asia, Indonesia and the Middle East.

Patria now works with businesses to lead and develop dynamic, innovative, and strategically directed teams to achieve high ambitions and work effectively with key stakeholders.

Additionally, she has also dedicated a lot of her time to philanthropic and charitable endeavors. For over 10 years she has been a director of the international Hope for Children Organization Australia, just one way in which she achieves her personal credo to ‘give back more than [she] takes’.

Justin Baird

Known as the innovationist, and an expert on all things digital, Justin brings a unique perspective on technology and the future.

He holds a dual degree in Electrical Engineering and Music from the University of Miami, as well as Master of Business Administration from the Australian Graduate School of Management and graduate level engineering acoustics training from Penn State University.

Justin brings over fifteen years of management and high tech experience, in areas ranging from research and development engineering, analog and digital signal processing, embedded systems development, product management, high speed digital networks, large scale entertainment systems, mobile and web application deployment, and interactive multimedia installation technologies.

Don O'Sullivan

Dr Don O'Sullivan is the Associate Professor of Marketing at Melbourne Business School, having joined from University College Cork, Ireland in 2008 and is Don is a member of the advisory board of the Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) Council of the USA.

His principal academic interest is in the impact of marketing activities and assets on company performance. Don’s research has been published in leading academic journals such as the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the International Journal of Research in Marketing and Marketing Letters among others.​​​

Don has extensive experience as a consultant and speaker and will spend two sessions at our Marketing Ambassador Programme speaking on what makes a strong marketing plan, creating a value proposition, and your price position in the market.