Our 2022
Speakers

Amy joined Boral in 2010, holding various senior legal roles before being appointed Chief Legal Officer in July 2021. Amy is responsible for all legal matters relevant to Boral, and has played a key role in recent portfolio reshaping. Amy is part of Boral’s Executive Committee, and works with a wide range of stakeholders across the business. Prior to joining Boral, Amy worked as a lawyer in the M&A team at Freehills (now Herbert Smith Freehills). Amy holds law and economics (social sciences) degrees from the University of Sydney and is admitted as a solicitor in New South Wales.

Annie leads the global Strategic Partnerships legal team for Accenture, supporting the 250+ relationships that form the backbone of Accenture's $50bn+ global business. In her previous role she helped establish and lead the cybersecurity legal support for Accenture Security - now a global 3bn security business within Accenture.

She recently won the Technology, Media and Telecommunications Lawyer of the Year Award (Lawyers Weekly Corporate Counsel Awards 2021) and Australian In House Counsel of the Year Award (Australasian Law Awards 2021).

She's a frequent speaker on cybersecurity issues for business and the legal profession.

Determined and resourceful, Daniel Flynn is the co-founder and managing director of one of Australia’s most successful start-ups, Thankyou.

He co-founded Thankyou at the age of 19, and today 12 years later, Thankyou’s products are stocked by major retailers in Australia, with every product contributing to helping end global poverty. To date, Thankyou has raised over $17 million to impact the lives of people across 22 countries.

Daniel is also the author of best-selling book Chapter One, a story that generated $1.4 million in sales in its first month using an unorthodox ‘pay-what-you-want’ model. He is known for his disruptive marketing and has received widespread media coverage for some truly unconventional and highly successful campaigns that led to Thankyou products being stocked by some of Australia’s biggest retailers.

Daniel’s achievements as an entrepreneur have also been widely celebrated. In 2014, he was named an honouree in JCI’s Ten Outstanding Young People of the World, and in 2015 Daniel won EY Entrepreneur of the Year (for the Southern Region). In 2016 Daniel was named in the Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 for Social Entrepreneurship.

Daniel is known for his ability to tell stories to engage and motivate audiences to realise that they too can make their own ideas a reality.

Phoebe is an accomplished senior executive with over 25 years’ experience in human rights. She advises clients and boards on the reporting and governance requirements in respect of ESG risks and opportunities, ESG strategy alignment and broader business and human rights risks and impacts of operations.

Phoebe’s work focusses on building on opportunities and finding solutions to the challenges that are presented by broad stakeholder engagement in corporate management of environmental and social issues.

She has worked on three continents, managing diverse teams and delivering a range of services in multi-sectoral humanitarian programs. She has worked extensively with governments, business, academia, the media and the public to promote human rights and develop excellence in humanitarian practice.

Phoebe has represented organisations at the United Nations, and was a founding director of the Humanitarian Advisory Group. She was Director of International Humanitarian Law and a member of the leadership team of Australian Red Cross.
Phoebe is Director at CARE Australia, and a member of the Monash University Masters of International Relations Industry Board. She is also a member of the University of New South Wales Australian Human Rights Institute Advisory Board and a Graduate Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD).

Jacob Varghese is Chief Executive Officer at Maurice Blackburn. An experienced litigator, he leads Australia’s number one plaintiff law firm from its Melbourne office.

Since becoming CEO in 2017 Jacob has led the development and implementation of a new strategy to strengthen the firm’s financial and business foundations. Together with an experienced and highly skilled leadership team, he has built a “one firm” organisational structure and culture around a shared ambition to widen access to justice on a scale with no precedent in Australia.

Jacob started his legal career in the medical negligence team at Maurice Blackburn in 2002. Leaving the firm a few years later to work as a political adviser and parliamentary researcher, he returned in 2006 to its pioneering class actions team.

Jacob established himself as one of the country’s top class actions lawyers and has run some of the firm’s biggest cases. Becoming a principal of the firm in 2011, his achievements include working on four shareholder class actions which each achieved settlements in excess of $100 million for shareholders, and leading the team that achieved Australia’s largest food safety class action settlement.

Prior to taking up the CEO role, he established Maurice Blackburn’s Australian litigation funding business, which focuses on providing funding to parties involved in commercial disputes. He also led the firm’s social justice practice, where he contributed to important victories for the rights of some of the most vulnerable in our society, including acting for 109 babies of asylum seekers which resulted in the babies and their families being given visas and released from detention.
Jacob chairs the Board of Per Capita, one of Australia’s leading policy think-tanks.

Jacqui Davy is the Head of Privacy and Product Counsel at Canva. An Australian start up launched in 2013, Canva is valued at US $40 billion and operates across 190 countries with over 60 million monthly active users. Canva is an online design platform with a mission to empower everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere.

Jacqui was previously the General Counsel and Data Protection Officer at ASX-listed start up and recruitment platform LiveHire Ltd. Prior to that she spent almost 7 years at REA Group Ltd which operates leading real estate portal, realestate.com.au, as their Privacy Officer and Senior Legal Counsel.

After advising three successful Australian technology start-ups, Jacqui is experienced at influencing stakeholders to consider and manage legal risks in fast-paced growth environments.

Advisory Executive and Consultant specialising in Legal, Security, Defence, Technology, Infrastructure, Transformation and Governance with multi-jurisdictional experience. Former Chief Legal Counsel and Security Executive for NBN Co, and General Counsel and Head of Governance for Vodafone Australia. Champion of the enterprise wide 'converged' security model. Staff Engagement Champion. 2015 Australian In-House Lawyer of the Year, 2012 Deal of the Year, 2015 Projects Deal of the Year, 2017 TMT Legal Team of the Year, among others. MBA | LLB | MAICD | former CEDA Trustee. Co-founder of High Tech Australian Defence Startup.

Katrina Bullock is the General Counsel of Greenpeace Australia Pacific. She was awarded the 2020 Lawyers Weekly 30 under 30 Corporate Counsel (SME) Award, was listed on the 2020 Australasian Lawyer In-House Leader List and was a finalist in the Women Lawyers Association of NSW Corporate Counsel of the Year Award 2021. Prior to joining Greenpeace, she was a commercial lawyer at Clayton Utz. She is also a financial broadcast journalist and is currently completing a PhD in corporate climate change disclosures. 

Laura is a barrister and entrepreneur with a blue chip legal and business background as a top-tier corporate lawyer, company director, business adviser and in-house counsel for listed corporates. A qualified arbitrator, specialist in corporations law and complex commercial litigation, Laura was awarded Innovator of the Year by the Womens' Barristers Association in 2020 for her work in pioneering online mediation.

Marina Mitrevski is General Counsel & Company Secretary of THE ICONIC, the leading online retailer for fashion, sports, beauty, home and lifestyle in Australia and New Zealand. Since being appointed to this role in early 2018, Marina has been responsible for building the legal function from scratch and now leads a highly successful team who are charged with delivering the full ambit of THE ICONIC's Legal, Governance, Regulatory, Compliance, Legal Operations and Company Secretariat function spanning all areas of the business including: Category Management, Technology, Operations, Marketing, Finance, Growth & Development, and People & Culture. Marina has seen the business grow from strength to strength, with THE ICONIC now home to over 17million+ visits per month.

THE ICONIC is also part of Global Fashion Group. which is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and is is the leading fashion and lifestyle destination in growth markets around the globe.

Michael is General Counsel at Sydney Fish Market. In this capacity, Michael is responsible for providing legal support for significant transactions and supporting strategy for the business, including by providing legal advice and working collaboratively across the organisation.

Prior to his current role, Michael held senior in-house legal positions with Lendlease Corporation, Cbus Super Fund, Commonwealth Bank and Goodman Group; where he has been responsible for leadership within high performing legal functions and providing high quality legal advice to operational businesses and Boards.

I have experience in private practice and in-house in general commercial law, corporate law and commercialisation of intellectual property. I like to build relationships with the people I work with and to help build a culture of integrity and excellence. I also have extensive pre-law experience in the chemical industry and regulatory affairs with respect to medical devices and pharmaceuticals. My goal is to always do challenging work that adds value to the organisation I work for.

Nick is General Counsel at AirTree Ventures, a venture capital firm with a mission to back the most ambitious Australian and Kiwi founders, building the iconic technology companies of tomorrow. Nick oversees all legal matters at AirTree, including advising on investment and exit transactions, fund structuring and establishment and compliance and financial services regulation. Nick has been a corporate lawyer for over 20 years, spending time in London, in the M&A and ECM teams at Clayton Utz and at LegalVision. He also spent 3 years as General Counsel and Company Secretary at Oneview Healthcare, an ASX-listed healthcare software company.

Paul is responsible for the management and leadership of the LOD Australia business from both an operational and client focused perspective. Paul has played a key role in the growth of the Australian business over the past 7 years and is a member of LOD’s global executive team.  Paul joined LOD in 2014 having previously worked as a lawyer in both in-house and private practice environments in London and Hong Kong, headed up an Australian based legal project management business and managed the legal divisions of two global recruitment businesses.     

With deep experience across professional and financial services, Petra has driven and championed the positioning of leading Australian legal brands. Defining best-in-class People and talent management capabilities and establishing a highly recognised, pioneering approach to legal operations, digital transformation and agile delivery practice.

Petra’s current role is Head of Knowledge and Development with the Westpac Legal team, and she has held previous roles leading People and Culture, Organisational Development, Transformation and Strategy with Gilbert + Tobin.

Petra has a deep understanding of organisational strategy and sees people, process and technology as integrated opportunities to deliver market differentiation, working with top talent to embrace and apply emerging technology to the world of business and creating agile environments that maximise outcomes for customers, shareholders and communities.

Reece is a leading member of Clyde & Co's cyber incident response team and has experience acting in a range of local, regional, and global incidents affecting government agencies and private sector organisations of all sizes, operating across all industry sectors. Acting as 'breach coach', Reece is well regarded for his ability to advise boards and other senior members in the executive, legal, IT, risk management and public relations functions to navigate their strategic response to Australia’s complex cyber landscape. Reece also routinely advises on incident preparedness and resilience strategies to address cyber risk head on, prior to an incident occurring, as well as post-incident third party IT liability claims, consumer claims, regulatory investigations and recovery actions.
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Sacha is the Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Lawcadia, a two-sided cloud-based platform that in-house legal teams and their law firms use for client collaboration, matter management, legal intake & triage and legal spend management. Sacha is passionate about transformation in the legal industry and applies creative thinking processes, strategy, and design thinking to identifying pain points and developing innovative solutions. Winner of the Australian Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2019 for legal and awarded Women in Law Marketing Communications Professional of the Year 2020. Sacha is an advocate for technology innovation and women in leadership.

Sam is the CEO and Co-founder at LawVu. Sam is a serial entrepreneur and board director. Before co-founding in-house legal software company, LawVu, Sam was a founding member of a global tech online project management company. Sam is passionate about transforming in-house legal operations and empowering legal counsel across many countries and industries with beautiful and intuitive software that will see LawVu become another successful globally NZ tech company.

Shaun is the Chief Legal Officer at LawVu. He also provides project management and legal technology services to legal teams across the world. Shaun has woven innovation and project management into all stages of his legal career both in private and in-house legal practice. Starting his career in contracts engineering, Shaun moved into the legal profession, with his focus on project and change management. His legal background spans public, private enterprises in environmental and project law, where he has delivered large capital construction projects. He teaches Legal Project Management with the College of Law (New Zealand) and enjoys transforming complex frameworks into simple and intuitive technical systems.

Somerset has extensive international legal experience having practised in the UK, Europe and the Pacific region. She has a broad skill set, spanning commercial, corporate, employment, WHS, dispute resolution, litigation, M & A and regulatory work, honed in both industry and government. Somerset has spent most of her career in the property world, spending 14 years with CBRE, a leading global commercial real estate company, before moving into State government. In 2020, she joined the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment to lead the Property and Commercial Legal division, which services, among others, clients as diverse and unique as Crown Lands, Property & Development NSW, NSW Land & Housing Corporation, Place-making NSW and Water Infrastructure NSW, supporting their extensive, complex portfolios. Combining strong technical knowledge across a range of jurisdictions with a pragmatic solutions-focused approach, Somerset prioritises understanding her clients’ drivers and the importance of aligning with, and supporting, clients' strategies to achieve their goals. Over the course of her career, she has developed and guided high-performing teams, advised on high-value acquisitions, led the defence of numerous multi-million dollar lawsuits and established innovative legal solutions, including online contracting systems and outsourced legal services.

Trent Czinner was appointed Group Executive Legal and External Affairs at TPG Telecom in August 2020, and to the role of Company Secretary in March 2021. He was previously Vodafone Hutchison Australia’s General Counsel and Company Secretary from 2013 to 2020. Trent has worked as a telecoms and technology lawyer since 1998. From 2011 to 2013, Trent ran the legal function for salesforce.com in Australia and New Zealand. Trent has a Bachelor of Law and Administration from The University of Newcastle was admitted as a Solicitor in NSW in 1995 and has a Master of Business Administration from the Australian Graduate School of Management. He is a Certificated member of the Governance Institute of Australia.