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Born and bred in wild Patagonia, Gus never allowed his small town and humble beginnings get in the way of his big dreams. A health disregard for the status quo 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 and working with companies such as Google X, Nokia and Amazon on the latest technology, creative cultures and high performing teams.

Seeking a change from corporate life as Executive Director and CTO of Lonely Planet, Gus moved back to his entrepreneurial roots, becoming an investor, founder and mentor. Today you will find Gus building robots, developing AI solutions, making 3D printed wheelchairs and investing in climate change technologies.

He loves sharing a story but he loves even more knowing those stories make a difference to people. Gus crafts a transformative experience that energizes and empowers. By connecting deeply with the audience, he ensures that the lessons learned resonate on a personal level, equipping each participant with the confidence and tools needed to turn inspiration into tangible, meaningful action. While Gus is happy to speculate about the future, he brings into focus what you can control right now, to make you ready for any future.

 Alice is a News Presenter and Journalist at Nine. She presents Nine Adelaide's Weekend News, after returning to her hometown following a five year stint in the Sydney newsroom presenting and reporting for national network bulletins and the Today Show. 

Her career highlight to date was being Nine's correspondent for the Tham Luang Cave rescue in Thailand, covering the international efforts to save 12 young boys and their soccer coach after 18 days trapped underground. She has worked across television, radio and newspapers, with accolades including Best TV Broadcaster (SA Press Club Awards) and Young Journalist of the Year (SA Media Awards).

She is also a Podcast Host, Event Host and Online Learning/Masterclass facilitator for Future Women, a digital community supporting thousands of Australian women in their pursuit of success, and committed to achieving gender equality in Australian workplaces. 

Fatima is a Cyber Security Consultant within Arup’s Resilience, Security and Risk team, based in Melbourne. She specialises in supporting major infrastructure and technology projects to understand, manage, and embed cyber and security risk considerations across the asset lifecycle, with a particular focus on practical, delivery-oriented outcomes.

Fatima’s experience spans transport, aviation, data centres, education, and public domain projects, where she has contributed to cyber security strategies, Threat, Vulnerability and Risk Assessments (TVRAs), and security risk assessments. Her work is grounded in both governance, risk and compliance (GRC) principles and technical considerations, enabling her to bridge the gap between high-level policy and on-the-ground implementation.

She is currently supporting the Sydney Metro West Stations Package, contributing to cyber security strategy, system identification, risk assessments, and the development of security requirements across multiple stations. Her role focuses on integrating cyber security into complex operational technology (OT) environments and ensuring alignment with project standards and regulatory frameworks. 

Through this work, she has developed a strong understanding of the challenges associated with translating cyber security requirements into actionable, auditable outcomes within large, multi-stakeholder infrastructure projects.

David has 16 years of experience across Government roles from skills and employment to business growth, to international trade and investment. As the Senior Adviser for Services and Technology Exports, David is positioned in the frontier area of AI, Cyber, Space, Defence and Quantum. He advises companies looking to go global on everything from pricing, to funding models, to cyber posture and data sovereignty.

His passions for AI and cyber drove him to complete a graduate certificate in cybersecurity at Charles Sturt University while also completing the Australian Defence Force’s Cyber Gap Program. He will proudly tell you about his homelab, Hermes box, IoT devices and his fully automated AI podcasts if you speak to him.

Prior to government David spent a decade as the senior executive with several small and medium sized businesses, a security alarms business, a marketing and communications company, and the establishment from concept to broadcasting of a community television station.

Sharon is a cyber security executive, entrepreneur and community leader recognised as one of Australia's 100 Women of Influence by the Australian Financial Review. A recipient of the Excellence in Industry Leadership award at the Women in Technology Awards 2023, and a member of the Queensland Government's Innovation Advisory Council, Sharon brings both strategic credibility and deep practical experience to the intersection of technology, security and governance.

Sharon currently serves as Vice President of Products at FirstWave Cloud Technology, an ASX-listed cyber security company whose network management and security software is used by organisations including Microsoft, Services Australia and NASA. 

A recognised builder of technology ecosystems, Sharon co-founded the Gold Coast Innovation Hub in 2017. Her advisory work spans early-stage technology companies, government and industry, reflecting a career built on connecting people, ideas and capability.

Sharon's focus over the past 18 months has shifted increasingly toward agentic AI - specifically the governance gap that has opened up as AI agents have moved from experimentation into production at scale. The question at the heart of this work is a human one: who is accountable when an autonomous system acts? Sharon believes the answer sits at the intersection of security, risk management and organisational design, and that most organisations are only beginning to grapple with what that means in practice.

Josh is a globally recognised cyber security expert and SANS instructor with a career built across digital forensics, incident response, and threat hunting. Currently serving as Director of the global Managed Detection and Response team at Uptycs, Josh helps protect some of the world's largest international brands from cyber attacks. 

Alongside this role, he works as an independent digital forensics and incident response expert in Australia, advising legal, government, and commercial clients. Over the course of his career, Josh has held a series of senior leadership roles at some of the world's most recognised organisations. 

As a SANS instructor, Josh teaches three highly regarded courses including FOR508: Advanced Incident Response, Threat Hunting, and Digital Forensics and FOR572: Advanced Network Forensics: Threat Hunting, Analysis, and Incident Response. He is also the co-author of FOR509: Enterprise Cloud Forensics and Incident Response and the SANS DFIR NetWars tournaments. His teaching philosophy is grounded in practicality. Knowing that students face an enormous amount of technical content in a short period of time, Josh focuses on what they can apply immediately and encourages them to keep building their knowledge beyond the classroom. One of the most memorable highlights of Josh's career has been seeing his forensic work reach the courtroom. 

Being able to identify the person behind a malicious attack and witness law enforcement act on that evidence is something he describes as bringing a rare but profound sense of closure to what is often an intense and demanding process.

Beyond investigations and the classroom, Josh is deeply interested in the wellbeing and operational efficiency of DFIR teams. Recognising that the high-pressure nature of the work often leads to burnout, he has made it a personal mission to understand how to create better, more sustainable environments for incident response professionals. 

His work on tools, automation, and IR processes has helped teams become more efficient, motivated, and focused on what matters most. Josh holds multiple GIAC certifications including GCFA, GCIH, GNFA, GPEN, GDAT, GPYC, and GREM and serves as an Advisory Board Member to Australian company Cydarm Technologies.

Jai Minton is a Senior Manager of Detection Engineering and Threat Hunting at Huntress who spends his time leading a team of specialist analysts in identifying, analysing, and mitigating stealthy intrusions. Describing himself as a "Jack of all Trades, Master of None", Jai has spent more than a decade building a versatile skill set that spans Threat Hunting, Penetration Testing, Security Operations, Malware Analysis, Detection Engineering, Digital Forensics, and Incident Response.

Having held Principal Analyst roles at both CrowdStrike and Huntress, and time spent as a senior intrusion researcher, Jai has devoted more than half of his career to understanding the techniques used by a wide range of threat actors who target Fortune 500 companies, and small to medium sized businesses.

Jai has spoken at security conferences including but not limited to AdelaideSEC (AISA), RooCon (Google), BSides Adelaide and SecTalks, and contributes back to the community through his blog, YouTube videos, podcast, and contributions to a number of community projects such as the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Jai is a back to back SANS Holiday Hack Challenge winner, having won the Most Creative Prize, Best Technical Answer Prize, and Best Overall Answer Grand Prize over the course of 3 years, and in 2025 was a runner up for the SANS Difference Makers Award: Practitioner of the Year - DFIR/ Threat Intelligence Forensicator.

Jai holds a Bachelor of Information Technology, a Diploma of Government, has completed courses such as SANS FOR710 (Reverse Engineering Malware: Advanced Code Analysis), and has certifications such as OSCP, and GIME. He has served as an Academic Advisor for Security Blue Team’s ‘Blue Team Level 2’ (BTL2) certification, with his research also being cited in renowned industry courses like SANS FOR500 (Windows Forensic Analysis).

Bobby is a cyber security leader based in Adelaide, stepping into the CISO role at a major public health organisation after years consulting to government and public-purpose clients across South Australia. He has spent his career in the gap between what security doctrine demands and what large environments can actually do and has come to believe that gap is where the real job lives.

Bobby is openly sceptical of security programmes that exist to look complete the asset register that's perpetually six months from finished, the policy library nobody reads, the maturity assessment that improves the score and nothing else. He'd rather know his crown jewels precisely, watch everything else like a hawk, and be honest with executives about what nobody can see. Some of his peers find this refreshing. Auditors take longer to warm up.

What he's actually known for, though, is translation. Bobby has spent years turning technical risk into plain English for boards, ministers' offices, and clinical leaders who don't care about CVEs but care a great deal about whether the hospital runs tomorrow. He treats executive communication as a core security control.