The LEO Award Advisory Board

The LEO Awards for Outstanding Contribution to the Knowledge Economy in Australia and New Zealand

Has over 13 years experience working in the Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing industry.  Having worked in the UK, Philippines and Australia in a variety of different roles and positions. He started his career with Yorkshire Electricity in 1996 in the UK as a Analyst Programmer.  This was his first introduction to BI when he was a member of a start up team building an enterprise data warehouse from scratch for the retail side of the business.  In this role he worked on many projects and built up hands on expertise in data modelling, warehouse design, build and Business Objects.

In 2000 he was sponsored by a Business Objects Re-seller and partner to move to Sydney to work as a Consultant around Australia and for 8 months in Manilla.

He then worked at Coca Cola Amatil for 4 years both as a BI Specialist and later a BI team lead. The experience at CCA covered the full business spectrum, delivering reporting, analytic and dashboarding solutions for Sales, HR, Finance, Operations and Logistics, Vending and Engineering.  Outside of the technical experience gained he also learnt the importance of selling and branding BI to the business and how important it is to set up BI communities and working groups to be evangelists and spread the BI word.

Since 2006 Marc has been at Insurance Australia Group as a BI Technical Delivery Team Manager in Direct Insurance. In this role he has been responsible for data warehouse and datamart mart project delivery and Operational Service and Support. Key successes have included the delivery of a green field data warehouse for Direct Insurance, several data marts and the implementation of a Leads Management system for Direct Marketing and analytics. He has just recently been appointed as Technical Programme Manager for a huge 3 year program or work integrating all the disperate data warehouses into the new stategic platfom that was finished earlier this year.

Steve is a business intelligence and information management expert. He is currently National Data Manager at NewsCorp and a Director of the Business Intelligence Group – owner of the Business Intelligence CORTEX (www.tbig.com.au), an online community for Australian and New Zealand professionals in business intelligence, information management, data warehousing, performance management and analytics.

Steve's passion is to drive analytic-based competition through smarter management of information assets. He has done this by building multiple business intelligence platforms for whole enterprises as well as for specialised functions such as Actuarial, Risk, Finance and Marketing.

For the last few years he was the Head of Business Intelligence and Analytics at ING DIRECT Australia. At ING he made information and analytics a core competency of the Bank while transforming the information management and business intelligence infrastructure.

Prior to joining ING Direct, he was Research Director in Business Intelligence and Information Management at Gartner, Inc. and a pioneer of data visualization in competitive intelligence applications in Europe and North America, co-founding publishing, data visualisation and market research businesses. He has held executive management roles around the globe with companies such as Storebrand-Norden, Citigroup, ABN AMRO, National Westminster Bank, IAG, and AMP.

Steve has an Executive Master of Business Administration in Innovation, Strategy and Information Technology from the Theseus International Management Institute in France. A Post-Graduate Degree in Information Science and Operations Research, from Canberra University and a Bachelor of Economics from the Australian National University.

Steve is a regular conference speaker on business intelligence, information management and data quality and publishes the blog Oz Analytics.

Steve can be reached at sbennett@tbig.com.au

Eng Chew is Professor of Business and IT Strategy at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), and a part-time Gartner Advisor. From 2005 -2008, he held the UTS-Gartner Chair of Business and IT Strategy at UTS.

He is a former Chief Information Officer of SingTel Optus, and has over 25 years of industry experience in IT and Telecommunications in Australia. Professor Chew was selected after an industry-wide search for a senior business IT executive with a proven track record in CIO-level management and advanced research and development achievements. 

He amassed extensive IT and business management experience in his seven years with Optus and was renowned for his success as CIO in turning around the Optus IT business, resulting in significant contribution to the firm's bottom line.

Professor Chew also has an impressive research and development track record in IT and telecommunications, having been research leader in telecommunications networks and services for over eight years at the Telstra Research Laboratories. 

In addition he has held senior roles in software product and system integration developments as research leader in telecommunications networks and services for over eight years at the Telstra Research Laboratories, and also in roles at the Australian Centre for Unisys Software, and Digital Equipment Corporation. His achievements include delivery of several hundreds of million Australian dollars of business value through business process re-engineering and organisational transformation.

Professor Chew has a PhD in Telecommunications from University of Sydney and during the 1990s Professor Chew held the Chair of the International Telecommunication Union / International Standards Organization (ITU/ISO) Committee for Open Distributed Processing, which defines the standards for enterprise architecture specification.

While UTS-Gartner Chair of Business and IT Strategy he produced insightful research papers for Gartner on China's ICT telecommunications industry market trends, China's ICT R&D and education institutions, and China's CIO leadership maturity.

A dedicated finance professional, Mark has in 18 years experience in senior finance and project management roles. Mark is the Managing Director of Southertons Sydney Consulting and and a Director of the Business Intelligence Group – owner of the Business Intelligence CORTEX (www.tbig.com.au), an online community for Australian and New Zealand professionals in business intelligence, information management, data warehousing, performance management and analytics.

His experience was gained initially in the chartered accounting profession, where he honed his skills in business strategy, management, tax consulting, and audit. Mark has spent the last 11 years building his skill base in commercial operations in both public & private corporations.

His industry experience has been gained in retail, property development & construction & financial services. Mark has specialised in the areas of cost reduction, process change & management, corporate restructures and funding acquisition. His significant roles over the last 10 years have been:

• CFO Meriton Apartments
• CFO general pants Group
• Financial Controller GIO Asset Management
• Project Manager, Management Reporting Analytics

Over the last 5 years Mark has focused on managing business intelligence projects within the financial services industry working for household names such as AMP and Westpac. The projects have delivered significant change to both financial & management reporting capabilities and have involved:

• Board-level reporting capabilities
• Activity-based Costing applications
• Financial Modelling
• General Ledger restructures.

Marks professionalism, pragmatism and commercial skills help ensure that the Business Intelligence Group is not simply another IT company but is an important partner delivering a complete package to exceed all of our client’s expectations.

Mark can be reached at mglover@tbig.com.au

Robert Hillard is a Deloitte partner leading the Enterprise Information Management practice nationally.  The team specialises in the delivery of information strategy advisory and architecture engagements to clients in across industries such as financial services, state and federal government, education, consumer products, telecommunications, resources and energy and retail.  He has been involved in many large data warehouse, business intelligence and information management engagements over more than two decades in the industry.

Robert is a leader in the development of standardised approaches to Information Management including the use of XBRL in government regulation and the establishment of the open source MIKE2.0 initiative (www.openmethdology.org).  He is vice-president and a board member of the MIKE2.0 Governance Association, the Swiss non-profit governance body for MIKE2.0.

Over many years, Robert has advised large complex organisations on their Information Management strategies and specifically how to leverage these strategies to achieve their business objectives including major transformations.  Many of these projects have involved a substantial multi-year investment and the buy-in of many different stakeholders across boards, government and management.

Before joining Deloitte in 2008, Robert was BearingPoint’s Global Solution Leader for Information Management.  In that role he established Information Management as one of the company’s two major integrated global solution suites.

Currently Business Intelligence Manager at Optus Singtel developing the business intelligence strategy and setting up a business intelligence team for the Small & Medium Business (SMB) division. In this role Michelle is leading the direction of the division’s capital investment in the architecture of the data warehouses and representing the interests of the division’s requirements in corporate design, governance and investment.

Between 2004 and 2008 Michelle was Senior Manager Information Management at Insurance Australia Group where she coordinated and managed the delivery of General Insurance and IAG’s budgeting and finance reporting and business intelligence requirements.

Between 1997 – 2005 she was a non-executive Board Director of N.R.M.A Employee’s Credit Union. Michelle has also worked in IT at Oceanic Capital Corporation Limited and Bank SA.

Carlie Smee is an experienced leader of marketing and analytical teams in Australia for brands such as Virgin Money, Vodafone and most recently National Australia Bank.

In 2006, Carlie was appointed as the Head of Customer Management, Analytics & Business Development at National Australia Bank’s new direct banking business UBank. In this role, Carlie has established the customer management and analytical capability, using a hybrid of National Australia Bank’s market leading analytical and campaign management systems and new direct methods. Carlie specialises in development and implementation of innovative customer management programs with the aim of driving customer loyalty, increasing sales to both new and existing customers and lowering the cost to serve to ultimately drive profit for the organisation.

Before joining National Australia Bank, Carlie spent more than three years as the Head of Marketing Services for Virgin Money.

In 2008 Carlie was elected as the NSW head of the Institute of Analytical Professionals (IAPA).

Thorsten has been working in the Competitive Intelligence space for over 10 years and currently leads the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence team at Pfizer Australia. His expertise is in delivering strategic insights and advancing senior managements understanding of their industry’s competitive environment.

Besides Pharmaceuticals, he also has extensive experience in the Wealth Management, Financial Planning and Insurance sectors, focussing on strategic planning, competitive intelligence, customer analytics and sales reporting.

He has a MBA in International Management and Finance, a Master in Accounting and a Bachelor of Business in European Business and Marketing. He is a CPA and currently writes his PhD thesis in Strategic Management and Competitive Intelligence.

With 20+ years of IT experience, Monica Woolmer (nee Tyson) has been leading data warehouse implementations for over a decade.  Formerly with Harrah’s Entertainment and Office Depot in the United States, and as a data warehouse and enterprise reporting advisor for the Australian Taxation Office.  Monica is currently the Managing Partner of Formation Data in Australia. Formation Data provides guidance and solutions which maximize the business value of a client’s most important asset - its data.

Her experience includes projects related to business intelligence, enterprise reporting, migrating data warehouses to new platforms, implementing loyalty card programmes and enhancing and extending existing data warehouses.  Monica has also created integrated data warehouses from multiple warehouses post merger and acquisition activity and has led organisations in creating effective governance structures and processes.

Monica has been actively involved with industry groups serving as a presenter, author and previously as an Associate Editor for The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) Journal of Data Warehousing.

Monica can be reached at monica.woolmer@formationdata.com.au

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