Sessions

Damien Greathead is the Head of Accountant and Advisor Marketing at Intuit Australia. He's passionate about helping accountants and bookkeepers have a lasting impact on their small business clients. He's worked with hundreds of firms around the world to help evolve their business models for great growth and profitability. He speaks to accountants and bookkeepers on cloud technology, service definition and pricing, and marketing. Prior to joining Intuit he was head of marketing at Practice Ignition and Vice President of Business Development at Receipt Bank, North America (now Dext).

I’m Andrew and I’m obsessed with the potential of the accounting industry..

The days of just doing the books and filing tax returns are gone. I affectionately refer to this kind of work as ‘keeping our clients out of jail’. Whilst it’s important work, it’s the bare minimum. And I know the accounting industry is capable of so much more than that.

Accountants of today (and tomorrow) need to be more and do more.

After all, keeping our clients out of jail is the bare minimum. The real magic happens in business problem solving, leveraging technology to streamline operations, and connecting on a human level to help our clients kick goals with both feet.

As the founder of Illumin8, I lead a team of accounting, bookkeeping, and business advisory specialists who share my passion for helping small business owners do more of what they love.

At Illumin8, I’m not limited by the traditions of the old world of accounting. Instead, I always push the boundaries, ask lots of questions and when I listen to the answers, I’m not afraid to challenge what I hear. It’s the only way I can make the difference I want to make.

The result of my approach is that my team is empowered to make decisions and to support their clients. They’ve got the freedom to think for themselves. That’s a big reason why we’ve won multiple accounting industry awards and why I was named as Australia’s accounting industry Thought Leader of the Year back in 2018.

Eugene is passionate about technology and how it can transform businesses and society. He has over 20 years’ experience in the software industry, and most recently, in accounting as Account Manager for Ignition.

Coming form a technical background, Eugene is well placed to assist clients find the right solutions and help them optimise their business at a technical and business level.

As a leader and a mentor, Eugene has a good grasp of technology concepts and is able to influence and guide decision-makers to ensure effective technology adoption in their business.

Eugene welcomes new challenges and enjoys learning new technologies. Both in his personal and professional life, he is goal-oriented and relishes the opportunity to apply his skills in problem-solving.

David is a hands-on and results-focused senior executive with extensive experience across various disciplines, including developing and driving strategy, sales leadership, organisational change management, channel development and growing and mentoring highly effective teams.

He currently heads the APAC region for Ignition. Before that, David held senior leadership positions as Chief Global Sales Officer of Spotlight Reporting, Managing Director of Receipt Bank ANZ, and National Sales Manager of Xero Australia.

With over 20 years of experience in the financial software industry, David is very passionate about helping small businesses, accounting firms, and bookkeeping businesses become more efficient, productive, and profitable, particularly through the adoption of cloud-based technology.

Stan is the CEO and founder of Business Automation Works (BAW), the innovative tech company behind the ATOmate, Australia’s market leading ATO document processing automation platform.

Designed specifically for the accounting industry, ATOmate combines powerful robotic process automation with comprehensive integrations to the ATO and leading Practice & Document Management platforms to reduce ATO document processing time by over 90%.

Stan enjoys working closely with accounting practices to transform how advisers and administrative staff manage ATO documents and client communications, enabling team members to refocus their attention away from tedious, time-consuming tasks towards more important things, such as managing and maintaining client relationships and engagement.

Elinor Kasapidis is the Senior Manager Tax Policy for CPA Australia. Elinor is responsible for the development of policy, research and advocacy on issues related to tax policy, legislation and administration in Australia and internationally. She leads the CPA Australia Taxation Centre of Excellence and represents CPA Australia on a variety of tax-related forums and groups. Elinor held a range of executive roles at the ATO prior to joining CPA Australia.

After Francois obtained his Chartered Accountant and a CFA® charterholder designations, he started his 20+ year career in global investment banking. During this time he worked in, built and managed various derivative trading desks ranging from equities, credit, fixed income and foreign exchange. While this required a range of skillsets, his core competency came down to identifying and monetising inefficiencies in processes and financial markets, which at the outset appeared small but over a period or applied to large volumes, realised significant gains. As Co-Founder of Paytron, Francois has applied these efficiency gains & experience to create a cloud based treasury platform for an SME to run their business, specifically focused on digitising and automating the Accounts Payable payments process with Xero.

Mark helps people SIMPLIFY the SHIFT to HEALTH, HAPPINESS and HIGH PERFORMANCE through a fascinating blend of EASTERN WISDOM and WESTERN SCIENCE.

A former AFL Footballer and best-selling author of ‘Ancient Wisdom for Modern Health, Mark understands the challenges facing business people today – stress, sleep difficulties, fatigue, changing demands, remote work, balancing home life & mental health issues.

With his unique mix of cutting-edge Western health-science, age-old Eastern medicine insights (Ayurveda), plus the secrets of the world’s longest-living people and highest performing business people, Mark’s sessions help people deal with these challenges. He also helps people look after their most precious resource – themselves – and recapture their NATURAL HIGH state of high energy, low stress, life balance and work success.

He does all this with simple, down-to-earth solutions anyone can do. (His tips don’t take any more time out of people’s busy days and most actually save considerable time.) Regular comments include, “truly life-changing” “the most commonsense view on health I’ve ever heard” “finally something that makes sense and inspires me to actually make changes”.

With Mark, you won’t hear anything about calories, fats or heart rates. You will however learn about the world’s oldest health science, the coming consciousness revolution and why good relationships, having fun and a sense of community or team are far more important for our health than having a six-pack, drinking green smoothies or activating our bloody almonds!

“Mark will change the way you think about wellness and quite possibly your life.”

Robert S. Conlee - CEO Neways International - Utah USA

“Mark mumbles, never ate his broccoli and isn’t as funny as he thinks he is. But he’s a lovely boy and I think you will like him.”

Mark’s mum

Nattika, is a self-confessed ‘Millennial’. Nattika’s passion lies in providing Partners with market relevant technology and digital transformation advice. Backed by over 10 years’ experience as a commercial accounting professional, she bridges the gap between accounting, technology implementations and change management.

Prior to joining Dext, Nattika has assisted clients by providing CFO advisory services across a range of industries, specialising in digital transformation and cloud implementations. She loves to share her expertise and passion for everything digital and has valuable experience in forecasting, financial and management reporting, implementing internal control procedures, resulting in substantial business efficiencies.

Victor joined Accountancy Insurance in 2005 and is the Associate Director of Business Development at Accountancy Insurance. Victor specialises in tax audit insurance or “Audit Shield”.

He works closely with the Audit Shield Operations Teams across Australia to ensure efficient Audit Shield set up, claim and renewal processes for many of the 3500+ Accountancy firms utilising the Audit Shield service.

Victor is very easy to talk to and he enjoys having conversations on what is happening in the accounting industry. His approach to Audit Shield is to keep it simple.

Tyson Cobb is a senior marketing and brand strategist to the accounting industry, as well as a podcaster, speaker and trainer. He has consulted for businesses across several different industries over a 14-year career in brand and marketing and has spent the last 6 years providing strategy and marketing support for accountants and professional services firms.

For several years Tyson watched on as accountants received cookie-cutter brands and misleading marketing advice that would often lead to poor marketing performance and underwhelming brands that had minimal chance of differentiating them in a saturated market. Tyson saw a need to provide tailored, honest and ethical marketing advice to an industry with untried potential and opportunity.

Along with his team at Practice + Pixels, Tyson wants to create excitement in the accounting industry. Excitement for marketing, for unique brands and immersive digital experiences. They want to change the way accountants look at and approach marketing and branding so, together, they can create unique digital experiences to accelerate their growth through marketing.

Gil is a serial entrepreneur and founder. He launched his first e-commerce venture whilst at university and shortly after graduating, co-founded Bench Media Group. Bench Media has expanded to become the leading provider of programmatic advertising and software solutions to the Australian and APAC markets.

He has acted as a growth advisor and invested in startups and early stage ventures for several years and is passionate about the startup ecosystem.

He currently holds the position of CEO at AuditCover, a world first insurance distribution platform for audit protection.

Judy is Principal Solicitor at Judy Sullivan Consulting Pty Ltd. From 2013-2020 she was Partner (Tax) at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sydney. This followed seven years as Partner (Tax) at King & Wood Mallesons Sydney. Prior to this she held various roles including Senior Associate (Tax) with Mallesons Stephen Jaques and Principal (Tax) Ernst & Young. She is currently a Member of the Revenue Law Committee and the Charities and Not-for-Profit Committee of the Law Council of Australia. She is also a Member of the ATO Not-for-Profit Stewardship Group and the Advisory Committee for the Board of Taxation. Judy holds a Bachelor of Economics and Bachelor of Laws (ANU) and a Master of Laws, University of Sydney. She was appointed to the Board in October 2020.

Sylvia is an Assistant Commissioner for the Individuals and Intermediaries Engagement and Support Branch. Sylvia has responsibility for the ATO’s relationship with the tax profession, including engagement, consultation, stewardship group, speaking events and the Practitioner Lodgment Program. Sylvia also leads the Schools and Culturally and Linguistic Diverse Community education programmes, Tax Help and TaxTime support services, content and products for individual taxpayers.

With over 20 years’ experience in the ATO, Sylvia has specialist knowledge and skill in user centred design, design facilitation, project management and policy and new measures design and development.

A regular host on Tax Professionals Live Conversations streams, Sylvia is currently studying her Master’s Degree in Business Administration.