With a career ranging from diplomat to business leader to entrepreneur across New Zealand and Asia, Ziena is a staunch advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion. Ziena assumed leadership roles from a remarkably young age and has helped some of New Zealand’s largest businesses to build their reputation and revenue, advised Ministers, and supported the growth of Maori and Pacific young people in professional careers. Most recently Ziena was appointed to the Board of Education New Zealand, became a finalist for New Zealand Women of Influence awards, and was also recognised by Campaign Asia Pacific as part of its 2020 Women to Watch.

Judy O’Brien leads the Culture, Diversity & Inclusion team at New Zealand Rugby to create great environments. This includes the implementation of NZR's Equity, Diversity and Inclusion strategy, and oversight of associated work programmes (Pasifika Engagement, Harm Prevention). She has 16 years of experience as an educator, entertainer and consultant working at the intersections of diversity, inclusion, primary prevention of interpersonal harm, and belonging.

Read more about Judy.

Madeleine has over 30 years of Leadership Training, Coaching and Learning & Development experience. Partnering with executive groups and cross-functional international teams she has achieved learning outcomes with commercial impact for a broad range of organisations including some of the largest global professional services firms, leading financial corporations, and world-class technology companies. Madeleine's specialty is in the facilitation, delivery, and sustainment of change initiatives in service of individual and organisational development. She is passionate about applied neuroscience and how an understanding of the running of the human brain can support people to access their most resourceful states, become aware of new possibilities and realise their full potential.

With seven years in the role there is never a dull moment.  The Ministry is focused on the move to modern technology to enable their People Strategy outcomes and creating a great place to work.  Kate has a background in HR and Finance and her passion is organisational change through behaviour change.  Kate will tell you that the technical work is generally easy but sometimes people make it hard.  Kate has worked in transformational change programmes across NZ Government and sees that the next phase of change needs to be focused on modernising technology to enable easy HR processes and let HR people focus on the higher value work as a business partners.  Workforce planning, capability development, growing talent and planning succession should be the support we are offering.

Victoria Lyons has been a part of Spark’s transformation journey for over 10 years, as the organisation transitions from a traditional telco, to a digital services company. In 2014, when Spark became one of the first large organisations in the world to completely flip to an Agile way of working, Victoria was at the forefront of this transition building collaborative, adaptive, and autonomous teams that continually challenged the status quo. Victoria has held a number of roles at Spark within the marketing and product teams, and is currently ‘Agile Coach of Coaches’ – leading Spark’s large Tribe of Agile coaches, who work with  people and squads to find innovative ways of meeting customers’ needs, while continuing to adapt to  ever-changing business landscape.  

Tina, has a strong passion for people, innovative technologies, data and insights. Tina works for Fonterra, a global dairy coorporation. Enjoying a number of roles in insights and visualisation, data transformation and systems deployment. Currently working on deploying SAC in SuccessFactors.   Tina has a background in finance and banking in UK and NZ. 

Ange Rowe leads the HR Systems and Information team at AgResearch to ensure their SuccessFactors footprint is optimised, managed and maintained to meet the needs of the business now and into the future.  Her role has evolved after successfully implementing an additional 8 modules, including EC Payroll.  Ange has significant experience across operational practice and processes in both HR and Payroll and is relishing the new challenges that come with an extended footprint and an everchanging technology and organisational landscape.

Ben is a People Analytics and Systems Manager with over a dozen HR-related system implementations and integrations under his belt. Using tools like Excel, SharePoint, and Power BI, he has then helped companies gain insight from the data captured in the systems.  He’s known around the office as the person who has too many hobbies and isn’t afraid to tell things like it is.

Jonathan has been at Christchurch City Council for the past 7 years as an HR Analyst. Jonathan has been working on Council’s Holidays Act Remediation Project since December 2020 and was seconded full time as a HR Subject Matter Expert in February 2021. Jonathan has held prior Analyst roles in HR, Finance & IT across the Private, Public & NGO sectors. Outside of work, Jonathan also volunteers at his Church to help with their HR & Payroll requirements. 

David Ludlow leads a team focused on the identification of market trends and the development of solution strategies and priorities that span the SAP SuccessFactors’ Human Experience Management (HXM) suite of solutions.  His team works with customers, partners, industry analysts, and development to ensure SAP is delivering the best HXM solutions for its customers.  David has been with SAP for over 20 years and has more than 25 years of experience in the HR solution space.  David was named one of the Top 100 Tech Influencers by HRE and the HR Technology Conference in 2019.

Having joined the SAP SuccessFactors team in 2019, Jess is a people professional with a range of experience across leadership, people technology projects and risk management roles.

Jess holds a Bachelor of Science and is a certified Gallup Strengths coach and Life Styles Inventory practitioner. Jess is passionate about developing meaningful strategies that deliver sustainable business outcomes and transformation.

Dr. Lauren S. Park joined SAP in 2019 and is currently a Research Scientist on the SAP SuccessFactors Growth and Insights team. She conducts applied mixed-method research on workforce psychology topics in partnership with SAP SuccessFactors clients to support SAP SuccessFactors product and portfolio growth strategy. Lauren has provided consultation to organizations around the world on a variety of topics, including employee engagement, technology adoption, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Lauren completed a dual-emphasis doctorate in Industrial/Organizational and Quantitative Psychologies at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. Lauren’s areas of expertise include diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and practices; learning and development; interpersonal relationships at work; and employee experience.s.

Steve is the Head of EX Strategy and Solutions for Qualtrics in APJ, leading a team of specialists in guiding organisations to optimise the Employee Experience at every point in the employee lifecycle. He is one of the region’s most experienced EX specialists having played a crucial role in launching and developing the XM category in APJ. Steve specialises in EX and human-centred technologies. As businesses and governments rethink the ways they work for a post-pandemic world, Steve brings 20 years’ of experience as a qualified business psychologist helping organisations design and improve their employee experiences.

Trent is passionate about the impact of technology on people transformation.  He can help organisations understand the impact of  Technology, People, and Process to ensure strategy and benefits are aligned to any digital transformation.  Trent uses his 20+ years in HR leadership, strategy and HR technology roles, along with leadership roles in private sector, public sector and vendors to provide a unique insight into HR technology.

Katherine has lived and breathed payroll for nearly 30 years.  She is SAP’s “New Zealand Local Product Manager”, ensuring that SAP’s HCM solutions stay up to date with New Zealand’s ever changing legislative and business requirements.  She is a key industry representative, who has been a member of various Inland Revenue and MBIE working groups and is currently a member of the “Better Rules’ working group set up to work on the Holiday Act Taskforce recommendations.  Katherine has been involved with numerous HR and Payroll implementations and continues to provide her expertise to customers and partners alike.