The Modern Creative Leader

Lizzie is the Festival Director and creator of Festival Fatale, co-founder and cultural curator of Women in Theatre & Screen (WITS) and a highly acclaimed actor and director for both screen and stage.

She graduated from WAAPA in 2009 and since then has performed for Sydney Theatre Company, Bell Shakespeare, Griffin Independent and starred in features such as Felony and Sleeping Beauty.

She has received three Sydney Theatre Nominations for her work as a stage actor and was shortlisted for the prestigious Heath Ledger Scholarship in 2014.

Lizzie is also a founding member of Sport for Jove Theatre Company, co-founder of Variety Fair and a proud member of Equity since 2009.

Jon is the VP Managing Director of R/GA in Australia across Sydney and Melbourne. He is responsible for the vision and leadership of the Australian offices of R/GA.

Jon started his career creating digital products and services at a time when a lot of what we know today didn’t exist, building platforms, inventing processes and creating brands.

He is passionate about the intersection between creative design thinking, strategy and technology to drive real business change. This passion drove him to partner in Hurricane, a London agency that developed brand, digital and innovation solutions for challenger brands such as Samsung, HP and Adobe.

More recently, Jon was Head of Strategy for local independent agency The Works, creating award winning work for clients like Jim Beam, Canadian Club, Woolworths and Skoda. For the past 2 years Jon was MD of local agency TCO working with clients like Nestle, Coca-Cola, Optus and Samsung to deliver unique and innovative ideas that help to transform their businesses.

With more than 20 years experience, Nitsa helped transform brands with big powerful ideas for businesses like VISA International, David Jones, Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, Coca-Cola, ANZ, GlaxoSmithKline, St.George, Beiersdorf, Singapore Airlines and RaboDirect.

After a brief stint in New York at Saatchi and Saatchi, Nitsa settled in Australia and has helped create some of Australians most memorable campaigns including the “greedy banker” campaign for RaboDirect. Her experience ranges from launching new products for big blue chip brands to helping challenger brands take on leader brands - and win. 

As Managing Director of Whybin TBWA, her renewed focus is to continue the agency’s growth trajectory and the positive momentum, with work that creates cultural impact. Her main focus will be on people, to create long term career opportunities and in turn create a culture that people want to be a part of.

Rose Herceg has built a career as one of Australia’s most respected social forecasters.

Rose’s first business, Pophouse launched in 1998, became known as Australia’s best regarded company for innovation, social trends and business strategy. BRW Magazine named Rose the number one innovative thinker in the country and Pophouse the country’s best place to go for new business models and emerging trends data. In 2006, Rose sold her company to the STW Group.

Rose has maintained a close working relationship with STW consulting on a regular basis to STW-owned companies in areas of strategy, social forecasting and innovation.

In March 2015, Rose was appointed as the Chief Strategy Officer for the STW Group.

Rose has had audiences with some of the most distinguished leaders of the global community including Lord David Putnam – film maker and head of Tony Blair’s NESTA - The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, American publishing and media giant Oprah Winfrey, Bob Mansfield former Chairman of Telstra, Michael Lynch former Chief Executive of the Sydney Opera House, Google founder Larry Page and one of the world’s most distinguished architects, Frank Gehry.

Rose has written three books – her latest The Power Book has been translated into several languages and is selling in Europe, Asia & the Middle East and is about to be launched in the US market.

Rose received the Small Businesswoman of the Year Award from Prime Minister John Howard in 2002.

Rose is also an investor in a number of start-ups – the most recent - a national online cupcakes company (Cupcakes Delivered) was sold to Australia’s largest hampers delivery business. Rose has sat on a number of public company boards including Brazin, Sanity.com and Text Media. 

Ellie Rogers is responsible for leading Facebook’s agency team. Her role is to help the big blue tech giant, re-define what partnership looks like, with the media and creative agency community, across the top 200 advertisers in the Market.

Prior to joining Facebook, Ellie spent 13 years working at media agencies. She started her career as a wheeler dealer TV buyer in London, then moved into digital where she was initially bamboozled by the lingo but then amazed by the possibilities that digital offered advertisers. 

She moved to Australia eight years ago to join Ikon, where she headed up their digital services including mobile, technology, data, search and social. She has been part of a number of award winning teams, and includes two Cannes Lions trophies on her virtual mantelpiece.

Industry recognition also includes:

• Ad News recognised her in their top 40 under 40 list of media people. She also works as a trainer for NGEN and the IAB.
• MYOB ranked her as 4th on their ‘young & influencial list’ in the lifestyle/ media category
• B&T recognized her as a powerful woman in media – Ranked 28th in Australia
• IAB Trainer running their Digital Training Program for marketing professionals

Ellie is also the proud mother of two children, Max – an eight year old golden retriever, and Nancy May – a four year old, little person.

Yasmin is the leader of the Sydney arm of SheSays. Since 2010 SheSays has organised close to 30 events for men and women in the creative industries as well as offering a free mentoring program called Who's Your Momma? 

In 2014 she co-founded The Working Model, an initiative that aims to keep talented people in the creative industries.

She is a thought leader on the topic of gender diversity within the creative industries and her perspective on gender equality issues is regularly sought after. Her focus is how to move discussions into a productive space that faciliates change. 

She is also an award-winning copywriter with over ten years experience.

Ruby’s goal is to empower people and projects to achieve their potential. Her expertise meets at the intersection of marketing, events, small business management and leadership.

She is the owner and Director of The Positive Projects Group, a social enterprise which works to empower people + ideas to make positive change.

She is a Director of the Frontline Management Institute, which was set up in 1999 by her father and continues to empower the managers and leaders of tomorrow with the skills they need to effectively lead and manage their teams and organisations.

Ruby holds on ongoing volunteer role as the Head of Events and Sponsorship for SheSays Sydney and a contract role as Merchandising Assistant for TEDxSydney 2016.

She has cofounded The Working Model, an initiative that aims to keep talented people in the creative industries.

Campaign Asia voted Lizi Hamer in the Top 20 Women to watch in Asia, and she’s been quoted to have the ‘enthusiasm of a school bus on the way to the zoo’.

Lizi Hamer is a Creative Director who solves business problems with a creative brain. Over the last 10 years she paved the way for global product launches, disrupted the norm on a budget of pennies, changed laws & excited the social sphere. Lizi has previously worked with starts up to ensure they have the best beginnings, creatively led large brands to innovate & teaches at The Change School.