Ageism - The Next Frontier

Leonie co-founded The Ageing Revolution to create transformative change, develop better services and products and engage ageing as a beneficial part of the community. She is in her element coming up with creative solutions to difficult problems. She believes the ageing of the population will be one of the biggest disruptions of the 21st Century. 

Apart from a brief sojourn as a pop star in Taiwan at the age of 33, Leonie has worked in academia, not-for-profits and government. She has delivered innovative whole of government policies, managed community engagement projects that incorporate technological and face to face solutions and facilitated events and discussion panels. She is also a firm believer in the inherent creativity of human beings to bring about good.

Simon is an avid believer in striking while the iron is hot. A scientist and partnership marketing expert by background, Simon's approach to changing ageing is grounded in practical action. As a co-founder of The Ageing Revolution, he has travelled around Australia talking to people about ageing and growing older. From Broken Hill to Darwin to Newcastle, Adelaide and Melbourne - our ageing population is affecting us all. Simon's fun and playful approach to ageing will have everyone looking forward to growing older AND continuing to play games. 

With a background in finance and law, Rick has worked as an investment banker on Wall Street, in a top-tier law firm in Malaysia, and in sales at IBM.  His international journey took him to Bloomberg in London, where he helped clients with financial analytics and data, and Sydney where he had a key account management role for international investment banks.  Rick is passionate about helping customers achieve better diversity and financial outcomes, and is excited about the potential of the technology to provide powerful educational experiences.

Dr Maggie Haertsch is a co-founder, executive director and CEO of the Arts Health Institute. With over 30 years' experience in the health care industry, Maggie began her career as a registered nurse and midwife and holds a PhD in Behavioural Sciences in Medicine. She has worked in a number of academic, teaching and research positions including health consultancy roles in East Timor, remote areas of Australia, the UK and USA.

Maggie is passionate about improving lives through the integration of the arts into all aspects of health and aged care. Under her leadership she has introduced a number of arts in health initiatives including the highly publicised Music & Memory program from the USA and the translation of the SMILE Study to Play Up now running in over 100 residential aged care services nationally. Maggie has grown the Arts Health Institute from a start-up to a major employer of artists nationally as well as increasing the institute’s research and education programs. 

In 2016 Maggie introduced the first training program in Australia to measure social care related quality of life for people living in residential aged care using the ASCOT measures run by the University of Kent. In 2015, Maggie was a finalist in the United Nations Australian Association’s Media Peace Prize Awards for her work promoting positive images of ageing and in the same year she was recognised as one of the 100 Women of Influence in Australia. 

In 2016 Maggie was recognised as Woman of the Year in Newcastle NSW. She sits on the Industry Advisory Committee for Macquarie University centre for the Health Economy and is an adjunct fellow in the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University. 

Daniel Breda is a painter, virtual reality artist and musician based in Wollongong, NSW. He completed his MFA at The National Art School in 2016 and has since developed a multidisciplinary approach to art making. Breda’s practice began with psychedelic and abstract painting that he executed with vibrant synthetic colour. His artist practice has expanded and he now applies his colourist perspective to painting installations, VR painting, VR app development and videography. His advocacy of art in VR has seen him provide tilt brush tutorials and has pushed the painting installation app to be showcased at multiple VR events in Australia and abroad. When he’s not making art he’s most often seen gallivanting around the Australian East Coast singing with Wollongong punk band Hoon.