KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Dr Lena Waizenegger is a Business Process Optimization and Automation Specialist working in the Robotic Process Automation team at Air New Zealand. She uses a holistic approach to process optimization that aligns automation technologies, people, governance, and workflow to improve people’s daily work tasks and processes with them in a collaborative fashion. Before joining the airline industry, Lena was a Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and the founder of the Early Career Academics Forum at AUT. Lena’s work has been published in top academic Journals and presented at renowned international conferences. Her research has been funded, among others, by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research. Lena’s research was featured in outlets like Forbes, Psychology Today and the BBC.Lena is also a proud mum of twins and loves the outdoors, especially hiking, snowboarding and mountain biking.

Greg Cross is CEO and Co-Founder of Soul Machines a Deep Tech AI Research company that brings life to the digital worlds of our future with its revolutionary Autonomous Animation platform and an end user Creative Suite which democratizes the deployment of Avatars for a wide range of creators. He is one of the original tech nomads, spending his career travelling to and living in every major tech market in the world. He now splits his time between the United States/New Zealand and creates businesses that compete on the international stage. Most recently PowerbyProxi, a wireless charging company he co-founded, was sold to Apple in 2017.

Greg is Chairman of luxury fashion brand Dadelszen and is also the Sir John Logan Campbell Executive in Residence at the University of Auckland Business School. He was recently inducted into New Zealand’s Technology Hall of Fame as the recipient of the 2019 Flying Kiwi Award and was a Auckland Grammar Augusta Award winner in 2020.

Matt works in the merge of the technological with the social. As the Chair of the AI Forum working group on Large Language Models, Matt's focus is on driving responsible innovation to position New Zealand's organisations for a competitive edge through the effective use of AI. Matt is also CEO and Founder of FranklyAI, an Auckland based startup owned by Beca which has been a forerunner in the generative AI industry, lauded for its pioneering approaches to leveraging AI for safe and secure enterprise use cases.

Paul O’Neil is the Head of Legal, Consultancy and General Counsel at the Employers and Manufacturers Association and he commenced this role in December 2022. Paul leads the EMA’s Legal and Consulting teams in their delivery of business advice and assistance throughout various regions in New Zealand.Prior to this, he was Deputy Chief Executive Operations and General Counsel at the Serious Fraud Office overseeing their financial crime investigation and prosecution work and before that was the Head of Enforcement at the Financial Markets Authority. Paul has represented New Zealand on various international committees relating to fraud, corruption and financial crime generally . He previously worked in private practice as a litigator at law firms in both New Zealand and London across a wide range of practice areas, including regulatory investigations and proceedings, energy, construction and telecommunications. Paul holds an LLB (Hons) from the University of Auckland.