Ross McEwan
Group Executive Retail Banking Services
Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Ross McEwan is the Group Executive Retail Banking Services in May 2007, with responsibility for Retail Banking Services – Australia’s largest retail banking operation. Ross joined the Commonwealth Bank as Executive General Manager, Retail Sales in December 2006 where he was responsible for the branch network, third party banking and direct banking. Ross enjoys water and snow skiing, cycling, reading and spending time with his family. He is married with two children.

Kevin Panozza
Chief Executive Officer
SalesForce

Kevin Panozza founded SalesForce Australia in partnership with advertising agency DDB in 1994; the ASX- listed company Salmat purchased SalesForce in 2005. Mr. Panozza’s lifetime experience and his strong personal convictions about stimulating work environments and empowering cultures have propelled SalesForce to a record three straight Best Employer Award for Australia and New Zealand (2004, 2005, 2006).

Mr. Panozza’s early reputation as a builder of high-performing sales teams brought him to the attention of the airline Ansett Australia in the 1980s. His sales efforts delivered a revenue revolution. New sales strategies led to a far greater reliance on commercial account management by telephone, and Mr. Panozza left Ansett in order to develop a call centre to fulfill this function.

As managing director of SalesForce, Mr. Panozza built a team that has achieved strong revenue growth in extremely competitive, dynamic times. SalesForce has maintained consistent profitability, organisational stability and the ability to embrace and adapt new business philosophies and techniques while deploying emerging technologies. He continues to lead SalesForce today as the chief executive officer.

Jared Mortlock
Manager, Speech Implementation Team
Telecom New Zealand

Jared Mortlock manages the Speech Implementation Team at Telecom New Zealand. He is responsible for maximising the business benefit from Telecom’s world class Speech Application along with their Touch Tone IVR’s, and providing the best customer experience possible through IVR. Telecom takes more than 100 millions calls annually to IVR and Jared is key to ensuring each contact is the best it can be for the customer and Telecom, and does this by maximising Telecoms technical capability, will maintaining a good customer experience.

Danielle Kithcart
Manager, Call Centre Technology
Toyota Financial Services

In this role, Danielle has responsibility for the development, deployment and support of Call Center Technology for the Toyota Financial Services call centers including IVR, Telephony, Work Force Management, Quality Monitoring, Diallers, Collection Systems and Risk Management.  Danielle's experience spans more than 20 years delivering technology solutions in the distribution and financial services industries.

Rory Herriman
Managing Partner
Ponvia Technology

Rory Herriman leads the Contact Center Solutions practice area for Ponvia Technology – a Management Consulting firm that specialises in customer interaction. In this role, Rory works with large and mid sized organisations to assess and define their customer interaction strategy and technology solutions.

Rory’s background includes more than 15 years of experience in the telecommunications and call centre industries, including senior level roles at MCI and executive level roles at Sears. His expertise spans both call centre operations and technology and includes operating environments from 500 to 20,000 seats.

Peter Richards
Assistant General Manager, Channel Strategy
Child Support Agency

Peter has been working in Australia’s Child Support Agency for more than 10 years where he has been involved in business strategy development, communications and project management. Peter has led many projects that merge new technology solutions with the organisational business needs. Peter’s current role is Assistant General Manager in ICT – and his portfolio includes Channel Strategy, Business Intelligence, Knowledge Management and program delivery of online web services and telephone call recording and analysis. One of his objectives is to optimise the use of technology to increase business value and ultimately increase value to the customer.

Wes Hayden
President and Chief Executive Officer
Genesys

Wes Hayden is responsible for setting the company direction and managing overall operations for Genesys. Previously, Mr. Hayden served as senior vice president for the Americas.

Prior to joining Genesys in 1999, Mr. Hayden was vice president of the central USA region for Informix Software. He has also held sales and sales management positions with Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment Corporation and Applied Data Research.

Mr. Hayden holds a Bachelor of Science degree and a master of business administration degree. He currently serves on the board of trustees for the Glenkirk Foundation in Northbrook, Illinois and on the board of directors of the International Women's Democracy centre in Washington, D.C.

Robert Winder
Vice President, Technology Strategy
Genesys

Robert Winder is Vice President, Technology Strategy & Chief Evangelist for Genesys. He is responsible for Genesys' technology strategy, innovation leadership and evangelisation. Prior to joining Genesys ten years ago, Mr. Winder served in a number of contact center end user environments including FirstDirect in the United Kingdom. Mr. Winder has served as a spokesperson for numerous customer service related venues, including public speaking at industry events, SuperComm, VoiceCon, etc; published in several customer service industry journals and also authors a blog on customer service topics.

Michael McBrien
Senior Vice President APAC
Genesys

Recently appointed senior vice president for field operations in the Asia Pacific, Michael McBrien moves from his role as Vice President of Genesys Voice Application Solutions Team for the Americas where he was responsible for managing a team of sales specialists in the Americas and supporting their voice self-service sales efforts. This team represented solutions that included GVP, Voice Genie, Nuance, IBM Speech, Virtual Hold, and ClickFox.

Prior to joining Genesys in 2003, Mr. McBrien was a sales director at TuVox, a voice applications development company. He has also held sales and sales management positions with S1 Corporation, Edify, Financial Fusion and Intervoice.

Jason Stirling
Vice President, Australasia
Genesys

Jason Stirling is responsible for managing the overall operation of Genesys in the Australasia region, including developing and managing sales and customer relationships in Australia and New Zealand, with a particular emphasis on ensuring customers maximise their return on investment from Genesys solutions.

Mr. Stirling has been with Genesys for more than nine years, and most recently served as Managing Director, Australasia, to which he was appointed in 2004. Previously, Mr. Stirling was Sales Director, responsible for Genesys’ business development in Australia, New Zealand, with a particular focus on the telecommunications, outsourcing, banking, and financial services sectors.

Before joining Genesys in 1997, Mr. Stirling worked for Hewlett-Packard Australia in a business development role focusing on telecommunications companies. Mr. Stirling holds a Bachelor of Business, and is an active member of the ATA and CCMA.

Steve Rutledge
Vice President, Product and Solutions Marketing
Genesys

Steve Rutledge is responsible for setting strategic direction and guiding investments within Genesys for solutions that deliver the best business value for customers in the areas of contact centres and customer service.

During his ten years’ tenure at Genesys, Mr. Rutledge has also served as vice president of strategic sales operations, responsible for identifying key customer needs and managing sales force initiatives; and in senior product management and product marketing roles.

Prior to Genesys, Mr. Rutledge held marketing and sales positions at Intel Corporation and AT&T. In the 1980s, he helped some of AT&T’s largest customers implement (early) CTI solutions. Mr. Rutledge has an MBA. and a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering.