Risk and Resilience: Strategies for innovation focused businesses

With more than two decades of experience in the information and communications technology sector, Rhonda Robati is widely recognised for her commitment to equal opportunities in the workplace, driving business transformation, and mentoring the next generation of leaders. Her dedication to this purpose was recognised at the Woman in ICT Awards, where she won the Achievement category in 2022.

Under Rhonda’s leadership, Crayon APAC successfully effected the strategic integration of rhipe, EMT Distribution, and Parallo to position the business as one of the largest distributors in the region. Rhonda’s strategic vision and commercial acumen has ensured continued investment and expansion to Crayon’s offerings and ability to deliver increased value to its partner ecosystem.

Prior to joining Crayon, Rhonda held senior leadership roles at Oracle and Salesforce and drove growth for two SaaS start-ups as Global Chief Revenue Officer.

A member of the ARN Hall of Fame, Warren Nolan has over 25 years of experience in the financial and technology services sectors. Widely recognised as a pioneering innovator in the regions cloud licensing distribution and services arena, Warren’s technical expertise spans areas from infrastructure migration to software asset management and compliance.

His expertise in driving partner success through collaboration and shared goals has played an important role in Crayon’s regional growth. Warren focuses on risk mitigation and profitability, ensuring that partners thrive in a competitive market.

Warren’s understanding of the dynamics between service providers and customers has helped Crayon to build an expansive network of strong and long-standing partner relationships across the region. His experience building subscription-based annuity-based business models stems from a background in commercial finance and business development, including leadership roles at several of Australia’s leading finance companies.

Warren joined the Crayon APAC Executive Leadership team from rhipe, where he spent eight years as Chief Commercial Officer

Dr. Sweeney is a principal advisor and industry analyst at IBRS. He is a recognised technology and business thought leader, often called on by media, vendors and enterprise leadership for his expert commentary and guidance on Future of Work, digital innovation, workforce transformation, and organisational change strategy.

For more than 30 years, Dr Sweeney’s boundless curiosity has kept him on the cusp of technological and cultural change. His career milestones include developing early ‘big data’ analytics for fraud detection, founding the first commercial Internet company in the Asia and publishing doctoral research on ICT policy and implementation in the education industry.

Prior to joining IBRS, Dr. Sweeney was the Vice President of Research for Gartner. He holds a PhD from the University of Newcastle, and his fields of professional and technical expertise include Microsoft, Google, AWS, VMware by Broadcom, and Citrix.

The founder of SHM Advisory, Shane Moffitt is a cyber security leader with a track record of highly successful technical project management and delivery for enterprise, government and non-profit organisations.

Between 2018-2024, Shane led the cyber security functions that ushered Victorian government bodies and citizens through the explosive cybersecurity threat levels of the global pandemic. As the author of the current cyber strategy for the Victorian state government, Shane holds a unique level of insight he national cyber-resilience mission will influence policy settings in for industry and business sectors.

Shane’s career history includes advising government and multinational companies like Google as the Oceania lead on ISO 27001 for EY, Information Security Project Manager for the Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance, and Project Manager, Identity and Access Management at the National Australia Bank.

Shane holds a master’s degree in business administration and a graduate certificate in IT management from Charles Sturt University.

Tim Stephinson, Chief Operating Officer

Tim has a commercial background in understanding and leveraging technology to drive strategic outcomes for businesses.

Prior to SherpaTech, Tim worked as Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operations Officer for a multinational entertainment company that delivers unique world-class shows.

In addition, Tim drove a family business scaleup leading to trade sale, harnessing the best technology to drive efficiency and reduce risk.

With the growing threat of cyber and professional risks, Tim leverages his knowledge of systems, process and technology to assist clients understand and mitigate risk.

Andrew Bremnar, Managing Director

Andrew has been in the financial services industry with a focus on technology since 1988, holding roles at organisations like PwC, IBM, as the Practice Leader for Financial Services, and Gartner as Managing Partner – Financial Services.

Since 2015, Andrew has been helping tech and IT organisations understand and mitigate their risks including insurance. As the Managing Director of SherpaTech, an insurance specialist for the tech and IT industry, Andrew’s experience is called on to demystifying the “what and the how” of insurance.

Andrew holds a Master of Applied Finance, is a member of the Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand and is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Todd Sampson

Todd is a Canadian-born Australian documentary-maker, television presenter, and former advertising executive. He gained prominence as a regular panellist on the ABC television program “Gruen,” which delves into the intricacies of advertising and marketing. Beyond “Gruen,” Sampson has created and hosted several acclaimed documentary series, including “Redesign My Brain,” which won the 2014 AACTA Award for Best Documentary Television Program, and “Todd Sampson’s Body Hack,” nominated for two Logie Awards.

In the advertising realm, Sampson served as CEO and later non-executive chairman of Leo Burnett Australia, leading the agency to numerous accolades. He co-created the Earth Hour initiative, a global environmental movement engaging over 1.4 billion people across more than 5,500 cities.

Sampson holds a B.A. from Queen’s University in Ontario and an M.B.A. from the University of Cape Town. He resides in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs with his wife, Neomie, and their two daughters. An avid adventurer, he completed an unguided ascent of Mount Everest.

Sam’s first full-time job was at The Australian, at a time when the country’s national newspaper produced the largest technology section in the world.

The influence of technology brand advertising spend on News Limited’s budgets and boardroom agenda was so immense, she was driven to understand why.

Fast forward through a 20+ year career in B2B tech marketing and communications, and Sam’s quest to fully comprehend the big strategic picture is greater than ever.

An analytical, pattern-recognising mind and knack for turning complex concepts into creative, easily understood anecdotes make Sam a gifted storyteller.

Her ability to identify and articulate the true – and often hidden – value of technology in business terms been deployed on GTM programs and campaigns for IBM, Australia Post, VMware, EMC, Telstra, Konica Minolta, Thomson Reuters, Sony, Ricoh, Paypal, Fuji Xerox and Vodafone to name a few.

Alongside her role heading up internal content and creative production services for Crayon APAC, Sam leads the regional market research program. Her research hypotheses have shaped the commission and release of four substantial studies into technology adoption in the SMB sector and the high-performance strategies that sustain growth objectives for Crayon’s partners.

Prior to joining Crayon APAC, Sam headed up the Strategy and Content services division for a B2B marketing agency and was the APAC regional marketing director for Intralinks, the world’s leading technology platform for securely managing mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, fundraises and syndications in the global capital markets.

Samantha holds a BA Hons. in Political Science from Victoria University, NZ.

Lorna Burman’s deep commitment to developing trusted relationships between channel partners and technology vendors is the result of 20 years running her own IT consultancy and leading client engagements for cybersecurity vendors and service providers.

Her time in the trenches also impressed upon Lorna an acute understanding of the human behaviours that can make or break the path to cyber-resilient operations.

As the Distribution and Partner Manager at usecure, Lorna works with MSPs to deliver Human Risk Management solutions and services to their customers.

Her ability to articulate the full value of Human Risk Management to business and technical stakeholders helps Crayon’s partners to develop new revenue streams and has driven rapid growth for uSecure in the Asia Pacific region.

After three decades of experience as a principal consultant for leading advisory firms, service providers and vendors, Gino Barletta has developed an unparalleled ability to identify and solution for highly complex risk factors in business and IT operations.

His technical expertise and deep understanding of the entire Microsoft portfolio enables Gino to advise partners on everything from conceptual designs and solution architecture all the way through to detailed trouble shooting and remediation best practice. His natural talent for engaging in creative and abductive thinking and hands-on technical expertise make Gino a rare breed of consultant in the cybersecurity space.

Before joining Crayon APAC as part of the cybersecurity emtDistribution subsidiary team, Gino held roles as Principal Consultant and Senior Technical Consultant for Thoman Duryea, Dimension Data, Insight, Avanade and IBM.