2023 Speakers

Opening Keynote Speaker

Rich Mironov is a 40-year veteran of Silicon Valley product management, including six startups. He coaches product leaders, helps design software product organizations, and sometimes parachutes into software companies as the interim VP Products or CPO. He’s been blogging about product management since 2002 here and wrote “The Art of Product Management.”

Hear from Rich on Product Waste and how Product Management adds value. Product adds most value by doing relentless discovery/validation before we start any development, spend 5% to see if it’s really worth building.

Tiffany is an experienced international leader, focused on driving customer business outcomes, transformation, innovative strategy and leveraging partnerships to drive growth.

Currently the country manager for AWS in New Zealand, leading the commercial sales team across large enterprise, Software as a Service providers, small to medium businesses and start-ups, Tiffany coordinates 150+ employees to deliver assistance across thousands of customers and partners as they leverage cloud-based operating models to transform their overall architecture with AWS services. Her teams work hand-in-hand with customers and AWS partners to provide deep expertise in the architecture, design, development and implementation of cloud computing initiatives that result in real business outcomes. Over the last 8 years AWS has been helping New Zealand organizations to innovate, succeed, and grow globally. Our focus in Aotearoa is to help unleash further innovation, drive greater productivity, increase our skilled workforce, and truly position New Zealand at the forefront of digital commerce for generations of Kiwis to come.

Tiffany has 24+ years’ experience in Services and Technology businesses with international roles in the US, Europe and Asia.

Janine is the Co-Founder and CEO of Easy Crypto, NZ’s leading cryptocurrency platform which has transacted over two billion dollars and supports over 250,000 users across NZ, Australia and South Africa.
Janine is a highly regarded Leader in NZ, driving collaboration between the industry, government and traditional finance. She advocated on behalf of the industry in Parliament and was invited to join the V20 virtual asset summit as part of the G20 event. She sits on the Executive Council for FinTechNZ, is a Wishlist Crypto Authority, is a member of YPO and is about to star in a Docuseries for TVNZ.

Raf took up the Leader of The Opportunities Party in early 2022. Prior to that, he served two terms as a Christchurch City Councillor. As Chair of the Finance Committee, his main focus was the Council’s financial position and insurance settlement, as well as its post-earthquake strategic direction, risk management and engagement with Central Government. 

He also acted as an Independent Advisor to the Christchurch Foundation on the distribution of donated funds and support to the victims of the 15th March Terror Attack. He sat on the board of Christchurch City Holdings Ltd and was a member of Local Government working groups on Funding, Risk and Localism and the Central Government Working Group on Trade for All. 

Raf spent 11 years trading global markets and providing high-level macro-economic advice for investment banks in London from 1989-2000. He left banking to work for an environmental start-up, Trucost, which became a pioneering company focused on measuring and accounting for the environmental costs of business. 

In 2002, he moved to New Zealand and has since been actively involved in governance, strategy and social enterprise. He has worked with the AsiaNZ Foundation, the Christchurch Foundation, the Volunteer Army Foundation, Refugee Resettlement Services, Christchurch Budget Services, Pillars and the Christchurch Arts Festival as both a volunteer and board member. 

In 2023, he proposed the introduction of the Teal Card, an app designed to invest in and promote sustainable and healthy outcomes for our younger generations. 

He has a degree in Economics and Social Studies from the University of Manchester and a Graduate Diploma in Political Science and a Masters in International Law and Politics from the University of Canterbury. 

Brett was born in Hawkes Bay and attended the University of Canterbury where he earned a degree in Physics and Economics in 2001.

Following a successful consulting career, Brett founded Webtools in 2014, a software company providing IT solutions, focusing on three key industries; energy, health and agriculture. In 2019, Brett sold the Webtools Energy business to a private equity group but continues to support the remaining Health and Agritech businesses alongside co-founders Harry and Melissa.

When he’s not working, Brett spends time fixing his Datsun 1200 race car, clay-target shooting and hanging out with his wife and 3 daughters.

Ben Reid is a technology strategist and futurist based in Aotearoa. He has over 25 years’ diverse tech sector consulting experience, working with leadership teams helping to navigate future technology and innovation in their organisations. Ben is also known for writing his weekly Memia newsletter on Substack covering the latest emerging tech trends and accelerating global change. 

Ben is also known for writing his weekly Memia newsletter on Substack covering the latest emerging tech trends and accelerating global change and will be talking about his new book Fast Forward Aotearoa: How Emerging Technology Is Defining The Future Of New Zealand…And What We Can Do About It.

An authoritative voice in the Māori tech area and more recently with Māori ethics with AI. A future thinking leader with Te Tiriti, Māori culture, tikanga, te ao Māori and how those rights and beliefs are applied to the digital and biological sciences.
A director of his boutique Research and Māori cultural advisory company Taiuru & Associates, he is also an experienced governor who resides on a number of private, community and government boards and advisory committees.

Cris is an experienced digital strategist, with more than 13 years’ track-record of building ventures, both as a business CEO and management consultant. He has handled an extensive full-cycle driving deal execution from strategy to integration, taken care of public sector to enterprise, corporate and SME accounts.

Cris takes on the Founding Expert role at Frontier Leader Institute, a leading boutique consulting firm in Vietnam specialized in digital transformation, corporate management, leadership.

Cris incubates and invests in a number of startups and M3TA Analytics makes Data accessible to the masses with the proprietary No-Code “text-to-chart” technology, especially for web3 businesses.

Cris was the Deputy CEO for Sovico Group, one of the largest conglomerates in Vietnam.

Hear from Cris on the Asymmetric Competition in Digital Age, from Asia Perspective and Actionable Insights for New Zealand.

Sponsored by the Asia New Zealand Foundation.

Tech Summit MC

Pip is a programmer and coder – of People.  She is a communication and engagement expert, helping leaders build more effective, engaged and meaning-full teams that deliver more meaningful outcomes for their organisation and their customers.

Pip’s mantra is ‘Everything we do, starts, and ends, with People’ and her programs help leaders put the fundamentals in place to build great teams that have the chemistry, clarity and confidence to keep up with the pace of change and deliver value, faster and more effective than they ever thought possible.

She has an extensive leadership background in both the private and public sectors, including 3 years at Microsoft, and leading a Co-design and Innovation Lab in local government.  She is also married to a ‘tech junkie’, who once brought her a Universal Remote as a birthday present.  Surprisingly, they are still together.

Whether she is delivering a keynote, or working with leadership groups, she brings a healthy dose of humour, simple language, and stories.  Like a good single malt, her work is rich, powerful and not watered down.

Pip will be one of the MC’s at this year’s Tech Summit.