Keynote Speakers

Paul Clitheroe AM is Chairman of the Australian Government Financial Literacy Board. The Board sets and implements the National Strategy for financial literacy. It has a particular focus on schools, universities and vocational education. He is a Non-Executive Director of iPac securities which he established in 1983. Today ipac manages $16 billion.

Paul was host of “Money” on Channel 9 from 1993 to 2002. His Talking Money segments run on radio stations all over Australia. He is Chairman of Money Magazine and his book Making Money has sold over 600,000 copies.

Paul is Chairman of the youth anti drink driving body RADD and is an Advisory board member of the University of Sydney Medical School. He is Chairman of the listed Fin Tech company AWI and a Director of the LIC “Wealth Defender” which successfully raised $120 million.

He holds the Chair of Financial Literacy at Macquarie University and is a Professor in the School of Business and Economics.

He was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia in 2008 for services to the financial services industry and the community.

A keen ocean racer, Paul won the 2015 Rolex Sydney to Hobart in his TP52 Balance.

Born and bred in wild Patagonia, Gus Balbontin never allowed his small town and humble beginnings get in the way of his big dreams. A healthy disrespect for authority and a severe case of fomo (fear of missing out) landed him in Australia at the young age of 17.

By the age of 22 he had dropped out of uni, hitchhiked South America, set up his first business and landed his dream job at Lonely Planet. Fast forward a few more years and he was leading the company globally, working with companies such as Google X, Nokia and Amazon on the latest technology, creative cultures and high performing teams.

Seeking a change from corporate life, he hung up his boots as the Executive Director and CTO of Lonely Planet and decided to move back to his entrepreneurial roots, becoming an investor, founder and mentor across the start-up ecosystem in Melbourne. He loves sharing a story, he loves even more, knowing those stories make a difference to people, helping them in their own business and life.

Over the last 3 years Gus has presented to audiences of 10 across regional Australia and New Zealand, to audiences of 10,000 across North America, Europe, South America and Asia. To him there’s no difference. Small, large, private, public, board room to mail room, his lessons hit a chord, his simplicity disarms you, his energy infects you and his counterintuitive way of looking at the world will motivate you to do things different.

Often thought as futurist, not because he predicts the future, but instead because he helps you focus on what you can control to deal with any future. Still want to talk trends? Sure! He loves as much as the next person trying to imagine a world run by AI, but he warns that getting too distracted with future guesses will only take time away from you and your company to actually do something about the future.

Peter Rowsthorn is a high energy, fast paced stand-up comedian one minute and a measured character actor the next. He is probably best known as long-suffering husband and pants-man Brett Craig on Kath & Kim.

Peter’s career really took off in 1988, when he was offered roles in The Comedy Company, Fast Forward and The Big Gig, all in the same week. He chose The Comedy Company and spent the next two seasons with the show. After performing in the feature film Crackers, he became a semi-regular on Hey Hey, It’s Saturday and hosted the Red Faces spin-off Gonged But Not Forgotten. He was also the host of Foxtel’s Sunday Roast for two seasons.

Peter has guested regularly on Thank God You’re Here series 1, 2, 3 and 4, popped up on Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation and hosts Can We Help for the ABC on Friday nights.

He recently appeared on Network 10’s 2018 series of I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

Peter is one of Australia’s best stand-up comedians and is also an extremely skilled Master of Ceremonies.

Simon is an engineer and economist turned social entrepreneur. In 2007, after turning down his dream job offer as a corporate high-flyer, he moved from Australia to South Africa to immerse himself in his true passion: development aid. There he discovered that the biggest problem faced by NGOs and social entrepreneurs is a lack of funding.

Driven by a passion to use business to give back, in 2010, Simon had the idea to start a toilet paper company that builds toilets in the developing world. In 2012, he launched Who Gives A Crap with a crowdfunding campaign, agreeing to sit on a toilet on a live webfeed until he had pre-sold the first $50,000 of toilet rolls. The multi-award winning launch attracted global media attention and generated over $1 million of PR value.

Since launching, Who Gives A Crap has tripled in size year-on-year, primarily relying on word-of-mouth to fuel its growth. In five years, Who Gives A Crap has donated more than $1 million.

Simon is also well known as the co-founder of Shebeen, a non-profit bar in Melbourne’s CBD that opened in February 2013 and ran for 3.5 years. Shebeen sold exotic beer and wine from the developing world, with 100% of the profit from each sale going to a development project in that drink’s country of origin.

Simon is one of Australia’s most prominent social entrepreneurs. His work has been covered by countless media outlets around the world, including The Huffington Post, MTV and The Stanford Social Innovation Review.