Newday

Dana is Aboriginal/Chinese person and a descendant of the Ngarrindjeri people in South Australia and has a passion for working with Aboriginal people and communities. She commenced her career as a youth community development officer and went on to work in a number of senior roles with the SA public sector in which she had responsibility for program management, service delivery, policy development and strategic planning.

Prior to Dana establishing her own consultancy, she worked with The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI). In this role she was responsible for implementing projects and supporting team members to apply innovative techniques and develop solutions to complex social and service problems. One successful solution, the Family by Family program, delivered a peer-to-peer model where families are matched together to create behaviour change.

Dana is also a certified mindfulness and meditation teacher with the Brach and Korfield Radical Compassion Institute.

Dana will be talking about collective leadership at the Newday Leadership Summit and exploring how this considers egotism, trauma and the need to evolve systems that help heal individuals, organisations and societies.

For over 12 years Robbo has been a guiding light for World Class athletes, esteemed executives, and visionary business leaders on their journey to
transcend limitations and realise their potential.

Robbo’s hunger for unleashing elite performance stems from his life as a former professional sprinter, transitioning into coaching Olympic and Paralympic athletes, culminating in being named Australian Paralympic athletics coach of the year in 2018.

Robbo has since focused his skills in service of the business and corporate world, harnessing insights from his collaboration with top-tier psychologists alongside elite performance techniques and cutting-edge neuroscience. This fusion of disciplines has supported some of his clients back from the edge, dismantling disempowering beliefs and transforming both their professional and personal worlds.

In Robbo’s keynote you’ll learn about simple and powerful breathing techniques that you can use throughout your everyday life to connect to more vitality, greater mental clarity, deep calmness and much more.

Robbo will share some important daily routines that have a significant impact on your mental & physical well-being & performance capabilities. This can save you from a lot of unnecessary stress & wasted energy. Connecting to these empowering routines means you’ll have far more in the tank for a more satisfying day.

Yamini is not only the world’s first economist turned Bollywood dancing business storyteller, but she’s also the first keynote announcement for our Newday Leadership Summit!

She is consistently voted among the top business storytellers globally and co-founded Australia’s first storytelling company. An award-winning speaker and best-selling author, she has worked with leaders from Google, Adidas, Ford, Atlassian, Tiffany and co and more. Her work with clients is commercially savvy, results driven and sets them up professionally.

At Newday, Yamini will wow us with insights, inspiration and actionable advice. She will teach us how to find and unleash our X-factor to connect, engage and inspire people, to move people to action, to win that pitch, promotion or business result and to achieve personal and professional impact.

Her research is conclusive. Everyone has X factor potential.

Yaser is a former refugee, survivor, and advocate dedicated to improving the lives of refugees in Australia. He arrived in Australia in 2014, started from scratch to study English, and ultimately earned a Business degree from the University of Sydney. Yaser currently serves as Marketing Activation Lead for Wesfarmers.

In addition to his daily work, Yaser is an inspiring speaker, sharing his story of survival, resilience, and the challenges faced by refugees seeking employment in Australia. He believes in the potential of refugees to become leaders and encourages corporations to hire more refugees.

As one of the Refugee Council of Australia's ambassadors, Yaser is committed to spreading awareness and promoting the inclusion of refugees. He has spoken at a variety of events, including Microsoft, KPMG, Virgin Unite, Glow Up Career, and Social Good Summit Australia.

Yaser's vision is to empower more skilled refugees to become tomorrow's leaders in Australia and beyond. At Newday, Yvonne and Yaser will share their story of how through connection and embracing difference, positive change can happen.

Yvonne Kelly is the trailblazing CEO of Glow Up Careers, an award-winning Social Enterprise, and winner of a Women Changing the World Award in London for Cultural Diversity and Inclusion. Glow Up's mission is to "Empower everyone to have the career of their dreams no matter who they are or where they are from”.

A human resources specialist with over 25 years across a successful international career in the recruitment industry, Yvonne has developed a passion for Diversity Hiring and Inclusion @ Work.

Shining a light on AI in hiring, and the myriad technological barriers to entry, Yvonne can unlock the secrets to 21st Century job-seeking, so everyone can have a seat at the table.

And by tirelessly working to shift leader mindsets, she is at the vanguard of positively changing hiring practices from within organisations seeking to be more open, inclusive and compassionate. At Newday, Yvonne and Yaser will share their story of how through connection and embracing difference, positive change can happen.

Dan is an acrobat turned communication lecturer, speaker and facilitator who works across multiple sectors to help organisations bring important ideas to life. Through his company, Daring Humans, Dan works in communication, collaboration, strategy, and wellness. The aim is always to create engagement, clarity, and connection.

He holds degrees in Communication, English, and Drama and has worked as a full-time lecturer/researcher at Charles Sturt University, winning a faculty award for excellence and innovation.

Dan has a background in elite gymnastics, acting, stunts (he has been a stunt double for Mark Wahlberg), circus, and physical theatre which fuels his embodied approach to presenting and teaching.

At the Summit Dan will share stories and tools to engage you with spectacular ideas about connection.

His diverse experience in education, art, business, sport and health, have given him a unique perspective as someone who helps others develop high-performance cultures, and consider what it is to be a ‘daring human’ for the greater good.

Cherie is a proud autistic woman and the founding director and CEO at The Digital Picnic, Australia’s leading social media training agency.

Whilst Cherie knows profit is cool, her bigger success revolves around disrupting the industry, and consistently leaning into the urge to make the world a better place for having neurodivergent people circulating within it.

Renowned for her ability to engage an audience of any size, Cherie has just the right amount of everything you’d expect from a great speaker: credibility, relatability, memorability, all finished off with an uncanny ability to 'read the room'. Cherie is rapidly becoming well known for her leading her team in a passionately human-centric way that builds on the way the world of work has changed since Covid entered our lives!

At the Newday Summit, Cherie will share how her neurodivergent strengths have built her own successful company and how you can make your hiring process more neuroinclusive.

Dr Kim Le is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist specialising in video gaming addiction or ‘gaming disorder’. In 2015, Dr Le was awarded a federal grant to investigate video gaming addiction clinics in Asia. This led to a TEDx Talk at Adelaide Town Hall titled ‘The Spell of Digital Immersion’. In 2021, Dr Le filmed an interactive SBS documentary ‘Are You Addicted to Technology?’

What make’s Kim a very different psychiatrist is his love of stand-up comedy, with over 400 performances to date! He has toured his Fringe show ‘War on Wellbeing’, a psychiatrist-comedian’s perspective on happiness to audiences across Australia – there is so much of this we think will resonate with everyone at Newday.

At our Summit, Kim will explore what connection means to a psychiatrist and a comedian and how we can build it as leaders and in our lives. He will share current research on happiness and help us understand what this might say about employees who are disconnected. And while we might not be conscripts in a war when it comes to wellbeing, it will definitely be a delight to learn how we might learn a bit more about how to win our battles with what can make us feel unhappy!

Megumi is best known for her book, Quietly Powerful: How your quiet nature is your hidden leadership strength, which received the Australian Career Book Award by RSA Oceania and Best Leadership Book by the Australian Business Book Awards in 2020. She is an international speaker, author and consultant on leadership, culture, and diversity and inclusion.

Throughout her career and consulting with some of Australia's largest organisations, including banks, super funds, insurers and government departments, Megumi came to realise that the ‘alpha’ or ‘hero’ leadership style alone is outdated and inadequate. In 2016, Megumi launched Quietly Powerful to share a different approach to leadership based on Quietly Powerful Leaders she interviewed (including Katrina Webb!), people she has coached, and her own experiences as a quieter professional.

She also co-founded Leaders who Listen in 2020 to highlight the value of creating a listening culture, learning from Quietly Powerful leaders. Co-founders Megumi, Anna Reeve and Leigh Gassner develop leaders whose high-quality listening unlocks the collective intelligence to navigate complexity, innovate, manage risks, build inclusive, engaged and high performing organisations.

At Newday, Megumi will connect us with practical strategies to help leaders become aware of power dynamics in ways that create safety and space for people to speak more openly with them, creating 'leaders who listen'.

Mickey Kumatpi Marratyu O’Brien is an Aboriginal person and descendant of the Kaurna (Adelaide Plains) and Narrunga (Yorke Peninsula) peoples. He has been providing cultural advice for many years and is a proud ambassador for the Kaurna people. His warm Welcome to Country is always a highlight at our summits.

Culture is an important part of Mickey's life and he honours the responsibility passed down to him by his father, well-known Kaurna elder, Uncle Lewis O’Brien, by incorporating culture into every Welcome to Country. He is truly valued as a Newday Leadership advisor.

Katrina Webb is recognised and acknowledged for her unique athleticism and outstanding success as a Paralympic athlete. She has won Gold, Silver and Bronze medals in athletics at three Paralympic Games.

She was the first torch bearer to enter the Olympic Stadium for the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games and in 2006 Katrina was selected to present on behalf of the International Paralympic Committee to the United Nations in New York.

To add to this she has walked the Kokoda track and has trekked to Basecamp Everest. Katrina was selected as one of two Paralympians Ambassadors for the International Paralympic Committee at the London and Rio Paralympic Games. She was a reporter with Ch7 at Tokyo Paralympic Games and will work on air with Ch 9 at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games

Katrina is an international speaker, leadership and personal mastery consultant, trainer in wellbeing and resilience, a physiotherapist and also the founder and director of Newday.

Drafted to Geelong at 28yrs old, James Podsiadly had a less than traditional pathway into AFL. The process saw 'Pods' gain a great understanding and appreciation for strong leadership, teamwork and personal resilience. With an education background in Exercise Science and Health, Business and his AFL playing and coaching career, he learnt firsthand how important physical activity is to the community's physical and mental wellbeing and development. It was evident AFL and sport offered the perfect vehicle to drive these learnings and engage with the wider community - and the idea of AFL Max was born!

With a passion for getting kids active, leadership, entrepreneurship, and personal growth, Pods will share his learnings and insights on business and the importance of leadership.

Matthew Wright-Simon is co-director of Newday Leadership. He works alongside Katrina in curating, designing and hosting leadership summits, labs and programs.

Matthew is a strategist, facilitator and storyteller. His purpose is to creatively engage and activate people to contribute to positive social, environmental and economic impact. He has led hundreds of impact projects and a purpose-driven enterprise for more than 20 years.

Alongside and prior to his role with Newday Leadership, Matthew’s diverse commercial work with his engagement consultancy, Engage Change, is informed by his roles in thought leadership, philanthropy and conservation with TEDxAdelaide, the Awesome Foundation and Landscape Partnerships, an environmental NGO he co-founded several years ago.

Matthew has been involved as a founder and has helped lead several social enterprise ventures and currently holds a board position with the South Australian Social Enterprise Council, the state peak body.

Matthew is a passionate advocate for wild places and nature, something he regularly connects with as an enthusiastic trail and ultramarathon runner.