Keynotes & Speakers
Keynotes
Corporate Environmental Responsibility: Leveraging Green for Organisational Differentiation and Advantage
Anna Rose, Australian Youth Climate Coalition
Corporate responsibility is changing; customers, clients and employees are now evaluating how green organisations are and using this information to make their decisions about who to use and who to work for. How does your organisation compare on the green scale? In this keynote Anna will discuss what's needed for green success, including achieving institutional cultural change. You will hear real world examples on the barriers faced by other Australian organisations, the strategies they used to overcome them and the benefits they've seen as a direct result of their actions.
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Anna Rose
- Co-Director
- Australian Youth Climate Coalition
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Anna Rose founded the Australian Youth Climate Coalition in November 2006. The coalition unites a diversity of youth organisations to mobilise a generation of young people to solve the climate crisis. The coalition runs a "Switched On Schools" program as well as undertaking advocacy campaigns such as last year's "Adopt a Politician". Anna has been involved in youth environment and social justice organising since she was 14.
Anna was elected National Environment Officer for the National Union of Students in 2005 and is past National Convenor of the Australian Student Environment Network. In this role she designed and launched a nation-wide "Campus Clean Energy" campaign across all 37 Australian Universities, based on work she had done as University of Sydney Student Representative Council (SRC) Environment Officer in 2003. So far, the campaign has achieved significant victories in energy reduction targets and renewable energy across Australian Universities. In her role as NUS National Environment Officer, Anna trained and mentored hundreds of new student leaders in environmental and social justice work, running training workshops on campuses across Australia and writing the first ASEN Campus Organising Guide. She instigated the first annual ASEN Summer Training Camp and worked closely with the staff group Australasian Campuses Towards Sustainability (ACTS).
Anna is a former editor of the Sydney University student paper Honi Soit, member of the United Nations Pacific Youth Environment Network, and Sustainability Team Leader for Project Australia. She frequently speaks and write on climate and energy issues at forums including the recent Blue Planet Summit (Hawaii), Vibewire.net's e-festival of ideas, the This Is Not Art festival, Power Shift 2007 (USA) and the Re-Energize Texas Summit (USA). The highlight of her public speaking career so far was being one of three keynote speakers alongside the Dalai Lama at the Spirituality & Sustainability Forum in Perth's Burswood Dome in June 2007.
Anna completed a summer clerkship in the climate law practice group of the law firm Baker & McKenzie and continues to research climate law issues as a researcher for Professor Tim Stephens at Sydney University Law School. She is also involved in the newly formed University of Sydney Climate Law and Policy Group. Anna recently graduated from an Arts (Asian Studies)/ Law degree with 1st class honours from the University of Sydney. She is the Law faculty's nominee for the University Convocation Medal, to be announced later this year.
Anna was a participant in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's "2020 Summit" in April this year. In 2005 she was a youth representative to the Kyoto Protocol negotiations in Montreal and in 2007 was a youth delegate to the UN Secretary General's Meeting on Climate Change in New York. She is a contributing editor to the blog ItsGettingHotinHere.org- Dispatches from the Global Youth Climate Movement, and holds a Global Youth Action Net Fellowship from the International Youth Foundation for 2007-2008. Anna spent seven months in the United States last year, where she studied at Cornell on exchange, helped build the US youth climate movement with the Energy Action Coalition, and began working with youth from around the world to establish a global youth climate coalition.
Anna continues some internationally focused work, and recently spoke in Japan at the G8 Civil Society Forum and to a large audience of Japanese student climate activists. She is a recipient of the Future Summit Leadership award, presented by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in May.
Anna was a delegate to the Australian American Leadership Dialogue in Washington DC this year. Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor of The Australian newspaper, describes the Australian-American leadership dialogue as "The most significant exercise in private diplomacy ever undertaken in Australia." Anna is also co-authoring a book called "The Future, By Us" with other young Australian social entrepreneurs, to be released in March 2009.
Speakers
The Journey Towards Green IT
Mark Jones, Corporate Express Australia
In the current economic environment the focus on cutting budgets is impacting many IT strategies, and yet it is possible to reduce expenditure while improving efficiency. Corporate Express is nearly 100% virtualised and their new data centre is performing at levels above best practice. In this session Mark will discuss their journey towards being green and aligning social responsibility with business strategy. He'll also provide insights into how they were able to build their data centre at well below best practice costs.
Greening Legacy Data Centres
Eugene Zaid, Westpac
Legacy Data Centres built in 1980's and 1990's were designed for IT equipment with relatively low power consumption and basic cooling requirements. As these facilities are rapidly approaching their end of life, companies often have to rely on them while replacement plans are being developed. In this case study, Eugene will present some real world examples of what can be done to improve efficiency in legacy data centres and will focus on both facilities and technology aspects. It will demonstrate how increased data centre efficiency can be achieved through a set of simple steps and strategies.
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Mark Jones
- Technology Infrastructure Manager
- Corporate Express Australia
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Mark Jones has over 23 years experience in Information Technology. Mark has been with Corporate Express Australia, a leading supplier of business essentials for 4 years in the role of Technology Infrastructure Manager. In this capacity, he has responsibility for the companies IT infrastructure strategy and operational services. Prior to his role at Corporate Express, he was Infrastructure Manager for the Smiths Snackfood Company, a PepsiCo owned business. He has also held various technical and managerial roles with PepsiCo over an 18 year period.
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Eugene Zaid
- Enterprise Architecture and Strategy
- Westpac
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Eugene Zaid is a member of Westpac's Enterprise Architecture and Strategy team. In this role Eugene is responsible for the development of a broad range of Technology - related strategies and initiatives, with a particular focus on sustainability and "Green" IT.
Prior to that, Eugene held positions in several global financial institutions, where he was in charge of the design and delivery of IT services. Eugene also ran a successful consulting business focusing on strategic aspects of IT infrastructure and services delivery.
Eugene has PhD in computational chemistry from the University of Natal (South Africa), as well as postgraduate degrees in management and applied finance.