The Imagine Series

What is The imagine Series?

The imagine Series is a series of events showcasing stories.

Stories of courage, of leadership, of pathways and journeys, twists and turns along the way that taught lessons and defined futures. It is not a selling platform.

Its mission is:

To seek out those stories and allow them to inspire and teach, to trigger imaginations and spark actions and ideas for the betterment of the world we live and operate in, both professionally and personally.
To connect with like minded, inspired people.
The best way to predict the future is to work together to create it.

The imagine Series is hoping to unlock potential and inspire ideas and actions to create some level of improvement for people – whether that be in the workplace, home or community (and hopefully all three). To create a platform for discussion and exchange of ideas and experiences, lessons learnt and ways forward – to change the world by changing our world in a positive way.

We are conscious about giving something back and delivering a platform of inspirational opportunities and strengthening relatonships for businesses in Auckland. Hopefully attendees will discover ways to pay it forward and use the stories and learnings to develop opportunities for themselves and others around them to do good things.

Past Events

Event #5: Thursday 19 November 2020 – Panel Discussion: How can digitisation and innovation make the post-COVID-19 world a better place?

Join us for the Imagine Series and come and share ideas and viewpoints from an expert panel on business leadership and innovation in these transformative times.

We are covering a range of topics from strategy and innovation, to transformative ways to look at both business and people. This session will be a must-attend to anyone looking for inspiration, observations and insight into the current landscape.

Our expert panel will be moderated by Edwina Mistry, Director of Operations at Imagetext. Edwina’s unique experiences in business, the education sector and management offer perspective and opportunity to enrich the conversation and direct to areas of interest for us all.

Date: Thursday 19th November 2020

Time: 12:00pm – 2:00pm. Registration from 11:45am for lunch 12pm and a 12:30pm start

Venue: Sorrento in the Park, One Tree Hill Domain, 670 Manukau Rd, Royal Oak, Auckland

Cost: Free

Includes: Lunch and Tea/Coffee/Juice

Dress Code: Smart Casual/Business wear

Attendance by reservation only.

Meet our panel experts:

Priti Ambani – Director, New Business and Innovation – Tata Consulting

Priti is the Director of New Business and Innovation at Tata Consultancy Services, a global leader in digital, IT and business services. Priti is a strategic business technologist and evangelist for women in business and technology. An engineer by education and training, Priti has 18+ years of experience in various roles across engineering, business, strategy, consulting and education. Priti sits on the boards of the Auckland Business Chamber and The Super Diversity Institute in Auckland and the Advisory Board for Tech Futures Lab.

Priti Ambani on LinkedIn

Andrew Jamieson – Executive Director – Strategy, digital transformation, design thinking and organisational agility – PwC

Andrew Jamieson is an Executive Director and strategy lead in PwC’s Private Business team. AJ has been working in strategy and digital technology for the past 20 years including spending time in telcos, utilities, digital broadcast, software development, financial services, digital strategy and interaction design. Increasingly, his work with PwC incorporates organisational strategy through to execution, taking a lean, collaborative, customer centric approach to solve business problems. AJ is happiest when he sees strategic thinking, digital technology and human centred design brought together to improve New Zealand organisational performance.

Andrew Jamieson on LinkedIn

Kayur Patel – Transformation Manager – PwC

Kayur Patel is a Manager in PwC’s Transformation team, and runs many of their key technology transformation projects across the Firm. Over the past few years, he has also been part of a team helping more than 15 PwC Firms across the global network digitally transform the way they work, the services they offer and the way they provide value to their clients. More recently, he has been using his skills and experience to help clients navigate the uncertainty and complexity of technology transformation, with a focus on how technology and people interact.

Kayur Patel on LinkedIn

Tracey Button, Human Resources Director, Australia and New Zealand, Ingram Micro

Tracey is the current HR leader for the Pacific Region. Based in New Zealand but looking after both Australia and New Zealand helping drive the People Strategy for the largest IT Distribution business globally with an ANZ revenue size of over $3Billion. Prior to Ingram, Tracey worked for The Nielsen Company, a leading Marketing Research organisation as the HR Senior Manager for New Zealand and Melbourne where she utilised some of the leading global practices in Human Resources.

Tracy Button on LinkedIn

Event #4: Thursday 2 July 2020 – Resilience In Leadership During Change – Keynote Speaker: Dr. Lehan Stemmet

Resilience In Leadership During Change

Resilience is a key skill in our personal and professional lives. It helps mitigate the impact of stress so people can perform optimally despite the challenges they may be facing. As a leader, you have an additional challenge to guide others through an ever-changing world, but it doesn’t have to be so stressful. This talk will explore stress, coping strategies and resilience from a leadership perspective.

You will come away with;

A clear definition of stress and resilience, applicable to your context, but sufficiently broad to also help you in various areas of life
Major research-informed tools you could use to navigate through challenges and help your teams and colleagues
Addressing more specific and individual contexts through a Q&A session at the end

Join us for this truly insightful session on Resilience at the fourth Imagine Series event with Dr. Lehan Stemmet, an expert in organisational and personal development with a deep understanding of stress, resilience and coping strategies as well as wide-ranging leadership and management experience across multiple sectors.

Dr. Lehan Stemmet

Over 20 years ago Dr. Lehan Stemmet developed an interest in how people deal with challenges through what started as a personal project he called ‘Deal With It’. He often presents the ‘Deal With It’ principles to diverse audiences and has also been a mentor and coach for many people over the years.

Lehan has held various senior roles in diverse industries and taught a range of undergraduate and postgraduate management courses, including organisational behaviour, research methods and organisational change and development. He has been invited to present numerous talks and seminars to diverse and large audiences of more than 2000, including senior leaders in businesses from a range of industries.

He is qualified in biochemistry, microbiology, organisational and experimental psychology and actively contributes to multidisciplinary research projects focusing on resilience, mental health and technology to support health and wellbeing. His work is published globally in mainstream business media as well as academic research articles, and in book and encyclopedia chapters internationally.

Event #3: Friday 4th October 2019 – Getting noticed in the digital age: A case study
Keynote Speaker: Dan West

Getting noticed in the digital age: A case study

Join us for the third event for the Imagine series where Dan West, Digital Strategy Director at FCB New Zealand, will share a presentation on:

The changing digital landscape in New Zealand and channels available
A case study (Dan will use Canadian Down Syndrome society as it’s a pure play digital one with low budgets)
Key learnings and takeaways

Dan West

Dan West is the Digital Strategy Director at FCB New Zealand. He is responsible for writing integrated strategies for many of FCB’s top clients including Samsung, NZ Post and the HPA.

Before joining FCB he spent time at Wunderman, McCann and Archibald Ingall Stretton in London. He has worked on groundbreaking campaigns such as an industry first Augmented Reality campaign for O2 in 2009 and the multi-award winning ‘This Girl Can’ integrated campaign, which was described by the Telegraph Newspaper as “changing the ad industry”.

Whilst at FCB Dan has been responsible for setting up the London office’s content creation arm as well as FCB New Zealand’s Start Up support initiative, FCB Changing Rooms. He has a keen interest in digital behavioral economics and the latest technology trends and is a guest lecturer at AUT on these topics.

When not working on campaigns you can find Dan on the rugby field or trying to stop his young daughter playing with plugs.

Event #2: 29th May 2019 – A Foray into the Dark Web – Keynote Speaker: Dr Frans Lategan

A Foray into the Dark Web

To cyber-criminals, data such as personal information and credit card details, is incredibly valuable – particularly as it can be sold off on the dark web; and used for further criminal activity.

But what exactly is the dark web? … What does it look like and what can be purchased there? What is the difference between the Deep Web and the Dark Web? Come along and find out what exists beneath the web we know in our day to day lives.

Join Frans Lategan, Principal Consultant at Aura Information Security, for an informative session that lets you take a look behind the scenes – in real-time – and see what happens to your data once it’s stolen.

DR FRANS LATEGAN

Principal Consultant
Aura Information Security

With a Ph.D. in Computer Science, a Master’s Degree in Mathematics and more than 22 years’ experience in the cyber security industry, Frans has a wealth of experience in both offensive and defensive security.

His key areas of expertise are penetration testing, security consulting, cryptography and source code review. During his career, Frans has assessed systems ranging from small mobile applications to Wi-Fi networks and large corporate networks to ATM security, as well as multiple web applications.

Prior to joining Aura, Frans held senior positions at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Barclays Africa Group Limited; and more recently, SensePost, a leading ethical hacking firm in South Africa.

Frans is a member of Aura’s senior management team and is primarily based in Aura’s Auckland offices.

Event #1: 21st February 2019 – Glen Willoughby: The exploration of space, helping humanity on earth – Lessons for digital innovation and transformation

In our first event for the Imagine Series join us as Glen Willoughby shares insights on his journey with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and how they have evolved an IT digital innovation and transformation model to support its goal of deep space exploration. The pace of technology change, increasing organisation pressure to disrupt their own organisation and an increasing focus to drive greater value through digital adoptions created both opportunities and challenges for ICT leaders to navigate.

Glen will describe JPL’s approach to digital innovation (using Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Solutions and Swarm Robots) he will look through the ‘lenses’ of four challenges:

Spacecraft design and build collaboration
Mars Mission programme: Insight and Mars 2020
Exploration of Europa: Jupiter’s Ice Moon
Detection of Near-Earth Asteroids

Bio – Glen Willoughby

Glen has over twenty years’ experience in the digital transformation, information and communications technology field having held senior leadership positions in some of Australasia’s largest and most complex organisations. Operating in the manufacturing, health, tertiary education, finance/consulting, space exploration and engineering sectors.

He holds Information Technology qualifications from Waikato Institute of Technology, an MBA from University of Waikato and postgraduate executive qualifications in technology innovation from Singularity University. He is a Senior Research Fellow Faculty of Health Victoria University and Advisor Digital Technology – Office of the IT Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Glen is regular international keynote conference speaker on digital technology adoption, security, IT digital leadership and innovation addressing forums including the ‘C’ level conferences (NZ, Australia, US), Medical Schools (Australia, NZ, USA), and Singularity University (Silicon Valley).

In 2018 he was ranked by CIO publication Top 100 as one top ten of New Zealand CIO digital innovation leaders and New Zealand CIO of the year finalist in 2015. Glen has a strong Australasian and international network in both the public and private sectors, including executive level relationships with leading global IT organisations. In contrast he also advises and supports IT start-ups organisations in New Zealand and Silicon Valley.