RiskNZ Speakers

Organizations require a new set of competencies to survive and thrive in VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environments. AGLX are a global network consultancy specialising in helping organisations embrace complexity and turn it into a strategic advantage.

Steve’s experience in bomb disposal in the New Zealand Army gave him a deep understanding and a personal appreciation for good decision making under conditions of stress and uncertainty.

Recognising that traditional management theory is of limited use in fast changing and highly complex environments, Steve has dedicated his career to seeking out and developing solutions for this issue. He has worked with organisations across the globe, to challenge old thinking and create strategy that allows them to be adaptive and resilient. Steve teaches on the executive education program at the University of Auckland and is an accredited Cynefin trainer.

Ahmed has more than 22 years of experience in the ICT industry, specialising in information security consulting for the past 17 years. He has held security leadership roles in critical national infrastructure organisations and led various industry initiatives.

He is an expert in implementing standards-based approaches to information security in a practical manner to ensure they support business’s objectives while complying with internal and external requirements.
Ahmed’s experience extends across industry sectors including government, health care, financial services, media, energy and telecommunications.

Mark Brewer has extensive experience as a learning facilitator and leadership coach, having served as the Commander of Leadership Development for the Royal New Zealand Air Force and Research Officer for the New Zealand Defence Force’s Institute for Leader Development.

Mark now focuses on building leadership capacity in the public sector and improving the performance of not-for-profit organisations. He most recently worked as a principal advisor, designing and delivering leadership development programmes for the United Nations and New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in South East Asia and the Pacific Islands.

Combining a post-graduate academic research background in human resource development, with deep expertise as a public sector manager, programme manager and organisational excellence advisor.

Mark is well positioned to help leaders improve their leadership practice.

Chris spent a number of years in the military with a strong focus on Counter Terrorism, Human Tracking and Mountaineering with the New Zealand Special Forces.

Chris received the Iraq Reconstruction Service Medal for services to the British Foreign Office and the Multi- National Forces Iraq (MNFI) and studied toward a Masters in Science with a specific focus on Risk management; Loughborough University, United Kingdom.

He is a Life Member of the New Zealand Special Air Services (SAS) Association, Member of the Institute of Directors, ASIS International (NZ Chapter), New Zealand Security Association, RiskNZ, Security Industry Association (UK) and the co-founder of the NZ Security Sector Network 2019.

He has recently been involved with risk management work for OCC, vulnerable communities programme during Covid-19. Currently building enterprise security risk management platforms, climate change and natural disaster technology systems.

Bryan has helped thousands of leaders to achieve their goals over a career spanning 30 years in engineering, insurance and management consulting. His passion is for making the difficult and complex become doable.

He has worked with organisations across just about every sector of the economy, all levels of government, not-for-profits large and small and a range of rising star SMEs.

Bryan is like a translator. He is comfortable in complex and challenging environments as he knows how to find pathways to a simpler world with eminently achievable goals.

Bryan’s mantra is for leaders to do the “hard-smart work” others won’t. To do the research, analysis, risk assessment and creative thinking that others only do half-heartedly. Hard-smart work is what sets successful organisations and leaders apart from the pack.

Whether speaking from the stage, authoring books, coaching executives or facilitating workshops, Bryan’s ultimate goal is to help organisations live in a world with clarity of decision making. A clarity that energises executive teams, empowers managers and excites their staff.

Amongst many volunteer roles Bryan held the position of President and Chairman of the Board of the Risk Management Institute of Australasia (RMIA) from 2012 to 2015.

Bryan is author of Winning Conversations: How to turn red tape into blue ribbon and DECIDE: How to Manage the Risk in Your Decision Making.

David Turner is a senior business executive and trusted advisor with over 20 years’ experience in risk management and leadership.

David joined the Australian Army and became part of a specialised team where he deployed to East Timor in 1999. After the military David contracted to varied private and government organisations in leadership, risk and project roles. In 2007 he opened his own company that advised on risk management and provided personnel for major projects including: BHPB; RioTinto; Multiplex; Police; Australian Elections and also CHOGM 2011 working with State and Federal Police.

David was born in NZ and returned in 2016 to work on the Transdev Wellington rail network transition. He now lives in New Zealand permanently and has worked with a number of Government and private organisations including: Ministry of Health; KPMG; PWC and Deloitte; New Zealand Transport Agency and Defence. He brings a unique blend of expertise across diverse areas with a focus on risk management of human behavior – one of the more complex, dynamic and often overlooked areas of the industry.

Tony Yuile is a life coach and clinical hypnotist specialising in helping people build their personal resilience and free themselves from unnecessary stress and anxiety. He works with people across NZ and internationally. He is the author of Seven Ways to Reduce Anxiety in Seven Minutes or Less. It was Tony’s own experience with chronic stress and anxiety that was the catalyst for his move, a decade ago, from risk management into coaching.

Tony’s career in risk management began in 2001 when he attended the RiskNZ conference and ‘discovered’ risk management. He went on to head the risk management branch of one of NZ’s largest organisations where he successfully led the implementation of the organisation’s enterprise-wide risk management system.

Prior to discovering risk management Tony enjoyed a twenty-year accounting career. He held several senior positions in private and public organisations in the UK and NZ. Tony is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants England and Wales and a member of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand.

Tony served on the board of RiskNZ for seven years and was its Treasurer for twelve years. He was presented with life member of the organisation in 2016.

Tony is a coach and trainer with YourLifeLiveIt an international coaching and training organisation.

In his spare time Tony enjoys playing his ukulele, writing fiction and performing improvised theatre.

My topic areas would fall under the wellbeing category:

• Work related stress
• Stress management
• Personal resilience
• Mindsets
• Our internal risk management system
• Overcoming limiting beliefs

Martin Petts has worked in crisis management, emergency notification, IT business continuity and data protection for over 20 years combined. Martin is responsible for all F24 business in the Australasia and Asia Pacific region, and manages operations with passion, driving forward client’s success with F24’s products for alerting, crisis management and critical communications on an international scale.

Crisis Management
Emergency Communication / Notification

leadership, safety, business, wellbeing, human, enterprise risk, operational excellence and organisational learning.

Brent works in partnership with organisations in the commercial, government and education sector providing practical advice to address health and safety risks and develop strategies to drive improvements in organisational learning.

Brent is well regarded as a risk management coach and for taking organisations on a learning journey to understand how workers are seen as the solution, how to engage people and leverage their skills so that organisational learning becomes a new way of running an organisation

Brent is the project architect for New Zealand’s most significant Court Ordered Project Order granted under the Health and Safety At Work Act, which is to develop, train and implement a Learning Teams framework for the maritime industry.  https://www.maritimelearningteams.org.nz

Brent is one of the authors of the Best Selling new book on Amazon “The Practice of Learning Teams: Learning and improving safety, quality and operational excellence.”, with foreword by Dr Todd Conklin released August 2020 (ISBN: 9798665374321, Sutton, McCarthy and Robinson: Pre-Accident Investigation Media).  https://swiy.io/POLT

Brent is the host of the weekly podcast series on the worldwide Safety FM channel called “The Practice of Learning Teams” https://www.learningteamspodcast.com

Brent lives in Auckland, New Zealand and actively advocates for doing risk management differently when both workers and the organisation learn and improve.

Data Digitisation

 Dr Fahimeh Zaeri is a creative lead and people inspirer using data to drive successful business decision making. For more than 15 years she has been leading teams in improving business performance and productivity by developing a data-driven culture and the use of analytical solutions to reduce risk and build success.

Having moved to New Zealand from the other side of the world, she is culturally focused on personal journeys of transformation, adoption, and growth within organisations. She is uniquely committed to connecting people with processes and data to utilise the full potential of data. Her exceptional motivational skills focus on Lean philosophy, understanding that when people integrate with data on a human level, organisations thrive.

Mike Wood is a highly experienced risk management practitioner, director and senior manager with a professional background in the telecommunications industry.

Mike joined Broadleaf Capital International as an Associate Director in November 2004, and his activities centre on the provision of advice, training and other consultancy services in risk management framework development and deployment, and qualitative and quantitative risk assessments of large projects for clients in New Zealand, Australia and the Middle East. He is a past Chairman of the New Zealand Society for Risk Management (now RiskNZ).

Mike has nearly 30 years of governance experience in both commercial and not-for-profit organisations and is a Chartered Member of the Institute of Directors. He is a former Chair and a current Trustee of the Ignite Sport Trust, and a former Chair and a current Trustee of the Youth Cultures and Community Trust.

Mike is an accomplished facilitator and trainer in governance and risk management. He currently facilitates the Strategy and Risk Governance sessions of the Institute of Directors’ Company Directors program, and also their Risk Essentials program. He has also developed and facilitated training for clients internationally and in New Zealand in his specialist subject of quantitative risk analysis.

Mike has extensive experience in quantitative risk analysis of the schedule and costs of large projects. He has been a member of New Zealand’s all-of-Government panel of providers of QRA services for the past 12 years and has provided these services for many of the state sector projects in New Zealand that are large enough for a QRA to be a mandatory requirement under the central agencies’ monitoring regime. These projects range from infrastructure to IT systems to defence procurements, ranging in size up to $1.5B. In this capacity, Mike has carried out quantitative risk assessments of the schedule, cost, and benefits for a large number of technology and infrastructure projects for Statistics NZ, the Ministry for Primary Industries, the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry for the Environment, the Department of Internal Affairs, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Conservation, Inland Revenue, EQC, ACC, Land Information NZ, the NZ Police, the National Library, the Treasury, Housing NZ, Maritime NZ, the Ministry of Social Development, the Parliamentary Service, Unitec, District Health Boards, the State Services Commission, the Ministry of Defence and the NZ Defence Force.

Mike has also carried out a large number of quantitative risk assessments of the cost of a number of construction and infrastructure projects sized at over $100 million for WorleyParsons, Electrix, Leighton Contractors, Downer EDI, and Damwatch Services, and he has delivered major infrastructure risk assessments for Telecom New Zealand (now Spark and Chorus) and Transpower.

Other Broadleaf assignments in New Zealand performed by Mike also include major reviews of risk management frameworks and capability for the Department of Internal Affairs, the Accident Compensation Corporation, the NZ Transport Agency and First Gas.

Mike’s assignments outside New Zealand include qualitative and quantitative risk assessments of a number of large ICT, oil and gas, mining and infrastructure projects ($500 million to $20 billion in value) for ZADCO and ADGAS in the United Arab Emirates, for BHP Billiton in Australia and Suriname, for ERM Power, Anglo Coal, Xstrata Coal and Leighton Group companies in Australia, and Rio Tinto in Mongolia.

Prior to joining Broadleaf, Mike was Manager, Strategic Risk Management Systems within the corporate office of Telecom New Zealand Ltd, with a corporate governance and risk management focus. He developed and deployed Telecom’s overall policy framework, with particular responsibility for the development and deployment of Telecom’s Managing Risk Policy framework in both New Zealand and Australia, working closely with managers in Telecom’s business and corporate groups to assist them with the integration of risk management into their business and project environments.

From 1994 to 1997, Mike was Managing Director of the NZ Telecommunication Systems Support Centre Ltd (TSSC), a joint venture company responsible for customising NEC’s technology for the New Zealand telecommunications market, and prior to that, he was Telecom’s National Network Planning Manager.

Mike has a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) from the University of Auckland. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand, a Chartered Member of the Institute of Directors, and a
Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (UK). He has been a contributing author to the books Project Risk Management Guidelines: Managing Risk with ISO 31000 and IEC 62198 (John Wiley
& Sons, Chichester, ISBN 978-1–118-82031-5) and Challenging the Future – Connecting the Words in Risk Communication (New Zealand Centre for Advanced Engineering, 2007, ISBN 0-908993-45-5).

I am the Risk Manager for Auckland Unlimited (a recent amalgamation of ATEED and Regional Facilities Auckland), an Auckland Council owned company. I am responsible for risk, audit, policy, security, and business continuity.

I was a Police Officer for 23-years. Prior to leaving the NZ Police I led the National Security Office and was responsible for counter terrorism, national security, counter terrorism exercise planning, organisational security, border security, search and rescue, and disaster security identification. For 6-years I represented the New Zealand Government on the Australia New Zealand Counter Terrorism Committee (ANZCTC).

For 3-years I was seconded to the Department for Prime Minister and Cabinet as a senior Policy Advisor. This role required me to write cabinet papers and briefing papers for the Chief Executive and Prime Minister, and as part of this role I led a number of multi-agency senior working groups, as well as completing the business continuity plan for parliament.

Prior to joining Auckland Council, I taught Business Studies, Economics and Accounting at Mount Albert Grammar School.

I have a varied academic background, with a Bachelor of Arts (Philosophy and Social Anthropology), numerous Diploma’s and am close to finishing a Masters in Strategic Studies from Victoria University.

I am the proud dad to thirteen year old twins, and have been with my wife for 33 years.