Official Event Advisory Panel
Quest Events would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the official event advisory panel who contributed their valuable time and expertise to ensure the agenda for this event is timely and relevant for all stakeholders working in procurement and supply chain.
Coretta Bessi
Chief Procurement Officer
NBN Co
Coretta is starting in her new role as Chief Procurement Officer at NBN Co starting in April. An initial focus for Coretta will be to review the frameworks, governance, probity and policy to transform the Procurement function to ensure alignment and enablement of the business to deliver outcomes.
Coretta Bessi is an experienced and recognised business services functional executive. She was until recently Head of Procurement and Shared Services at BlueScope. Her primary role was to manage a centralised core team and co-ordinate an extended network of 200 procurement and shared services professionals across the Australian and New Zealand businesses to ensure strategic alignment and define accountabilities to drive maximum value.
Coretta commenced her career as a cadet at BHP 23 years ago, since gaining experience across mining, manufacturing, and distribution covering all aspects of Procurement from purchasing to global category management. Coretta has worked in Human Resources where she gained a keen interest in developing others and a passion in ensuring Procurement was taken seriously as a profession through development of competency based training. More recent roles have included Shared Services which covered insourced, outsourced and offshored business processes of Information Technology, Property Services, Human Resources, Payroll, Financial Services and Accounting Services in addition to Procurement.
Coretta has a Bachelor of Commerce and a Masters of Business Administration. She has furthered both her own academic study and her interest in developing others by lecturing in Procurement at the University of Wollongong and the Sydney Business School for post graduate masters students for the past eight years.
Sarah Collins
Chief Procurement Officer
Roads and Maritime Services
Sarah holds a Bachelor of Science in Manufacturing Management and has also obtained her international professional procurement qualifications (MCIPS). She has over 18 years supply chain experience, with the last 15 of those in procurement.
Sarah is currently the Chief Procurement Officer at Roads and Maritime Services, part of the Transport for NSW cluster, where she is leading the development and implementation of leading practise strategies, policies, systems and processes to develop procurement professionals and increase the maturity of procurement within the agency.
Sarah is highly active in the Australian procurement community, having been a member of the NSW CIPS Committee since 2008 where she held the role of Chair from 2011-2014. She is also passionate about developing future procurement professionals and lectures on procurement at the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS) at The University of Sydney. She is also one of the founders of the global CIPS Women in Procurement mentoring program.
Jonathan Dutton
Director
JD Consultancy
Jonathon Dutton was the founding Managing Director of CIPS Australasia for over eight years up until February 2013. He was responsible for all aspects of CIPS activities as the global peak body for professional procurement & supply management in the region. He represented the profession and its standards to the highest levels of business and government. As a former qualified procurement manager himself, as well as sales manager turned marketing director, Jonathan can easily draw on experiences from both sides of the negotiating table. Jonathan has worked in senior positions for British Airways, QANTAS, Regus & CHUBB, and is a fellow of four institutes covering procurement, marketing, management and the royal society of arts. He is also a graduate diploma member of the institute of company directors, and has a degree in economics with accountancy and business law.
Jonathan is married with two young children and lives in Melbourne, and can be reached easily through LinkedIn or his website.
www.jdconsultancy.com.au | @JDTheBuyer
LiWei Ang
Australasia Sourcing Manager
General Mills
LiWei Ang leads the strategic sourcing function at General Mills as the Australasia Sourcing Manager. With a team of category leaders across commodities, packaging, ingredients and co-packers, LiWei creates a competitive advantage for General Mills through innovative sourcing strategies that focus on holistic value creation. LiWei’s ability to drive leading edge procurement strategies is well noted with a proven track record of tangible bottom-line value and top-line growth. She joined General Mills in Feb 2010. Prior to joining General Mills, LiWei was a management consultant with Infosys Portland providing optimisation solutions across the complete procurement and supply chain functions. Her procurement leadership experience spans multiple industries including many high profile FMCG companies, Mining & Explosives and IT. LiWei is an advocate for leadership culture and also a champion ballroom dancer with multiple state championship titles. She also holds an Actuarial Science degree from The University of Melbourne, Australia.
Jaymie Cross
Senior Manager Sourcing and Procurement
IAG
Jaymie is a year into her role as IAG’s Sourcing and Procurement Strategy Lead. With a varied background in Analytics and Project Management in Australia and overseas, Jaymie has been able to help shape the recent Procurement Transformation at IAG and start to focus on the developing and maturing of the function.
Jaymie holds a Business Management/Bachelor of Arts dual degree and a Masters of Commerce (Finance), holds a Project Management Professional (PMP) qualification and is a CIPSA member. She has an avid interest in transformation, sustainability and process improvement.