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 procurement stakeholders.
Coretta Bessi
Former Chief Procurement Officer
nbn Australia
Coretta Bessi is Former Chief Procurement Officer at nbn – the government business enterprise set up to design, build and operate the national broadband network across Australia. nbn was founded in 2009 so is six years young with a current annual expenditure of approximately $5 billion. Procurement has an enormous ability to impact the quality, speed and cost of the broadband rollout across Australia. Coretta has recently completed a transformation of the function with an internal business partner focus supported by strategic category management and supplier relationship management.
Prior to this role, Coretta held roles of CPO, Head of Shared Services, Procurement Manager & HR Consultant at BlueScope and BHP Billiton across mining, manufacturing and building products distribution businesses. Responsible for up to medium to large teams across multiple locations, Coretta has primarily been employed or promoted into roles requiring change and transformation.
With a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in management and law and a Masters of Business Administration majoring in Strategic Supply Chain Management, Coretta has gained a real passion for the education sector and has been lecturing for the last eleven years in Procurement Management for Masters students.
Sebastian Chua
Head of Procurement
Singapore Ministry of Health & CIPS Asia 2017 Individual Award Winner
Sebastian Chua has accumulated many years of procurement experience within the Indirect Procurement & Project Sourcing domains and held several regional and country positions in Asia Pacific.
Sebastian started his procurement career with Agilent Technologies (a spin-off from Hewlett Packard) as their Country Manager for India, Singapore, Thailand & Philippines before he took on the portfolio as the Regional Procurement Manager. Sebastian then moved on to join Microsoft Corporation, Citibank & Alcatel Lucent to transform their procurement organization in Asia Pacific region.
At Microsoft, he was recognized for providing leadership in the category sourcing strategies & operational excellence that contributed to organizational indirect spend reduction, process efficiencies and supply base rationalization as well as launching a pioneer transformation initiative for outsourcing the operational finance & tactical procurement functions around Accounts Payable, Records, Payroll and Procurement transactional services.
At Alcatel-Lucent as their Senior Procurement Director for APAC region, Sebastian was recognized for providing innovative business solutions and achieving break-through strategies across a series of procurement transformation initiatives in the areas of People & Organization, Business Alignment & Supplier Partnership, Program & Process Excellence and Controls & Compliance.
In 2014, Sebastian Chua took on a new challenge to accept the opportunity to transform the public procurement practices at Health Promotion Board (HPB), a statutory board under the Ministry of Health. He reports to CEO, HPB in his current role as Head of Procurement. His Procurement Transformation Paper has been nominated at the 2016 World Procurement Congress in London for 2 award categories – Public Sector and Procurement Leader as well as the 7th International Public Procurement Conference.
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 LINKED IN or his website.
Marea Getsios
Procurement Specialist
Bayside Council
Marea Getsios is a high-achieving procurement professional, who is experienced in implementing procurement processes. Her procurement background coupled with her sales and marketing background make her highly creative, intuitive and innovative. Having worked with both Local & State government departments over the last 20 years, Marea has successfully developed a high level understanding of client and supplier expectations and a high level ability to form and maintain positive relationships in business, which she sees as key for developing a strong supply chain. In her most recent role Marea has proven to be a forward-thinking leader who mentors and motivates teams to achieve a common procurement strategy across the organisation.
Charles Salinas
Co-founder
ProcurHub
A driven and innovative thought leader with +15 years’ experience in large scale, hands-on procurement ranging from enterprise and government category management, strategic sourcing, commercial management and program management.
Specialised skills such as Procurement Process Audit (ICAC), Procurement System Transformation (NSW RailCorp), Defence QA inspector team chief for regional IT networks, Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning Digital Procurement Platform and Block Chain Build Strategy.
Charles possesses strong interpersonal, communication, problem solving and decision making capabilities. Has the ability to establish and maintain strong alliances; lead and motivate teams; drive projects to successful completion; convey complex technical requirements/data; exceed customer expectations and achieve fiscal bottom-line results.
Kishwar Rahman
Digital Transformation Advisor
NDIA
Kishwar is a Digital Transformation Lawyer with extensive Commonwealth Government experience having worked with Defence, ATO, Department of Human Services and Department of Finance in various roles as a public servant, as a senior lawyer in a tier one firm, and as a management consultant.
Her experience in procurement includes designing complex procurement arrangements, visualisation of contractual arrangements, dispute resolution and advising on ICT procurement policy reform. Most recently she has assisted the Digital Transformation Agency with the launch of their Digital Marketplace which has included implementation of click-wrap work orders and digitisation of the procurement process.
She loves her work and is curious and excited about the endless possibilities of transforming transactional exchanges between government, businesses and citizens to make them more affordable, efficient, and accessible.