Our Team

Stephen Rutter

I want to tell a story about how I came to be a Provocateur. For those that don't know the Mad Max story, it is an Australian dystopian action thriller film directed by George Miller. Mad Max 4, Fury Road, was shot in Namibia, Southwest Africa, over 15 months. I was responsible over a 7-year period for getting 1200 crew in and out of the Namibia desert, as well as 140 tonne of break bulk cargo, and over 5000 freight movements. We lost crew members ... let’s just say it was “high risk” action filmmaking.

What I came to learn from that experience is that a plan is only as good as the execution, and the environment that you're working in. We were dealing with shifting standards (and sands), creative geniuses, and plans changing so fast and often that it was very difficult for the production staff to deal with. Working under these extreme circumstances, I came to learn about being agile, adaptive, and most of all honest. Honest with my team. Telling staff that they have to spend an extra six months in the desert, shooting long days, where temperatures reach 45 °C and nights are freezing ... all because George Miller needed to have a few extra takes ... was not easy.

But I was hired by the studio and so it was my responsibility, just like it is many of yours, to keep the shoot to a reasonable timeframe and reasonable budget. Mad Max taught me to be an Innovator in Residence. It forced me to have difficult conversations, the conversations that really matter. There was always tension ... and as it turns out, tension is a pretty big deal – not just for strengthening muscles, but for growing a business.

Founder, The Scale Institute

Agi Reefman

Agi is a consultant specialising in strategy, innovation and product development. She has a passion for helping businesses overcome their challenges, grow and thrive.

Her specialities include: managing and accelerating start-up businesses; building and advising new and evolving businesses; optimising people operations; developing product vision and strategy; developing business and digital strategies; and enabling businesses to effectively leverage technology to realise their strategic goals.

Andrew Pattinson

Andrew is the Founder of Incredible Bosses™ – an organisation created specifically for SME’s to maximise their profit and create time freedom whilst focusing on the positive social impact of creating highly valued and engaged communities.

As a Founding Member and ultimately CEO of startup to ASX listed Infomedia Ltd (IFM), Andrew held key senior roles in all of the Operational and Development/IT areas of the business as well as establishing their Melbourne and European operations.

With an exceptional sense of community, process and over two decades of experience in creating SaaS solutions, Andrew brings a wealth of practical knowledge to the group.

Ben Grozier

Ben is the co-founder and CEO of ClassCover, a software as a service that helps schools save vast amounts of time in the management of casual relief teachers and support casual relief teachers with online professional development.

These days Ben combines his passion for teaching and experience in business to assist other business owners and founders to be their best. He does this via his work as Entrepreneur in Residence for the Charles Sturt University Ready To Launch programme, mentoring with the Remarkable Accelerator (run by Cerebral palsy Alliance) and course design and workshop presentation for the Scale Institute among other projects.

Ben Pecotich

Ben is a designer, innovation coach, and the founder of Dynamic4 - a social enterprise and certified B Corp he started in 2001 that is focused on design and innovation for happier communities.

Ben is the author of Solve Problems That Matter - a 90-day program helping to take a human-centred approach to design, build, and launch a social enterprise idea - and build momentum while looking after your wellbeing. He is also the cofounder of the Sydney Design Thinking meetup, a founding board member and treasurer of the Social Enterprise Council of NSW & ACT (SECNA), and a Social Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Centre for Social Impact/UNSW Business School.

Our Innovation Guides

Carli Liembach

Carli is a Lead Facilitator, Learning Designer and Creative Strategic Consultant. She has worked across South Africa, Europe, North America and Australia helping organisations develop a wide range of innovation processes.

Additionally, Carli teaches Creative Intelligence, Entrepreneurship, Design Thinking, Project Management, Stakeholder Engagement and Leadership at UTS, USyd, Charles Sturt and UNSW Art & Design.

Daniel Bolger

Daniel is a media and communications professional, specialising in events, media management and digital content initiatives.

For over 20 years, he has been providing media and strategic communications advice to government , non-government and university clients. A highly regarded communications professional with a strong record of delivering an events program, seamlessly integrating message/engagement and communications objectives.

Eli Itin

Eli Itin is an experienced innovation consultant and lecturer with over 30 years’ practice in the international marketing, innovation and start-up ecosystem. His Tier-1 clients include, amongst others: EY, Merck, Intel, Hero Motors, Nice, Allot and Perpetual Australia. Previously, he has led Organizational Innovation at Amdocs, an MNC providing software and managed services to the telecommunications and financial services sector.

In collaboration with Prof. Jacob Goldenberg from Columbia University, Eli co-founded the Omnivati Edtech platform, used by top Universities such as Columbia, MIT, Yale, University of Mannheim and others.

Elvis Gleeson

Elvis is a philosopher, company founder, and community builder from the small regional town of Moruya. After graduating from ANU with first-class honours and the most prestigious award for an undergraduate student, The Tillyard Prize, he went on to found the research and publication company, Thorial, whose thought leadership on the future of work.

More broadly, he has presented his academic work on social ethics and policy at national and international conferences, most recently at the London School of Economics. His entrepreneurial work and relentless search for diverse ways of thinking have taken him to 25 countries in just 4 years, and he is now dedicated to bringing these perspectives to bright young minds.

James Alexander

James is a leader in boosting recognition for entrepreneurship in Australian Higher Education. James founded INCUBATE at the University of Sydney which became one of the first and leading university accelerator programs in Australia. Over the past seven years he helped build INCUBATE into an award-winning entrepreneurship program that has impacted thousands, and directly funded and supported hundreds of students and researchers to launch new innovations.

James is now the Co-founder of Galileo Ventures, a new global seed fund, and consults to organisations on opportunities in entrepreneurial program design, facilitation and innovation. James also teaches Technology Venture Creation for engineering students at The University of Sydney.

Jennifer Weller

Jennifer runs her own business (Creativeworkz) and has delivered programs in leadership, change management, agribusiness innovation, strategic and international marketing, marketing research, lean start-up, ideation, design lead thinking and commercialisation. Many designed to meet the needs of the client. Jennifer assists businesses and individuals to understand and grow themselves, their ideas and their businesses.

Julie Rae

With 20 years of global experience inspiring teams and customers, Julie is focused on making a positive impact, and praised for a leadership style that builds high-performance teams with a kick of joy.

Julie has been part of great creative agencies like BBH in New York, BMF in Sydney and Fallon in Minneapolis. Recently, she has spent years helping to build Australia’s leading digital bank. Along the way, she has gathered experience in driving growth, creating high-performance teams, developing business strategies, digital transformation, using artificial intelligence and content marketing. She has been an agency Partner, Director, Chief, and the person who orders the company pens.

Julie is passionate about the value of brands and the commercial impact of marketing budgets.

Kathy Gray

Over the past 15 years Kathy has worked with a variety of government, cultural, education and community organisations across Australia.

Kathy believes in the power of storytelling to inspire, empower and to co-create realities. She has achieved a Master thesis on narrative, and spent years working with others to develop compelling interviews and storyscapes.

Kathy values the vibrancy, interconnectedness and resilience in our regional communities, and is invested in supporting people living in major Australian centres.

Liam Daley

Liam is fascinated by team dynamics and performance. A leader’s effect on the structure, culture and performance of their team led him to study leadership. Liam has been involved in teams led by those all along the continuum from lacklustre to entirely inspiring. This has motivated him to self-reflect on his own strengths and weaknesses in leadership. Liam aims to inspire his whole team to strive for high performance.

When building high performing teams, Liam ensures they are built on a base of trust, integrity and open communication. Combining this base with a flat structure ensures an empowered team which achieves goals with diversity of thought and skills. The leads to engaged and passionate employees who feel valued by those around them and gives all every chance of success.

Lily Wang

Lily is a dedicated advocate for youth entrepreneurship. As Head of People at Generation Entrepreneur, she facilitates programs to help young people start their own businesses.

She has also served as a Creative Director, Podcast Manager, and Ambassador for Young Entrepreneurs Connect (YEC). As a member of the REELise Youth Council, she works to raise awareness about navigating technology.

In addition, Lily has completed internships at Salesforce, where she worked on the Strategic Advisory Services team, and at Aurecon, where she gained insight into the engineering and consulting industry. She was also the Australian winner of the FedEx/JA International Trade Challenge in 2019.

Max Parasol

Max is currently working in Private Equity, specifically helping to set up new businesses, investment analysis and capital raises.

He recently submitted a PhD at UTS surveying artificial intelligence (AI) business models and global AI ecosystems. He is an Adjunct Lecturer at Monash University where he teaches a postgraduate unit about China’s innovation ecosystem.

Previously Max practised as a lawyer in Shanghai, Western Australia, and Victoria and completed a masters degree at Nanjing University in Chinese.

Mariam Mohammed

Mariam is an entrepreneur, speaker, and facilitator. In 2016, Mariam was elected Women’s Officer of the Sydney University Postgraduate Association (SUPRA). In 2017, she became the President of SUPRA – leading the team that delivered a 600% increase in the organisation’s community engagement. By 2019, she had co-founded MoneyGirl to empower and inspire women to become financially independent.

Now, Mariam teaches advocates and changemakers how to create and leverage a strong personal brand to amplify their impact. She is among the Australian Financial Review 100 Women of Influence list, 40 under 40 Most Influential Asian-Australians, a 2020 NSW Young Woman of the Year Finalist, and a 2021 7 News Young Business Achiever of the Year Finalist.

Nataliya Kozhushna

Nataliya is a purpose-driven strategy analyst. She has worked with social enterprises, corporates, government, and not-for-profit organisations around Europe and Australia.

She believes that bridging the gap between science and society is essential to solve the world’s greatest challenges.

Currently, Nataliya is the Senior Strategy and Market Analyst at CSIRO where innovation and impact are at the heart of every single project. She delivers critical analysis and recommendations for the most impactful solutions and pathways to adopt and scale.

Nicholas Stevens

Nicholas has worked in a solar farm company, cleantech start-ups, and academic programs with universities.

He created the Regionate and Metronate challenges, which enables high school youth from low socioeconomic areas to develop an innovative solution that creates social impact in their local community. In 2020, over a third of the cohort identified as Indigenous Australians. This then led to Nicko creating the Unicorn Cup entrepreneurial challenge with Learn Lemons.

He also established the University of Sydney's first-ever Innovation Festival, which has now run for three years. The festival was broadcast to a live audience of over 500 attendees through partnerships with SPARK Festival.

Nusardel Oshana

Nusardel is a digital designer with a background in transdisciplinary innovation and communication.

He is passionate about solving complex challenges, and believes the best solutions transcend disciplinary boundaries. As a recent graduate, he has consulted on design innovation projects for diverse organisations including UTS, Honda and the City of Sydney. Most recently, he co-developed Plott, an exercise that helps prime workshop participants for better deliberation.

He is currently freelancing, supporting diverse clients to create engaging digital experiences.

Priyanka Ashraf

Priyanka is the Founder and Director of The Creative Co-Operative, Australia’s first 100% migrant Women of Colour owned, led and operated startup dedicated to lifting the economic access barriers faced by migrant WoC as a result of systemic racism. Structured as a social enterprise and operating as an agency, the CCO employs migrant WoC across creative, marketing and digital services and in the space of roughly 6 months of bootstrapping, has already created over 50 paid work opportunities for migrant WoC. The CCO applies a Pay It Forward model, where its commercial work helps fund community projects to amplify WoC. For instance, the recent Curious About Culture Festival amplifying over 40 WoC creative entrepreneurs and generated over $30,000 for the community.

Priyanka is also the Entrepreneur in Residence at Tech Ready Women and a Boosting Female Founders mentor.

Shirin Danesh

Shirin specialises in applying Agile and Lean practices in sales, both direct and digital space.

She helps sales teams to shorten their sales cycle by improving the solutioning and proposal preparation phase, creating an effective and collaborative touchpoint with clients and bringing visibility to blocked items in the deal pipeline.

Dr Tim Rayner

Tim is an internationally recognised expert on entrepreneurial leadership and new innovation cultures. He teaches ‘Innovation Leadership’ in the Advanced MBA, and ‘Leadership, Teams and Scalability’ in the MBA in Entrepreneurship (MBAe), at UTS Business School, Sydney.

Between these two courses, Tim teaches startup entrepreneurs how to build, launch and lead scalable small business and corporate innovators how to think and act like startup entrepreneurs.

Amelia Loye

Amelia is a social scientist, specialising in community and stakeholder engagement, social impact and democratic innovation.

For over 15 years, she has been helping governments and organisations in Australia, New Zealand and Canada understand communities and engage stakeholders in the design and delivery of policy, programs and services.

Jim Hutchin

Jim is crossing boundaries as a consultant, industry practitioner and researcher. His special focus is on the alignment of interests between the risk, entrepreneurship and innovation.

Experience ranges from the C Suite, to academia, to consulting to organisations such as Temple University, University of Technology Sydney, Willis Research Network and the UN Environment Program.

Kate Frost

Kate is currently consulting with Active Directions working closely with PwC, in the strategic planning/business development space, which reflects her successful track record and experience over the past 25 years.

In the NFP space, her first role was Head of Fundraising at The Smith Family; then in 2008 she joined YWCA NSW as CEO/Executive Director.

Advisors

Matthew Salier

Matt is the Founder and Executive Director of the New Venture Institute at Flinders University.

The role of the Institute is to focus the innovation and entrepreneurial activities of the University, delivering accredited education, startup acceleration and incubation programs, and innovation capacity building programs for organisations.

Richard Marshall

Richard is an international co-founder, entrepreneur, start-up advisor to SMEs, for purpose and for profit ventures.

Richard works as a business advisor on entrepreneurial education, the development of a world-class learning experience platform and civic innovation. He has been a small business owner since 1991, SME business enabler, strategic advisor, cross-cultural, cross-border and international business development.

Alisha Geary

As an Indigenous entrepreneur of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent, Alisha is dedicated to fostering cultural appreciation and equality. With a background in Business Law, Accounting, and Fintech, she founded Provvypay, a digital payments platform for the agricultural industry, and co-founded Thirsty Turtl, a cosmetics brand supporting Indigenous farmers. As an angel investor with Blak Angels, Alisha invest in high-potential startups to drive innovation and opportunity.

Cleaveland McGhie

As a Wiradjuri descendant and leader on Dharawal country, I'm committed to entrepreneurship and innovation in Indigenous communities, guided by 'The Power Within is Infinite.' I reclaim family stories to preserve our history authentically, driving impactful initiatives across sectors like Education and Health. Through roles at Curijo and co-owning Yaali Collective, I advance Indigenous workforce outcomes and empower personal growth with initiatives like the 'My Mob and Me Genealogy Journal' and 'Self-Reflection & Affirmation Journal Set'.

David Parkin

David Parkin, Managing Director of Luggarrah, a wholly Aboriginal owned business in Stawell, Victoria, connects regional youth with the tech industry through innovative events and workshops. He champions upskilling First Nations people in video game creation and cultural storytelling, recognized internationally for his contributions to Indigenous representation in gaming and leadership roles at Kinaway Chamber of Commerce and Victorian Fisheries Authority.

Jocelyn King

Jocelyn is a seasoned executive with over 25 years of experience across government, nonprofit, and Indigenous business sectors, specializing in leadership, strategic partnerships, and organizational change. She founded First Australians Capital to drive investments into Indigenous economic development and holds leadership roles at FAC and the NSW Aboriginal Land Council's Economic Development Advisory Panel.

Indigenous Entrepreneur Pathway Facilitators

Lateesha Jeffrey

Lateesha, a Woolwonga and Kukatj woman from the Northern Territory, advocates passionately for education, particularly for young women, aiming to heal intergenerational trauma and strengthen communities. She founded Wave of Change Consultancy Pty Ltd and the Lateral Empowerment Program to drive meaningful change and empowerment. Her vision is to achieve generational impact for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities through collaborative empowerment efforts.

Les Delaforce

Les Delaforce is a seasoned First Nations leader and Non-Executive Director at First Nations X, known for advancing Indigenous startups through technology and innovation. He co-founded Covocate, led entrepreneurship initiatives at Minderoo Foundation, and has been recognized for his contributions to Indigenous economic development globally.

Jess Morris

Jess Morris, a Wiradjuri and Wailwan woman, co-founded Strong Spirit Aboriginal Services to promote sustainable growth for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. With over 15 years in the health sector and qualifications in Health Science and Public Health, she excels in project management and community engagement, earning recognition for her contributions.

Tshinta Morris

Tshinta Morris, a Barkindji and Gamilaroi woman, participates in UTS Business School's Indigenous Academic Development Program, pursuing a Master's in Transdisciplinary Innovation (Research) focusing on Indigenous Social Entrepreneurship. With experience in fitness, nonprofits, and roles like Program Lead at NASCA and Assistant Graphic Designer at the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, she aims to empower Indigenous communities through Social Entrepreneurship.