Shane Fitzsimmons
Shane Fitzsimmons AO AFSM GAICD brings over three decades of dedicated service and leadership in emergency management and community resilience to the Connectivity Innovations Network.
He has served as Chair of the NSW Telco Authority Board (2012-2023), the State Emergency Management Committee (2007-2022), and the State Recovery Committee (2020-2022). Shane led the world’s largest volunteer fire service, with over 76,000 volunteers and 1,000 staff. His work in crisis management, disaster response, and community recovery has been influential in the field.
Shane has received the Rural Fire Service Long-Service Medal, the National Medal, the Australian Fire Service Medal (AFSM), and being honoured as an Officer (AO) in the General Division of the Order of Australia in the 2022 Australia Day Honours.
Sarah Goss
Ericsson
As Head of Innovation, Ericsson Australia & New Zealand, Sarah Goss is a member of Ericsson’s local executive team, responsible for company-wide strategy execution and innovation.
Prior to her current role, she led Ericsson’s government and enterprise practice for Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia, focusing on digital transformation in industries such as utilities, transport and public safety.
Sarah was a founding director of HealthTech startup, Umps, where she remains a shareholder. She is also Chair of Ericsson’s Diversity & Inclusion Council, member of the Industry Advisory Committee for RMIT School of Management, and Advisory Board member for In2Science, which provides STEM peer mentoring in low socio-economic schools.
Joanna Knox
Telstra
Joanna Knox is the Executive for Product Excellence and Incubation in the Product & Technology team at Telstra. Product Incubation includes the Telstra Labs, where Telstra validate, explore, and incubate new product solutions for and with customers. Product Excellence is the product lifecycle management disciplines, including Product Architecture.
Previously, Joanna was Telstra’s Chief Risk Officer from 2017 to 2021. In this core governance role for Telstra, Joanna drove programs to uplift Telstra’s risk and compliance effectiveness, and implement an agile@scale operating model for risk. Joanna led the Crisis Management team and resilience risk management, including responses to natural disasters and Covid.
Prior to joining Telstra, Joanna was a management consultant with Bain & Company for 10 years.
Michael Stein
Motorola Solutions
Michael Stein brings extensive Director and senior executive experience, skills and demonstrable leadership in the information technology and communications arena with strong governance, strategic, commercial and management depth. Michael has a unique blend of skills and experience from tech start-ups to Global Fortune 500 companies.
Michael is currently a Director and Australian Country Board Member at Motorola Solutions. Prior to this, Mike held senior executive roles with KPMG Consulting, Alcatel-Lucent (Nokia), Storability (Oracle), Avaya and Ericsson.
Elyssa Rollinson
BAI Communications
Elyssa Rollinson is the Chief Commercial Officer at BAI Communications Australia. Prior to joining BAI, she worked with PwC and in the UK for BBC Technology and Group4 Securicor.
In her current role, Elyssa is responsible for supporting strategy development and execution and for engagement across the broadcast, telecommunications and government sectors.
Having a strong belief in the value of collaboration, a key area of focus is to bring the insights that BAI has gained internationally to help drive better connectivity outcomes here in Australia.
Darren Mills
NBN Co.
Darren Mills is Executive General Manager, Strategic Network Insights at NBN Co Limited.
Darren Mills joined nbn in 2010, holding several senior leadership roles within the organisation before being appointed Executive General Manager, Strategic Network Insights. Strategic Network Insights are responsible for ensuring network plans are fully optimised to deliver nbn’s strategic network priorities and provide expert knowledge of innovative technologies and market trends for the network technology and strategic roadmap.
During the last 13 years with nbn, Darren has been accountable for real-time availability of the nbn network, planned outages, and network security on a 24 x 7 x 365 basis. Starting from a blank piece of paper, Darren has overseen the complete development of nbn’s processes for network management and preparation for, response to and recovery from natural disaster events. This includes the building of capabilities, tools, processes, and infrastructure internal to nbn, as well as establishing external relationships and partnerships needed to optimise the uptime of the nbn network in real-time. Darren has built and led nbn’s emergency management function over the past decade.
Before joining nbn, Darren served as General Manager Bigpond, Content and Media at Telstra in the Global Operations Centre. Prior to that, Darren spent 14 years at Optus in various leadership roles including General Manager Mobile Operations and General Manager Operations Programs, where he successfully led a series of lean six sigma process improvement initiatives.
Darren began his career in telecommunications with highly specialised roles within the Australian Army and Australian Defence Industries where he was awarded the Australian Army Exemplary Service medal. He has now accumulated over 38 years’ experience in the industry with expansive knowledge of network operations, telecommunication networks and network technologies.
Jane Want
NSW Department of Customer Service
Jane is experienced in leading transformation and industrialisation of underperforming programs to deliver best-practice service offerings, designed around the needs of business customers. Through her work in the university and telecommunications sectors, Jane has specialist knowledge in commercialising engineering technologies and innovation.
Paul Tremlett
TPG Telecom
Paul is the General Manager of Technology Strategy and Innovation at TPG Telecom.
With over a decade of experience at TPG Telecom (formerly Vodafone Australia), Paul has held various roles in Programme Management, Commercial & Planning and Project Initiation. Prior joining TPG Telecom, he worked in Engineering and Programme Management roles for major network vendors.
In his current position, Paul oversees the development and implementation of strategies across TPG Telecoms Technology portfolio, which includes service and product offerings, infrastructure and access networks.
Nick Lochrin
Nokia
Nick is the Head of Digital Industries within Nokia’s Network Infrastructure – APAC Enterprise & Partner Sales business unit. Prior to joining Nokia, Nick has worked for telecom equipment vendors, system integrators, independent software developers and communication service providers via his own consulting firm.
In his current role, Nick has responsibilities for business development involving innovative go-to-market around digital infrastructure including private data networks, pre-integrated edge systems, smart city and green energy initiatives. Deals typically involve sophisticated pricing, integrated financing, and structuring collaborative business models. He was involved in Australian government mission critical infrastructure (rail, PSMB) dating back to 2015, was Nokia’s commercial lead for NSWTA’s PSMB PoC and commercial lead for Alcatel-Lucent on the Singapore NBN. Nick has also been involved in support due diligence on M&A transactions and a member of the Alcatel/Nokia Shanghai Bell M&A team.
Nick’s activities include leading Nokia’s business development for a new entrant global data service provider, working with Australian Government agencies, establishing collaborations with innovators, and involved with three Sydney based universities – including as a representative on industry advisory committees.
David Haigh
Optus
David is the Head of Field Operations at Optus and brings over 30 years of experience in telecommunications engineering and operations. In his current role, David leads the national strategy for Optus’ Field Operations, overseeing the mobile network, exchanges, Data Centres, technical facilities, and fibre optic infrastructure. He also manages Optus’s disaster response efforts across Australia.
Before joining Optus, David spent over 15 years in the United States. During this time, he achieved several industry firsts, served on national boards including the SCTE National Board and provided expert testimony to the US Congress on technical standards related to RFoG and FTTx.
More recently, in 2023-24, David served on an Expert Panel for the ANU Tech Policy Design Centre, where he contributed to developing a sector-wide resilience profile for telecommunications.
David has been a member of the NSW Rural Fire Service since 1989 and is also an amateur radio operator.