Global heavyweights to judge 2018 NZ Hi-Tech Awards

Bill Reichert, Dr Rosie Bosworth and Rebekah Campbell join international judging panel for 2018 NZ Hi-Tech Awards

Auckland, New Zealand, 29 January 2018 – The international judging panel for the 2018 New Zealand Hi-Tech Awards has been boosted with the appointment of Garage Technology Ventures managing director Bill Reichert, future food technologist and agritech specialist Dr Rosie Bosworth and Hey You founder Rebekah Campbell.

They will join established international judges Claudia Batten, Katherine Corich, Pascal Finette, Pat Kenealy, Richard Keyse, Nick Lambert, Andy Lark, Richard Mander, Dr Catherine Mohr, Savannah Peterson and Rohit Shukla.

Jennifer Rutherford, Chair of the Hi-Tech Trust says this is the best line up of international judges ever assembled to evaluate and judge the Hi-Tech Awards.

“Any business awards, domestic or international, would be lucky to have such a line-up of global stars. We are delighted to have Bill, Rosie and Rebekah join our existing panel of international judges.”

“These world class business leaders are busy people and it’s very encouraging that they are giving their own time to judge the Hi-Tech Awards. Their interest in New Zealand, our tech sector and the Awards is just amazing and a great reflection of the achievements of our tech companies on the global stage,” says Rutherford.

Rutherford says the fact that the Hi-Tech Awards can secure judges of this calibre is testimony to the increasing recognition of the NZ Hi-Tech Awards, both domestically and internationally. The 2018 Awards will be judged by over 70 local and international judges.

“As an industry we compete on a global stage and contribute significantly to the New Zealand economy. The Hi-Tech Awards presents a great opportunity for New Zealand technology companies to gain recognition for their achievements and to get their company in front of a world-class group of local and international business leaders,” says Rutherford.

BIOGRAPHIES OF THE INTERNATIONAL JUDGES

Bill Reichert

Bill Reichert has over 30 years of experience as an investor, entrepreneur and operating executive. Since joining Garage in 1998, Reichert has focused on early-stage information technology and materials science companies. He has been a board director or board observer at CaseStack, WhiteHat Security, ClearFuels Technology, Simply Hired, MiaSole, D.light Design, ThermoCeramix, and VisaNow, among others. Prior to Garage, Reichert was a co-founder or senior executive in several venture-backed technology start-ups, including Trademark Software, The Learning Company, and Academic Systems. Earlier in his career, he worked at McKinsey & Company, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., and the World Bank. Reichert earned a B.A. at Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Stanford University. He was a founding board member and a Chairman of the Churchill Club, and is an advisor to the Women’s Startup Lab. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Reichert is the managing director at Garage Technology Ventures.

Dr Rosie Bosworth

Dr Rosie Bosworth is a future of foods strategist, speaker, and communications specialist, passionate about creating, driving and facilitating a sustainable, progressive and scalable global food system fit for a growing world. The strategic innovation consultant and communications professional has a penchant for driving competitive business growth through disruptive innovation and game changing technology platforms. With over six years consulting experience in business innovation, a PhD in disruptive sustainable innovation and technology development, and a background in marketing and account management, Bosworth harbours a rare breadth of skills and competencies. Having built a strong and rare global network of leaders in the future of foods arena, Bosworth has accumulated a rare, valuable and intimate database of knowledge pertaining to the future of food. She is an advisor to businesses, industry and government on the various strategic pathways forward in the future of food and agriculture, as well as an experienced journalist and regular keynote speaker (including TEDx) on the future of food.

Rebekah Campbell

Rebekah Campbell is a serial entrepreneur who has played a lead role in the disruption of two industries. Her company ‘Hey You’ is Australia’s largest mobile ordering and payments platform for cafes, processing more than 50K transactions per week. Hey You is currently growing at 4% per week and recently closed a $5M investment round led by Westpac. Campbell first company, Scorpio Music, developed the careers of some of Australia's biggest stars: Evermore, Matt Corby and Lisa Mitchell. Campbell collaborated with Warner Music to pioneer new business models that revolutionised the relationship between record company and artist. In 2010, Campbell launched a technology platform that enabled music fans to earn income by promoting concerts online. The business later sold to Future Music. Campbell is an expert in developing strategies to disrupt and improve the way we do things and then to create the right product and brand to fulfil on the opportunity. She understands how grass roots communities work and how to build momentum so that a product takes off. Campbell has won the support of high profile investors in Silicon Valley, raising $10 million in venture capital. She is passionate about community building and entrepreneurship and was instrumental in the creation of large-scale fundraising events such as the Levi’s Life Festival to raise awareness about youth suicide and Make Poverty History in 2006. Campbell serves on the Advisory Board of Kidpreneur, writes a weekly column on entrepreneurship for the New York Times and regularly contributes to Forbes, Fast Company and BRW. In Bali, APEC named Campbell 'Young Women Innovator'. rebekahcampbell.com named #3 best Australian business blog by Smart Company. Campbell is a finalist in the AFR Women of Influence Awards for Innovation.

Andy Lark

Andy Lark is globally recognised for his marketing and leadership in high growth start-ups and Enterprises and has recently been appointed as CMO of Foxtel. He has built one of the most successful SaaS start-ups into a global software powerhouse; launched apps used by millions every day; lead the transformation of Australia's most vibrant financial services brand; and, built one of the largest eCommerce sites in the world. Most recently he was the chief business officer for global accounting software company Xero – named by Forbes as the world's most innovative company. Lark previously held senior positions at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Dell, LogLogic, Sun Microsystems, Nortel Networks and Fleishman-Hillard. He is a non-executive director of Mercury Energy and SLI Systems. He is the co-founder and chair of hot Australian-based marketing technology start-up, Simple Technologies. Today he leads Group Lark – a global consultancy driving brand and digital transformations for the world's leading countries and enterprises. Group Lark helps great ideas flourish in a digital world – and great brands design their future there. Lark , a Kiwi, is a passionate supporter of NZ and Australian entrepreneurs and he has won over 100 awards for work in building brands and creating online capabilities. His work was recognised with the NZ Government's prestigious World Class New Zealander Award and the Flying Kiwi Award for outstanding contribution to the NZ technology sector.

Richard Mander

Richard Mander is the Chief Operating Officer at ikeGPS, where he is responsible for the design, development, production and support of all products. Prior to joining ikeGPS, Mander held technology engineering leadership and management roles at Apple, Visualant, Contour, Carousel, HumanWare, Navman and Zanzara. As a cross-functional leader with expertise in the development of new technology products, Mander has led the development of many award-winning products. Mander holds multiple technology patents as well as speaking and writing about user-centred product design. Richard holds a Bachelor of Arts from University of Canterbury, a Masters of Arts from University of Auckland and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Claudia Batten

Claudia Batten has spent over 15 years in the technology sector as a founder, advisor, mentor, board member and enthusiast. Batten was part of the founding team of Massive (sold to Microsoft in 2006), a first-of- its-kind network for advertising in video games. In 2009, Batten co-founded Victors & Spoils, one of the first advertising agencies built on the principles of crowdsourcing. Batten is Executive Chairperson of Star86.com and a co-founder of Broadli.com, companies that are at the forefront of looking for new ways to use digital tools. Batten is a regular speaker on digital innovation, digital media and building businesses of the future. She is hugely driven by having an impact on the career of young women and is currently writing a book called The Squiggly Line.

Katherine Corich

Katherine Corich is the founder of Sysdoc, a global services company that works with clients to deliver genuine transformational change. Corich set up Sysdoc in 1986 and the company now has offices in Europe, Asia and the Americas, with clients that range from McLaren Automotive to large corporations and government departments. Corich also leads Sysdoc’s performance-based philanthropy, offering expertise, time and seed funding, to deliver projects “where we can make a significant and sustainable difference around the world.” Corich has received several awards including being named Ernst & Young Master Entrepreneur of the Year and, 2015 UK New Zealander of the Year. Sysdoc has twice been named as one of the 30 Top Employers for Working Families by Working Families UK in London. Alongside running her business, Katherine Corich is on the board of the charity Happy Child International which developed a high profile, visible campaign against the sexual exploitation of young children during the Rio Olympics.

Pascal Finette

Pascal Finette heads up “everything entrepreneurship” at Singularity University and leads breakthrough thinking at SU Labs, where Silicon Valley’s brightest minds are leveraging exponential technologies to transform the world. He further serves as Singularity’s Global Evangelist, interpreting SU’s vision of the future to C-level and Fortune 500 leaders in small private groups. Finette has spent his career pushing the boundaries of technology – he started on the Net before there was a web browser, ran eBay’s Platform Solutions Group in Europe, launched a consulting firm for entrepreneurs, invested into early-stage tech start-ups, led Mozilla’s Innovation Lab, created Mozilla’s accelerator program WebFWD, headed up Mozilla’s Office of the Chair and has invested into social impact organisations around the globe at Google.org. Finette has also founded several non-profit organisations and publishes the opinionated newsletter, The Heretic, which is read by ten-of-thousands of entrepreneurs around the globe. His new book, The Heretic: Daily Therapeutics for Entrepreneurs features the best of his top 100 posts edited into short, digestible and unfiltered insights.

Pat Kenealy

Pat Kenealy is the managing director of Ridge Ventures (formerly known as IDG Ventures USA). Kenealy founded the original IDG’s Digital News Publishing subsidiary, Publisher and served as CEO and CEO of its PC World Communications subsidiary. Kenealy is now CEO of Ridge Ventures, overseeing media, market research, and event businesses in more than 50 countries. Kenealy previously founded IDG Ventures in San Francisco, IDG Ventures Atlantic in Boston and IDG Ventures Europe in London and has invested in more than a dozen early-stage information technology and new media investments – but is now best known for his work at Ridge Ventures. Kenealy has held several board and observer seats. Prior to IDG, Pat held a number of publishing and editorial management positions.

Richard Keyse

Richard Keyse is a business transformation professional with an enviable range of blue chip clients. Keyse has many years of experience working with CxO level executives on a number of corporately strategic initiatives including mergers/demergers, company procurements, global change programmes, systems implementations, BPR programmes, operational reviews, introduction of new products, outsourcing arrangements and reorganisations. The scale of programmes is typically multi-million pound investments and involve managing large, multi-disciplined project teams located across multiple geographies. Keyse is a board member of NZTE’s European Beachheads Advisory Board and is the owner and founder of UKNZ Associates. Keyse has previously held directorships in companies across a range of sectors including tourism, health informatics, software and recruitment. Keyse was formally an investor and advisor to 2iC Ltd, an agile, award-winning IOT company that has innovative software products to securely and flexibly connect and control disparate digital devices and systems. Keyse now works in investment management at Accenture where he has researched, developed and presented a paper on the disruptors affecting the investment management sector over the next five years and how each disruptor may affect various types of investment manager.

Nick Lambert

Singapore-based Nick Lambert is the managing director in Asia at ServiceNow, an enterprise cloud company. Lambert was previously executive director of global industries for Telstra, responsible for leading the expansion of the Australian telecommunications industry verticals including financial services, mining, utilities, manufacturing, public sector, retail and services across the region. Prior to that role, Lambert was executive vice president of Vodafone Global Enterprise and before that he spent six years at Cable & Wireless Worldwide, where his roles included director of all global operating companies and member of the executive board. In this role, he managed a team of more than 1300 employees across all regions outside of the UK. Earlier in his career, Lambert worked for several years at IBM New Zealand.

Dr Catherine Mohr

Catherine Mohr is a surgical robotics technologist and Director of Medical Research for Intuitive Surgical based in San Francisco. She began her career as an engineer, receiving her Bachelors and Masters of Science in mechanical engineering at MIT. Following her studies, Mohr worked at AeroVironment to develop alternative-energy vehicles and high-altitude aircraft. Nine years later Mohr returned to study, this time at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In addition to her work at Intuitive Surgical, she has served as a scientific advisor for several start-up companies in Silicon Valley and government programs in New Zealand. Mohr has over a dozen patents to her name, is the author of numerous scientific publications, and has TED talks that have been viewed over one million times. Mohr was announced as a New Zealand Hi-Tech Awards Flying Kiwi in 2014.

Savannah Peterson

Savannah Peterson is a 2016 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Consumer Technology and the Founder of Savvy Millennial – which specializes in innovation services, go-to-market strategy, explosive product launches, niche community building, and all things digital. Peterson is an international public speaker, live-streamer, community builder and innovation strategist. Before starting Savvy Millennial, she was the Director of Innovation Strategy at Speck Design and Massive Labs. She was also previously the Director of Global Community at Shapeways, the world's largest 3D printing community in New York City, where she empowered and enabled the over 25,000 3D printing businesses. Peterson has helped friends, clients, and fellow creatives raise over $4.5M through crowdfunding. Before diving head first into design, Peterson worked at Fox Sports Northwest, the Centre for Communication and Civic Engagement at the University of Washington, and founded her own social media marketing agency, Savvy Marketing Seattle. Savannah is an avid mentor for women and men in tech. She teaches entrepreneurship, community innovation and digital marketing at Stanford, NYU, UCLA, PACE and Xavier. She has been featured in/on the Today Show, the BBC, NBC, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Gizmodo, CNET, The Verge, and more.

Rohit Shukla

Rohit Shukla, CEO of Larta, is an established thought leader and respected practitioner on innovation, commercialization and enterprise and technology-led economic development. Shukla cares deeply about entrepreneurs and speaks around the world on innovation and commercialisation related always to the various stages of development. Shukla founded Larta Institute in 1993 and incorporated it as an independent non-profit organization in 1997. It is a mission-based organisation, focused on the transformation of ideas into enterprises working to feed, fuel and heal the world. The Larta Institute works with a world-class network of experts, buyers, investors and public and private organisations to stimulate innovation through its focus on adoption and commercialisation of great ideas. Shukla directed a prominent group of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies in the defence electronics and aerospace industries in the U.S., counting among his associates the great Peter Drucker, Bill Perry (who later became the U.S. Secretary of Defence), Malcolm Currie, CEO of Hughes and other luminaries. He created and managed the first “defence adjustment” programme derived from policy advice he provided to the Clinton Administration in the early 1990s.Shukla was also an entrepreneur himself, founding two companies in the information technology and information processing industries prior to the Internet boom.

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