Guest Speaker, International Women’s Day 2021

Queensland Small Business Commissioner

Maree Adshead is the Queensland Small Business Commissioner. The Commissioner aims to advocate, enable and empower small businesses to help drive economic growth in Queensland.

Maree is an experienced advocate and small business owner having spent 10 years in the legal profession, and as partner of a tier one national law firm. She co-founded and built her own successful software start-up businesses which received multiple awards for excellence in innovation, and has also been instrumental in helping others to build theirs.

She became founding CEO of the Open Data Institute Australian Network in 2014, which was dedicated to enabling business, industry, academia and government to use public data as a strategic resource.

In 2017 Maree was appointed the inaugural Queensland Small Business Champion, establishing a trusted interface between business and government, advocating on behalf of the Queensland small business community, as well as triaging and referring disputes.

Having achieved great work for Queenslanders as Small Business Champion, Maree now leads the Office of the Queensland Small Business Commissioner.