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.

Guest Speaker, International Women’s Day 2021

Speaking on Navigating a Never Changing World

The more the world changes with respect to gender equality, the more it stays the same. Despite goals and actions at the global and national level, a recent report indicates that true gender parity will not be achieved for 99.5 years – not in our lifetimes, or the lifetime of our children.

So how do we navigate this ‘never changing’ world as women in business, as industry leaders, as young people facing a career in gender biased environments, and for some of us, as mothers?

Suzie Christensen has experienced the highs and lows of working as a woman in male dominated fields, and doing so while raising three children on her own after the tragic loss of her husband.

Awarded her first CEO role in her 30’s, with 20 years’ experience as a leader and manager, she shares powerful reflections on the strategies and mindset necessary to survive and thrive in the modern world.