Michael Rodrigues - NSW inaugural 24 Hour economy Commissioner

Mike believes in the inspirational power of cities and spends a good amount of time encouraging anyone in his orbit to get out of the house, to know their city and to have more fun.

While working as a lawyer in the Middle East, he spotted an opportunity to launch global lifestyle brand Time Out in Sydney in 2007 to achieve these aims. In 15 years at the helm of Time Out Australia he has grew the brand across print, digital, event and social channels, which now reaches 1,000,000 Australians monthly. He also co-founded the Time Out Bar Awards and the Time Out Food Awards. Time Out’s contribution to our cities was recently recognised in 2020 when Time Out was awarded the Mumbrella Publish Awards Publishing Company of the Year, and Mike himself was awarded Publish Leader of the Year.

Since 2017 and prompted by the challenges facing Sydney's night time economy, Mike has focussed his efforts on aligning and empowering industry to actively engage in the political process in order to effect change. This saw him take a leading role in launching an independent bars association for Sydney in May 2018, followed by the launch of a Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) in November 2018 of which he was the inaugural Chair. The NTIA was at the forefront of the development of the NSW Government strategy for a 24-Hour Economy, and in February Mike was announced as the State of NSW’s first 24 Hour Economy Commissioner, a role that commenced formally on 29 March 2021.

Mike is also co-host of leading hospitality podcast Back of House, a board member of UNSW Art & Design’s advisory council and a board member of Torrens University Hospitality advisory council.

Danielle Harvey - Director, 'A Midnight Visit' & Festival Director, Festival of Dangerous Ideas

Danielle Harvey is a curator, creative producer and polymath.  Currently the Festival Director of the infamous Festival of Dangerous Ideas and co-creator and director of the large-scale immersive experience A Midnight Visit. She is the founder of pop and screen-culture festival BingeFest; founder of Antidote: a festival of ideas, art and action, former Executive Producer of popular podcast It’s A Long Story and former co-curator of All About Women the Sydney Opera House’s feminist festival.  

Danielle has been responsible for a large number of theatre, dance and cabaret productions showing in Sydney like This Is Our Youth starring Michael Cera and Kieran Culkin, The Illusionists, Circus 1903, Limbo Unhinged, Swan Lake:Loch na hEala, Barbu, Club Swizzle, Miss Behave Gameshow, Ballet Preljocaj’s Snow White and Bill Murray and Jan Vogler in concert.

She’s worked with culture creators like Shia LaBeouf, Tavi Gevinson, Dan Harmon, Brian Reed, Ira Glass, Arianna Huffington, David Simon, Miranda July and presented thought leaders like Noam Chomsky, Germaine Greer, Salman Rushdie, Stephen Hawking, Elizabeth Gilbert and Eve Ensler. Danielle works across the live performance and digital space, creating layered programs that connect deeply with audiences.

Past roles include Head of Contemporary Performance at Sydney Opera House and Festival Executive Producer of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras. Career highlights include producing Spencer Tunick’s mass nude installation The Base, touring comediennes Margaret Cho and Joan Rivers, presenting Stephen Hawking as a hologram in the first event of it’s kind and creating stage shows for Cyndi Lauper, George Michael, Olivia Newton-John and Amanda Lepore. Other parts of her resume include theatre directing credits, philanthropy programs and a terrible stint in a deli at age 15.

Robbie Brammall - Director of Marketing & Communications, Mona

Robbie is fortunate enough to be the Director of Marketing and Communications at one of the world's most creatively driven start ups - The Museum of Old and New Art. That means he gets to do a bunch of fun marketing stuff for a museum (Mona), a winery (Moorilla), a brewery (MooBrew), some music festivals (MOFO), an amazing restaurant (The Source), a convention and accomodation business, and hopefully the world's weirdest caravan park. And he get to do all of that in beautiful Hobart - the best place in Australia for scallop pies and raising girls.

In regards to Robbie's career, whilst he might have started in marketing, he quickly moved into the world of advertising, where he was able to travel the world working at great agencies like DDB, Saatchi & Saatchi, George Patts Y&R, and Clemenger BBDO.

Over the years Robbie's work has been recognised at all the major award shows, but the high point was definitely having his work for Devondale win back to back campaign of the year in Australia. That was no mean feat, given when he took over the business it was doing Brand Power ads with an animated cow.

Anyway, it turns out all those years of advertising shenanigans were actually preparing Robbie for the daily shenanigans at the best, bravest and most creative client in Australia - Mona.

Dr Natalia Nikolova - Director UTS Advanced MBA, UTS Business School

Dr Natalia Nikolova is Director UTS Advanced MBA at the University of Technology Sydney Business School. Her research focuses on organisational practices, strategy and innovation in a range of contexts including professional services and creative industries. She is the co-author of an industry report investigating the practices and strategies of boards and executive teams for fostering innovation in Australia’s ASX 200 companies, as well as the barriers hindering innovations, and is currently working on a range of projects with a focus on intrapreneurship in large companies and public organisations. Natalia’s recent research seeks to provide students, the business community and the public with a deeper understanding of the opportunities and challenges associated with the future of work. Natalia has a strong reputation in designing learning experiences and courses that prepare students for the future of work through the development of ‘enterprise’ skills, such as complex problem-solving, critical thinking, communication, teamworking and project management skills.

Associate Professor Jochen Schweitzer - Director Entrepreneurship, UTS Business School

Jochen is Associate Professor of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategy and Director Entrepreneurship at the UTS Business School. He leads the development and implementation of the entrepreneurship programs including the MBA in Entrepreneurship and the Bachelor of Entrepreneurship (Honours). His research, teaching and consulting focuses on issues of strategy, collaboration, entrepreneurship and innovation with a special interest in design thinking, emerging technologies and open innovation. Jochen was Visiting Scholar at Stanford University and Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) School of Design Thinking at Potsdam University. Prior to joining the Business School, he has taught at the UTS schools of Design and Architecture and at Macquarie University. He was a principal at PricewaterhouseCoopers, production engineer at Volkswagen and a program manager at the Goethe Institute. Jochen is also the founder of U.lab, an interdisciplinary thinktank and platform for innovation projects. For further information please visit Jochen's LinkedIn or ResearchGate profile page.

Carli Leimbach - Design Thinker, WWF Innovation Lead, Regenerative Practitioner

Carli Leimbach is an Innovation Lead at WWF currently designing the 'Innovate to Regenerate' national challenge, a former Learning designer for the ABC establishing the first emerging leaders program, a design thinker for Google and the 2019 Fempreneur in residence at the UTS Business School.