Champions of Digital

In this episode of Champions of Digital, Mark hosts Nathan McEwan, the CMO and Digital Officer at Stratton Finance. Mark and Nathan discuss digital's influence on the CMO role, gaining trust with the executive team and the death of CX! Get the inside scoop on a unique approach to launching an e-commerce platform for one of Australia’s largest asset finance brokers, and much more.

Nathan is a commercially minded marketer and business leader, with a passion for leading and supporting teams to achieve their objectives. He gravitates towards internal and external data to help inform strategy and execution plans. As an energetic leader with a strong bias to action and a passion for businesses with a growth and digital mindset, he enjoys building high performance teams around a set of common goals.

As CMO at Stratton Finance, Nathan leads the marketing, digital product, digital sales and customer service team to deliver customer engagement improvements across acquisition, portfolio management, retention and digital channel development. In recent months he has led a digital transformation that has not only brought customer lifecycle marketing to life, but has also led to a new digital product that has generated $6 million in incremental business.

His previous roles have seen him head up product, marketing and strategy teams for companies such as Australian Unity, Coles Group, Medibank and NAB.

Mathew Ashley, Director of Experience Design & Delivery at Westpac joins us on the Champions of Digital Podcast this week to chat all things digital, design and leadership. This week you can expect to hear a bit more about design thinking in a large corporate sector environment, dealing with a Royal Commission and  what it takes to thrive as a designer in an organisation like Westpac.

With a background and Degree in Design, Mathew is a passionate and highly motivated, results driven, creative and strategic problem solver with over 15 years experience encompassing Engineering, Advertising and Digital Product Design and Development. He has worked in a number of different markets including the UK, Australia and Japan 

Mathew possesses extensive experience in building, managing and supporting successful Digital Product Design teams with a specific focus on Experience Design, Digital Strategy and Innovation. Well versed in the design and agile development of both consumer and enterprise solutions, he is also passionate about collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to design and build new products from the ground up, fix existing products that are broken or improve products and processes that are not working as well as they could be.

This week Mark jumps into the education industry with GM of Strategy and New Product, Jack Hylands. A passionate teacher, Jack left the consulting industry early on to pursue his passion for education, specifically tailoring University offerings to the modern learner. Mark and Jack speak on the drastic changes that have happened within education over the last few decades, providing world-class student experiences and scaling a team at pace.

Jack is highly passionate about excellence and equity in education, and what this means for the future world of work. Jack is currently leading the strategy of RMIT Online and advising a number of education and technology start-ups. Jack was previously CEO of Ducere, where he established and grew innovative degrees with universities in Australia and overseas.

Jack's prior background is as a management consultant in the digital space and an alumnus of the Teach First Leadership Development program. Jack is an arts graduate from the University of Cambridge and a qualified mathematics teacher.

Jack is a director of Cann10 Australia, a business advisory council member of ACS and a strategy advisor for Maddie Riewoldt's Vision.

Welcome our second guest for the season, CTO at Carsguide, Jeremy Gupta. Mark and Jeremy discuss what it means to implement change effectively, developing a culture of knowledge sharing into an organisation and why Jeremy doesn’t want to be involved in every single meeting. With an abundance of tidbits, anecdotal experience and some banter, check out this episode to learn about the ups, downs and sideways experiences of what it means to be CTO of an evolving technology company.

An experienced technology and product leader, Jeremy has been working in digital since 2003 after graduating from UNSW with a Bachelor of Computer Engineering and a Masters in Biomedical Engineering.

With experience across the full product life cycle - from pre-sales to ideation, scoping, product management, solution architecture, engineering, data and then hosting and support he has been influencing companies and partners to adopt a mobile first approach and ensure that technology is a differentiator and not just an enabler.

His core interests are in building and leading effective teams, strategy, product development, automation and the creation of Products that serve unmet needs.

This week’s episode is all about change management, agri-tech and building digital teams in a notoriously analog industry. Join the conversation between Mark and Scott where surprisingly, there was no need to pop any dollars into the swear jar. Swear jar you ask? Listen on!

“A large part of the initial work was just building trust within the business... We were able to deliver some tactical solutions within a six to eight week period which blew the minds of the business.”

— Scott

We’re excited to bring you a second season of Champions of Digital. Thanks for joining us to hear from some more digital legends this season!

Meet Mark Oliver, CEO of Inlight, a digital services business that is obsessive about our client experiences, and the voice behind this podcast.

In Season One we learned about the challenges of digital transformation and how legacy industries were responding, discussed digital teaming, agility, managing stakeholders and securing digital budgets from the powers that be.

Now, season two we’re taking it to a deeper level! Enjoy the conversations as we talk to some heavy hitters from Westpac, RMIT Online, Graincorp, Carsguide and more!

As always, we’d love your feedback and any thoughts about who else you’d love to hear interviewed on the podcast, so don’t be afraid to get in touch via [email protected]!

In this week’s podcast we fly into the world of aviation retail with Group Head of Digital at Jetstar, Cathryn Arnold. Cathryn explores the ideas of Jetstar existing as a Digital retailer rather than solely an airline, how they (Jetstar) deliver their digital solutions from a team composition perspective and the agile methods being adopted to adapt to rapidly changing industry conditions. This episode is packed full of information, set aside 20 minutes and enjoy!

In his 27 years at The Age, Mark Fuller has witnessed its transformation from print to a ‘digital first’ organisation. He has held multiple leadership roles, the most recent of which has been heading up the newspaper’s digital edition. Mark shares with us his insights into the world of digital publishing.

Mark talks about getting the right balance between producing quality journalism versus easy to consume online articles. He finds the online space more customer-driven than print and talks about how The Age uses customer data to optimise their stories in real time. He covers topics such as subscription content, social media, click-bait and the next big technology trend to hit the publishing world.

On a more personal note, Mark also talks about being constantly connected and living in a house with 6 iPads, 8 iPhones and 5 laptops!

This week on Champions of Digital we dive into the world of retail with Andrew Wilkinson, General Manager - Digital Strategy & Product at Vicinity Centres. Andrew talks us through, his views on communication between digital and operational teams, key technologies that are on the horizon for Australian shoppers and how he believes larger corporates should integrate specific start-up mentalities. We also find out why Andrew left his (once) dream career as a rocket scientist and landed in the retail space.

Momentum Energy is one of Australia’s leading energy retailers, owned by Australia’s largest producer of renewable energy - Hydro Tasmania. In this episode of Champions of Digital, we chat with Luke White, the head of digital for Momentum Energy. Luke has been with Momentum for over three years, and since then has developed a high-performing digital team, led the organisation’s digital channel through various major projects, and acted to oversee and rebuild the brand’s digital presence.

In this episode Luke gives particular insight into the crucial importance of the relationship between clients and agencies in the digital landscape. He touches on the various challenges that are faced in the digital media line of work, as well as the rewards that will be reaped if parties are a strong match and work together cohesively. Luke also brings additional substance to the topic, outlining common areas that need to be targeted and fulfilled to ensure a healthy and effective relationship is maintained.

Laura and Luke touch on Luke’s progression throughout his various digital jobs over the years, and the journey that led him to be at Momentum to this day. They then further delve into Luke’s role at Momentum, outlining and discussing his short-term goals as well as the company’s long-term vision.

Further in, the podcast gravitates toward a focus on the future, leading Laura and Luke to ponder future technologies that could disrupt the market, as well as the prospective effects of rising electricity costs.

The podcast ends on an interesting note with an anecdotal discussion regarding the intrusiveness and distractive nature of technology, as well as the importance of limiting one's time spent on our phones.

A digital leader with experience across client and agency side digital roles, Luke has a background in everything from Telcos to Superannuation.

He has experience with delivering major digital transformation projects whilst executing against aggressive ecommerce performance enhancement targets.

In his current role as the Head of Digital for Momentum Energy Luke is responsible for building and managing digital strategy for an organisation facing significant industry disruption.