CISO New Zealand schedule

• Responding to unprecedented change with clearer priorities around growth and resilience
• Determining where leaders should drive acceleration — and where stronger guardrails are needed
• Shaping a compelling executive vision that connects AI, organisational change and investment strategy 

• AI tied to performance: Keeping revenue, cost, customer and risk outcomes in focus
• Embedding AI into the core: Positioning AI inside products, services and operating workflows
• Guardrails for impact: Using governance, cadence and metrics to keep AI efforts grounded in value 

• Setting transformation initiatives up for success through clear sponsorship, scope and decision-making
• Aligning business, product and technology leaders around shared priorities, ownership and outcomes
• Scaling successful approaches across the organisation to create repeatable and lasting value

Speakers:

Amanda White Chief Information Officer Open Country Dairy

Annette Rangi General Manager - Digital Transformation HEB Construction

Grant McIvor Chief Digital Officer Southern Cross Health Society

Dolly Kaur Director ICT - Centres of Expertise New Zealand Police 

• Advancing innovation while reinforcing operational resilience and stakeholder confidence
• Addressing the evolving risks shaping AI, data and digital transformation programmes
• Creating clearer accountability to support faster, more effective execution

Speaker:

Raffaella del Prete Chief Digital Officer Steel & Tube Holdings Ltd

Vijay Tekumalla Head of Architecture Suncorp New Zealand (moderator) 

• Simplifying the estate: Reducing complexity to improve speed, resilience and operational clarity
• Standardise where it counts: Creating shared foundations without constraining strategic differentiation
• Platforms that enable movement: Supporting experimentation and scale while mitigating sprawl 

• Unified visibility across the estate: Connecting cost, performance and utilisation across hybrid environments
• Supporting better investment choices: Using stronger financial insight to guide decisions
• From reporting to active governance: Making financial management part of technology steering

Speaker:

Jan Serfontein Director - Technology Operations Kāinga Ora - Homes and Communities 

• Resetting technology’s place: Shaping platforms, operating model and enterprise performance
• Re‑engineering funding, platforms and accountability: Aligning investment, ownership and measures
• Inflection points that changed the trajectory: Structural, leadership and capability moves 

• Translating ambition into action: Defining bets, dependencies and trade-offs
• Prioritising under constraint: Balancing strategic intent with realistic delivery decisions
• Maintaining momentum: Keep leadership focus amidst challenges 

• Structuring around products and platforms: From idea to outcome
• Defining ownership across the organisation: Who owns platforms, data, AI and customer-facing capabilities?
• Autonomy with alignment: Enabling teams to move fast while staying within a common playbook 

• Starting with the basics: Focusing on the data, utilisation and outputs that matter most
• Enabling AI pragmatically: Using fit-for-purpose models without the burden of unnecessary complexity
• Embedding AI where it matters: Supporting personal productivity, platform workflows and core business processes

• Trust as capability: Strengthening confidence in digital systems, data and AI-enabled services
• Resilience without drag: Reducing exposure while keeping strategic execution moving
• Closer alignment across architecture, security and governance: Trust as a design principle 

• Critical capabilities: Prioritising skills that matter across platform, product, data and AI
• Build, buy or partner: Deciding where to deploy internal capability vs external leverage
• Leadership and role redesign: Evolving architecture, engineering and technology leadership roles for a modern estate

Speakers:

Craig Lauchlan EGM Technology | CIO Suncorp New Zealand

Mike Jackson Chief Technology Officer Grant Thornton New Zealand

Kevin Rowland Digital Director Eastern Institute of Technology

Xanthe Sulzberger Head of Data - Operational Excellence Fonterra (moderator) 

• Joining the dots on decisions: Engineering, product, finance and risk
• Visibility that sharpens focus: Portfolio metrics that clarify trade-offs
• From activity to outcomes: Delivering quality and executive confidence 

• Identifying the patterns worth scaling: Approaches that genuinely improve customer, risk or financial outcomes
• Scaling with adaptation: Extending what works
• Backing success through portfolio governance: Use funding and decision frameworks to reinforce proven approaches

• Next leadership priorities: The themes that will dominate the CIO/CTO agenda across value, resilience and AI
• Managing shifting expectations from customers, regulators and boards: Reshaping technology decisions
• Defining a high-performing technology organisation: What “good” looks like in leadership, capability and delivery

Speakers:
Sanit Kumar Head of Cloud & Infrastructure Platforms One New Zealand

Denver Drayson D'Costa Head of Information Technology & Chief Data Privacy Officer (CIO) Honda New Zealand Ltd

Antony Challinor Chief Digital Officer Radius Care