Tiffany Crawford is Co-Director Climate Change and City Resilience and Co-Chief Heat Officer at City of Melbourne, focusing on delivering a resilient, adapted and zero emissions city. In her role as CHO she focuses specifically on heat resilience and protecting and improving the lives of Melbournians in a changing climate.

Tiffany has degrees in Law and Arts from Monash University and an Executive Masters in Public Administration from the University of Melbourne. She has worked in both the public and private sectors, in both USA and Australia. With experience in litigation, tax and business advocacy, and as Legal Counsel at the city for 10 years, Tiffany has for the last 10 years focused in her career specifically on public policy and leadership in sustainability. Tiffany has contributed to many of the City’s innovative and world renowned initiatives in urban greening, climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience, environmental finance, the Sustainable Development Goals and infrastructure provision. 

Tiffany is a proud advocate for equality in the workplace and has job-shared in this senior role for over four years with her colleague Krista Milne. 

Marcus is an internationally recognised urbanist, social innovator, writer and media maker working at the intersection of cities, culture, innovation, place and creativity.  

From 2016 to 2021 Marcus led the redevelopment of the former Collingwood Technical School in Melbourne into Collingwood Yards — a diverse and dynamic creative precinct that opened in 2020.  

Prior to that Marcus was the founder of the multi award winning Renew Newcastle and Renew Australia projects. These projects have revitalised main streets, launched hundreds of creative and community projects in empty and abandoned buildings and reopened more than a hundred vacant shops and offices across Australia.  

Marcus has been an advisor, consultant and board member to local, state and federal governments. He is the author of the book Creating Cities and was the writer and presenter of ABC TV series including Bespoke and Not Quite Art. Marcus was 2016 Westpac Foundation Social Change Fellow and is an Honorary Fellow of Monash University.  

As the Director of Digital Twin Victoria, Carys led one of the most innovative digital programs in the Victorian Government. The Digital Twin Victoria program was a record $37.4 million investment by the Victorian Government in digital twin technology, data science and spatial innovation. DTV is committed to collaborating with across Australia to democratise access to rich spatial data and enable visualisation and modelling of places virtually, before investment hits the ground.

Bruce is currently in his 2nd year as president of ASCA.  In his day job he is Coordinator Economic Development and Smart Cities at Maribyrnong City Council in Melbourne's Inner West where his team has responsibility for driving the municipality's Smart City program and delivering on the vision of the Smart City Strategic Framework.

Over his 15 years working in the Local Government sector Bruce has had a number of roles relating to Economic Development, Investment Attraction, Place Making and Visitor Economy promotion.  He is passionate about exploring how Smart City initiatives can play an active role in place making, place activation and driving new innovation both within Council and across the broader community.

Bruce is an experienced board director in a range of sectors and is committed to embedding sound governance practices to ensure the ongoing success and sustainability of ASCA.

Inaugural HoS Creative Industries, University of Newcastle. Responsible for setting strategic direction of the School to deliver institutional KPI’s across teaching, research, impact and engagement. In 2018 he set up the Future Arts, Science and Technology Laboratory [FASTLab] as a collaborative translational research hub to do transformational research with global impact with global impact connecting businesses, NGOs and government to demonstrate how we can create value through creativity and innovation balancing sustainable economic growth with social and environmental developments. Within the lab, his research focuses on human-centred interactions. It harnesses human imagination, empathy, cooperation, co-design, design thinking, visualization, playfulness and creativity to enable a better understanding of the underlying systems of creativity, and motivations of humans. This iterative approach is designed to take speculative ideas into a Beta to Alpha development process and onto commercialisation opportunities.

Before moving to Australia in 2017 Paul founded the successful Media Innovation Studio in the UK doing cool things with people in large media organisations like the BBC, Haymarket and Google. He’s done a few other awesome things like setting up the UK’s Civic Drone Centre, having his work nominated in the top 100 design ideas displayed at the London Design Museum and making a few dozen TV documentaries for UK and international broadcasters.

Aditi’s work focuses on developing practical and user focused solutions through applied research and policy development. As a results driven professional with a strategic and collaborative mindset, her core areas of expertise are built environment, urban sustainability and climate change with cross cutting skills in strategic development, execution and project delivery. Aditi was one of the core team members of two large award-winning NSW Government grant funded smart city projects that demonstrated the use of low-cost sensing technologies in various urban settings. 

As an Architect with Masters in Sustainable Development and Climate Change, Aditi has over a decade of experience in private as well as public sector. In her recent role with the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, Aditi led the development and dissemination of a project that documented the impacts of a public policy implementation across New South Wales

Notably, her work extends beyond research and consultancy, as Aditi is also an active contributor to policy discourse and industry thought leadership through various appointments including her recent appointment as an elected member of the Institute Board at the UTS and also as an ASCA’s reference group member

She is passionate about fostering collaborations with diverse stakeholders, influencing policy at state and local government levels, and spearheading projects that drive sustainable and resilient urban development.

Hanan Zakaria is Camden Council’s Head of IT Strategy & Programs within the Digital Technology and Innovation branch. She is an Enterprise Architect and ICT Program Professional with a passion for the government sector, optimising operating models and enhancing community experiences. Hanan’s career has been shaped over 14 years’ in tertiary education, government, and private sectors in information technology, strategy development and program delivery. A thought leader in understanding business needs, addressing REAL organisational and community problems, designing, and directing optimised ICT ecosystems and leveraging technology and data as an enablers to meet business objectives. Most recently Hanan has been instrumental in the development, coordination and execution of Camden Council’s Digital Innovation Strategy which has seen the fruition of many Smart City workstream initiatives including ‘Empowering Inclusivity through Technology’ which won the 2024 Special Project (under 150k) NSW LG Excellence Award.

A multi award-winning engineer, Churchill Fellow and data scientist with extensive global experience, Zoe takes the overwhelm out of the technology conversation. She does this by sharing stories and insights which surprise, engage and educate about what is possible through technology and data. Zoe is determined to not do things the way we’ve always done them. Her engineering mind and unique background allow her to critically analyse her experiences and draw practical conclusions for the future with wit, humour and grace.

Zoe keeps up-to-date with the latest trends and shares her learnings through hosting The Smart Community Podcast. Through her boutique consultancy My Smart Community, she works with government, academia and industry offering strategic advice on dealing with disruption, leveraging major infrastructure spend, smart technology in all communities and facilitating genuine collaboration.

In his role as Innovation and Improvement Manager, Michael leads the unit that supports the Christchurch City Council’s vision to make Christchurch a city where anything is possible through trialling innovative technology and approaches as well as inspiring fresh thinking.

He is focused on supporting organisations and communities to implement positive change and believes smart solutions, innovation and sustainable technology are critical to our future.

Laura Pfiester is an urban technology leader with a proven track record in driving innovation and digital transformation. As Head of the Smart City Incubator at the City of Melbourne, Laura is dedicated to fostering a collaborative innovation ecosystem where community members are empowered to co-create a thriving, resilient and evolving city. 

With a background in spatial engineering and experience in driving the adoption of emerging digital and data solutions, Laura is passionate about leveraging technology to address urban challenges and shape more equitable and sustainable city futures.

Peter is an independent management and technology innovation consultant.  He assists organisations with the design development and implementation of innovative digital and data solutions.

Peter has a wealth of experience with Smart Cities technologies and programs.  He is currently also the Natural Hazards and Smart Cities Theme Leader for the NSW Smart Sensing Network and previously led Data61's Smart Cities program.

Peter has had previous technical and management roles at CSIRO’s Data61, National ICT Australia, Avaya USA, Bell Laboratories, Woolworths, GIO Australia and several SMEs including as the CIO of a technology based retail startup.

Peter is a prolific inventor with 29 patents granted in voice and video communications, data networking and biometrics, civil engineering and data analytics.

Peter holds an MBA (Exec) from the Australian Graduate School of Management and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. 

Peter is a member of numerous committees including the NSW Government Smart Places Advisory Council, City of Parramatta Smart Cities Advisory Committee, Australian Network for Structural Health Monitoring and Standards Australia Sustainable Cities Technical Committee IT-268. 

Peter was an ASCA committee member from 2016 to 2021 including as Vice President from 2018 to 2021.

Chris brings a wealth of Local Government experience and knowledge with over 13 years of service to the Wyndham community. He has held roles in Conservation and Land Management to now being a driving force in Wyndham’s vision of being a Smart City.

Chris is passionate about innovation and dedicated to maximising the use of data and emerging technologies to empower informed decision-making for the community.

With a strong focus on collaboration, Chris enjoys nothing more than working with stakeholders to identify and address challenges faced by a growth area council. He is driven by a desire to deliver more for less, ensuring that solutions are not only effective but also sustainable. His unique combination of creative problem-solving and operational expertise allows him to bring fresh perspectives to the evolving landscape of smart cities.

Sadaf is an urban infrastructure planner, professionally trained in Australia, Germany, and Pakistan.

Her professional experience includes around ten years’ working in the field of urban planning and transport planning at different strategic positions in industry as well as a transport planning academic.

She observes that urban and transport planning is inextricably linked for sustainable outcomes and in her current role she is focusing more on developing land use oriented safe and sustainable transport options for the communities in Whittlesea.