KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Annabel Crabb

Annabel Crabb is one of Australia's most beloved journalists. She is an ABC writer and presenter who has covered Australian politics for 20 years but also is nationally well-known for her insightful and humorous analysis on gender and current affairs. Annabel has written and presented six seasons of the ABC’s enormously popular Kitchen Cabinet, as well as the groundbreaking documentary series on life inside Parliament – “The House, With Annabel Crabb”. She also presented Back In Time For Dinner, the top-rating ABC series on Australian history and food, and co-starred in Tomorrow Tonight with Charlie Pickering.  

She is the creator and presenter of Ms Represented, which is a raw and honest account of politics from the female perspective. 

Over her career in journalism Annabel has worked as a political correspondent for The Advertiser, The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, as Europe correspondent for Fairfax’s Sunday titles and written a popular syndicated newspaper column on politics and social affairs. She is the author of The Wife Drought, a humorous and best-selling account of women and work in Australia. Her Quarterly Essay about Malcolm Turnbull, Stop At Nothing, won Annabel a Walkley Award and was expanded and republished as a book in 2016. 

She received two Logie nominations in 2013 including the Graham Kennedy Award For Most Outstanding New Talent and Most Popular New Female Talent for her work on the show. 

Annabel has written a cookbook, Special Delivery, with childhood friend Wendy Sharpe. Their new book Special Guest: Recipes for the Happily Imperfect Host was published in October 2018. 

With friend and ABC colleague Leigh Sales, Australia’s pre-eminent current affairs journalist, Annabel hosts the cult podcast Chat 10 Looks 3 where the pair discusses books, film, culture and cooking. Their first book together, Well Hello, will be published in September 2021. 

In 2011, Annabel travelled to the United States as Australia's Eisenhower Fellow to study developments in digital media and politics. She is a regular face on ABC TV’s election night and Budget broadcasts, and has a long history of appearances on ABC’s Insiders programme and across the ABC radio network. 

Annabel boasts the awkward distinction of being Twitter’s most-followed Australian journalist, with an audience of over half a million.

Yung Nietschke

​Over the past 20 years, Yung has been working to design and implement education programs in developing countries. She believes in the power of education to lift people out of poverty and transform lives. This is because she’s experienced it first-hand. 
 
Yung grew up in Vietnam, during the aftermath of the Vietnam war, an environment defined by poverty, insecurity and hardship. In 1983, her family fled Vietnam in a small fishing boat with 40 others on board. Unlike many others, they were fortunate to survive the journey and was granted asylum to settle in Australia. 
 
This early experience instilled a desire to understand the root causes of conflict and a career in peace and conflict resolution. In 2001 Yung returned to Vietnam to work for the United Nations. It was also where she met her husband, and the reason she’s ended up on a wheat and sheep farm in the Barossa Valley. In 2003, Yung was awarded the Rotary World Peace Fellowship to undertake a Masters degree in the United States and has since continued to deliver education programs for the most marginalised people around the world for the United Nations, the World Bank and the Australian Government. 

CONFERENCE MC

Kate Burr

Kate Burr is a Leadership and Communication expert who specialises in engagement. As an Award-Winning Comedian and a High-Performance Humour Coach, she shows Professionals to take their people from disengaged and don't care, to energised and enthusiastic. 

“In business, the primary reason for humour isn’t laughter; it’s engagement - as better engaged people leads to better relationships, improved performance and increased results,” Kate says.
 
Creator of COMIC INTELLIGENCE and the FUNNY ON PURPOSE FORMULA, Kate has “left-brained” comedy by adding her own templates, checklists, laugh data and reference maps methodology which she uses to teach humour and engagement.

She is a business owner and published author. With 20 years of experience as a Stand Up Comedian, Event MC & Speaker, Kate loves to create feel-good experiences for her audiences that are a lot of fun!