Our Vision
To be a conduit in co-creating the most innovative and entrepreneurial region within Australia.
Our Mission
To develop, support, and steward a nationally accessible, vibrant ecosystem that maximises collaboration, creativity, innovation, and sharing. This is achieved through continuous involvement in activities with stakeholders, supporting industry associations by connecting talent with facilities and councils, and those organisations that aspire to greater success through innovation.
Gavin is currently the CEO for Search365 an innovative Australian startup company involved in deploying mission critical search and AI
solutions aimed at Financial Services, and National Security.
Gavin is regularly invited to speak at industry conferences, and has published articles on his leading edge perspectives. He is an Adjunct
Senior Fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast, plus one of the founders, in 2007, of the Australian Government Digital Careers
Program that has had over a million Australian kids participate in their annual events.
As an entrepreneur Renee founded Distance Assistance in 2017, delivering sustainable health & wellbeing solutions for organisations with remote workforce via Wellbeing Express, an innovative 24/7 wellness platform delivering relevant content with activity-based metrics.
Renee is also a Community Leader connecting local entrepreneurs, businesses, government stakeholders and community members. This is achieved by organising experiential learning events, such as Startup Week and Startup Weekend, delivering workshops to improve the digital literacy of Queenslanders as a 2019 Queensland Digital Champion. Finally, as the Business Development Marketing Manager of the Innovation Centre Sunshine Coast. Her drive is to grow innovation and business capacity on the coast, providing a platform for others to stand up, speak up and cause a ripple effect.
• Over $100m of research funding from sources including the Australian Research Foundation, Australian Government, National Science Foundation, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, US Army, IBM, HP, Intel, AT&T, Texas Instruments, Fujitsu, Bull, Sun Microsystems and Digital Equipment Corporation.
• Academic positions at the University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign, University of Queensland and University of Cape Town.
• Executive Dean, Faculty of Science & Technology at QUT.
• Head, School of ITEE at UQ.
• Principal Scientist, CRC for Distributed Systems Technology.
• Director, NICTA Queensland.
Currently, Simon is CEO of [ui!] the urban institute in Asia-Pacific, and founder of the [ui!]'s Asia-Pacific operations. His primary focus is on business development across Australia, New Zealand and into the broader Asia-Pacific region.
Simon's unique background and experience allow him to work with clients across technology and organisational issues to develop multi-faceted solutions that catalyze improved organisational vision and strategy, service provision, performance and technology delivery.
Experienced educator with a demonstrated history of working in the primary/secondary education industry. Strong and proven leadership/management skills. Expertise in Timetabling, Classroom and Behaviour Management, Educational Technology, and Curriculum Development. Passionate about innovation and disruption to Education and believing for radical change to the system.
Currently managing the profit and loss and development of a National Wholesale Import Company.
Specialties: Visionary strategy plans, business development, leadership and unique value solutions.
Current company provides innovative electric over hydraulic vehicle levelling solutions and high grade safety and towing devices for the Automotive, Recreation Vehicle, Defence and Transport industries.
Ms. Foster was executive Senior Director of Xbox Games Marketplace as well as Microsoft Store online where she managed the profit and loss and global expansion in over 200 geographies with annual revenue budgets in the low $1 billion of dollars. She has extensive technical and commercial experience in software and hardware solutions and advises companies on strategy and technology.
Ms. Foster has started a new venture on the Sunshine Coast, launching highly available and secure datacenters.
Since moving to Australia, Ms. Foster is a non-executive Director for two listed companies and a couple of non-listed companies in Australia.
Ms. Foster holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in International Marketing from Oregon State University and Associate of Science (ASc) - Computer Science and Information Systems from SCC Seattle, USA.
Ben is also the co-founder of a local programming and entrepreneur group on the Sunshine Coast, QLD since 2013. Ben hosts frequent technical meet-ups presenting new technologies, from using Caffee, building apps in EmberJS, introduction to Tensorflow, how members have built high-performance systems, and more.
As a Sunshine Coast resident, Ben's vision is to promote the growth of tech startups in the
community. Leading a successful campaign for local government to invest in digital
infrastructure, supporting our growing tech scene.
Ben has successfully aligning the interests of the community, mayor, and stakeholders in government, a $4M investment was allocated to build a 750sqm digital hub in our local community of Peregian Beach. Opened in Jan 2018, the precinct encourages local talent to build and launch new startups in the Noosa region. The master-plan includes over 2,000sqm of green-space for community use and recreation, footsteps from the beach.
Julian manages an IT & Data Consulting firm, where he provides specialist technical and R&D solutions worldwide; as well as a regional Cyber Security Consulting firm that provides cyber security preparedness & incident response to Sunshine Coast SMEs, with a team of specialists from the likes of Zoom, Amazon, US/AU Defence, and more.
My passion in life is to assist entrepreneurs achieve their full potential and I have worked with over 180 companies in 5 countries from startups, high growth businesses to large multinationals. As the former CEO of the Innovation Centre Sunshine Coast (2012-2020) I assisted founders to succeed, introduced new accelerator programs and had the privilege of leading a team of advisors / mentors and commercialisation experts to provide catalytic support to over 150 entrepreneurial members.
As Manager, Invest Queensland (now Trade & Invest QLD) my team assisted companies to expand into Queensland - clients like Youi Insurance, Lockheed Martin, Virgin Australia, Sandvik, Talisman Energy, Tracknology and Capral.
In the early 2000’s I assisted a range of new ventures to scale, including companies like Dascom (now the centre of IBM's e-security division), QuickBeds (now owned by Flight Centre), FireWire Surfboards and Storey Bridge Climb.
I helped establish our local Startup Weekend in 2014 (now an annual event), Annual Business Pitch Competitions, SunCoast Angels (early stage investment group) and the Sunshine Coast Regional Innovation Program (which secured $1M in project funding) to assist SMEsand has been a strong advocate for the subsea cable.
I first started assisting startups at Griffith University in 1989 and then formally via The Office of Economic Development City of Brisbane Ltd in 1992. Mark’s team played a key role in business facilitation and establishing Australia TradeCoast (1992-98), BNE Airport Corporation Ltd (1996-97), ourBrisbane portal (1997-98), Smart State Strategy (2000-2003) and Cities of Asia Pacific Conference (1992–1999).
I Chaired the Sunshine Coast Health Panel (2018-19), have been an active member of the local Chamber Alliance and was President of the Brisbane Junior Chamber of Commerce (1995-96).
As Manager, Invest Queensland (now Trade & Invest QLD) my team assisted companies to expand into Queensland - clients like Youi Insurance, Lockheed Martin, Virgin Australia, Sandvik, Talisman Energy, Tracknology and Capral.
In the early 2000’s I assisted a range of new ventures to scale, including companies like Dascom (now the centre of IBM's e-security division), QuickBeds (now owned by Flight Centre), FireWire Surfboards and Storey Bridge Climb.
I helped establish our local Startup Weekend in 2014 (now an annual event), Annual Business Pitch Competitions, SunCoast Angels (early stage investment group) and the Sunshine Coast Regional Innovation Program (which secured $1M in project funding) to assist SMEsand has been a strong advocate for the subsea cable.
I first started assisting startups at Griffith University in 1989 and then formally via The Office of Economic Development City of Brisbane Ltd in 1992. Mark’s team played a key role in business facilitation and establishing Australia TradeCoast (1992-98), BNE Airport Corporation Ltd (1996-97), ourBrisbane portal (1997-98), Smart State Strategy (2000-2003) and Cities of Asia Pacific Conference (1992–1999).
I Chaired the Sunshine Coast Health Panel (2018-19), have been an active member of the local Chamber Alliance and was President of the Brisbane Junior Chamber of Commerce (1995-96).
The journey took nearly 2 and a half years to plan, 54 days to fly and nearly half a million dollars in fundraised cash and services. Overcoming threats of arrest, huge storms and challenging flight conditions, together my team reached millions around the world and began redefining the capabilities of today's generation.
It is now my mission to help organisations objectively examine and redefine their relationship with the millennial generation; creating better understanding of mindsets, beliefs and core values to ultimately lead to improved retention, communication and sales.
I am an educator, facilitator, researcher and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience across all sectors of education and a range of industries. I specialise in offering consulting, human-centred program design, facilitation and training with a focus on innovation, entrepreneurship and social capital strategy for individuals and organisations.
I have gained unique skills in building trust, peer and social learning in a range of environments particularly in virtual learning environments (well before a global pandemic) as a program facilitator with USQ’s award winning "Wire Program". This program connected hundreds of geographically isolated women online to help them start new or expand existing businesses, in turn creating jobs for their drought-ravaged regions.
I have founded three training organisations in Safety Leadership (Registered Training Organisation)- Pilbara WA and Central Qld , Neuroscience Leadership and Groei Education. I currently lecture in Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Strategy, Organisational Behaviour, Decision Making and Creativity for a number of leading Australian institutions and am undertaking a PhD on social and entrepreneurial capital.
I am a current director of the International Social Capital Association and have recently been appointed as the Australian Chair for leadership and entrepreneurship education to the G100 a global group of female leaders that provide thought leadership to the G20 and policymakers.
On the sunshine coast I mentor for Generation Innovation, The Telstra Mayors Innovation awards and am a judge for the Sunshine Coast Business Awards.
One change I want to be part of is educational reform including developing innovative ways to educate and embed future thinking skills across the Australian Qualifications Framework.
Key Specialities: People and Culture Development, Workforce Planning, Learning and Development Management, Social and Human Capital Development, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Practice Development, Learning Program Design, Regional Economic Development, Community Collaboration, Extended DiSC Accredited /Workshop Facilitation/Training Deliver/ Instructor-led, eLearning, Microlearning, Peer and Blended-learning.
