Keynote Speakers

For more than 25 years, Naomi Simson OAM has been bringing people together through her businesses, keynote speaking, and writing. As one of Australia's most passionate advocates for business and leaders navigating a rapidly changing world, she brings deep lived experience and practical insights.

After a successful corporate career with Apple, KPMG, IBM and Ansett Australia, Naomi founded RedBalloon in 2001, bootstrapping it from a spare room into one of Australia's most loved experience brands. In 2017, she co-founded Big Red Group, now the largest experiences platform across Australia and New Zealand.

Beyond building businesses, Naomi is a prolific blogger, the voice behind the podcast Handpicked (six seasons), and a regular business commentator. Many know her as the #RedShark from four seasons of Shark Tank Australia. She has authored two bestselling books, Live What You Love and Ready to Soar. With more than 2.6 million LinkedIn followers, Naomi is a trusted voice on the forces reshaping business right now — from AI leadership and the future of work to customer obsession, entrepreneurship, and building organisations that last.

Dr Olivia Lee Ong is a Melbourne-based rehabilitation medicine and pain physician, keynote speaker, and HarperCollins author of Back on My Feet. Her work centres on resilience, wellbeing, sustainable leadership, and the neuroscience of hope, helping individuals and organisations thrive through adversity without sacrificing their health or humanity.

In 2008, Dr Ong's life changed in an instant when she was struck by a car while walking to work, sustaining a catastrophic spinal cord injury. Told she would never walk again, she experienced first-hand the profound physical and emotional challenges of life on the other side of the healthcare system. Through years of rehabilitation, determination, and self-compassion, she regained the ability to walk and returned to practising medicine with a deeper understanding of healing and what it truly means to care for others.

Today, Dr Ong combines her clinical expertise with her lived experience to deliver compelling, evidence-based keynotes that inspire lasting change. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, and powerful storytelling, she equips audiences with practical strategies to build resilience, regulate stress, prevent burnout, and cultivate sustainable strength. Her mission is to help people not simply survive adversity, but flourish with greater hope, purpose, compassion, and authentic leadership in both their professional and personal lives.