Speakers

SANDRA BAIGEL has been immersed in voice work from an early age and she chose to focus her career on voice in spoken contexts that include achieving vocal presence, mastering vocal expression and delivering voice in performance.  She brings vitality, energy and passion to the topic of human voice, its relevance, influence and power in business contexts.  She established her company, Voice & Word, in 1993 after migrating from South Africa, where she first taught voice, to Australia.  Based in Melbourne, Sandra is highly regarded as an experienced practitioner of voice and spoken word expression in professional contexts.  Currently, Sandra works one-to-one with leaders and managers from banking and finance institutions, professional service firms, government regulators, national and international retailers, IT specialists and manufacturers. In 2009, Sandra’s analytical tool and learning model, ‘The Voice Wheel®’ was registered as a trademark.  She will be sharing aspects of this model during her workshop at the Origins Conference.

CHRIS BURMAN heads the Development Facilitation and Training Institute at the University of Limpopo South Africa. For over a decade Chris worked in haulage in the UK and West Africa before embarking on an academic career. His principal area of interest is rural development (health, education, service delivery in the context of global change) in sub-Saharan Africa. In his early years of academia he found many developmental approaches to be based on linear thinking, often dogmatic, and with few links to the world he inhabited prior to working at a university. Genuinely surprised by the way in which he found many people working in development to expect that doing ‘more and more of the same’ would bring a different result he embarked on a mission to identify potential new avenues for change and development. Narrative is one key area of interest as is complexity, innovation and activism. While this mission has often been frustrating, results are gradually emerging. He is ambitious to develop this work further particularly in the field of HIV prevention but ultimately wishes to see a paradigm shift in rural development.

SHAWN CALLAHAN is the founding director of Anecdote, a firm specialising in helping clients harness informal knowledge and harness the natural power of stories to bring strategy to life. He has more than 15 years’ experience as a consultant and researcher, and has undertaken a wide variety of projects — including community of practice development, knowledge-mapping and knowledge strategy. As co-founder of the ACT Knowledge Management Forum, an international community of practice for knowledge management in the public sector, Shawn has helped to develop the group from eight members to more than a thousand.

CHET CHETSANDTIKHUN is co-founder and Managing Consultant for Siamentis, a consulting firm specialising in brand communications, social change and corporate social responsibility. He has more than 10 years of working experience in market and sales management. He started his marketing career by joining Leo Burnett and worked on three successful pitches for Yoplait, Singha Gold, and Singer Thailand. He later became Marketing Manager for Dancall mobile phone at Jebsen & Jessen and made the small Danish brand the best-selling mobile phone in Thailand. He has worked with Hewlett-Packard in computer sales, on new media (pay-television and Internet) business projects in Thailand and in a number of Asian countries, on feasibility studies of pay-television projects in the Philippines and Sri Lanka, and on the acquisition of an ISP and Internet portal site which led to the formation of M-Web Thailand.

CECILIA CHIA is the director of human resources in The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore. Ms Chia rejoins the hotel from her previous post as director of human resources for The Fullerton Hotel Singapore and regional human resources director, in charge of strategic people asset management for the Fullerton Hotels and Resorts. Prior to leaving for The Fullerton Hotel, Ms Chia was instrumental in leading The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore to win the Singapore Quality Award, People Excellence Award, Singapore’s Employer of Choice by Hewitt, and Best Employer Branding Award for two consecutive years in 2004 and 2005. In 2005, the hotel won SHRI Leading Corporate HR Award, Leading HR Practices in Learning & Human Capital Development, Leading HR Practices in Manpower Resourcing & Planning, Special Mention in Talent Management, Retention and Succession Planning, Special Mention in Compensation & Rewards Management – sweeping almost every mark of distinction, an industry first. In addition, under her human resources leadership, the hotel was also a finalist in the Employer of Choice, Best Human Resources Director, Best Retention Strategies, and Best Training, Learning and Development Practices awards by Key Media’s Human Resources Magazine.

DR DAVID B. DRAKE is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Narrative Coaching in San Francisco and Sydney. David uses his expertise in both human and organization development to help clients like PricewaterhouseCoopers and Nike to grow their leaders and teams and achieve their vision for change. In particular, he uses narrative and conversation-based methods to support great inclusivity and innovation. A practical visionary, he speaks internationally on the evolution of coaching, learning and leadership. David has written 30 publications on narratives and coaching and was the editor for The Philosophy and Practice of Coaching: Insights and Issues (Jossey-Bass, 2008).

TERRENCE GARGIULO is an eight times author, international speaker, organizational development consultant and group process facilitator specializing in the use of stories. He holds a Master of Management in Human Services from the Florence Heller School, at Brandeis University, and is a recipient of Inc. Magazine’s Marketing Master Award, the 2008 HR Leadership Award from the Asia Pacific HRM Congress, and is a member of Brandeis University’s athletic Hall of Fame. He has appeared on Fox TV, CN8, and on CNN radio among others. Terrence and his father’s opera Tryillias was accepted for a nomination for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in music. His website is at www.makingstories.net, and he blogs here.

NERIDA HART has over 30 years experience in delivering information and knowledge services in organisations. Her strengths are in turning theory into practice, and she has a particular interest in the application of narrative techniques, especially in the area of evaluation. Nerida’s work with Land & Water Australia on the “Knowledge for Natural Resource Management” programme, which made extensive use of narrative techniques, won an actKM Platinum Award in 2008. Nerida has been Deputy Convenor of the actKM Forum since 2004 (one of the most active global knowledge management communities, with a focus on public sector KM) and is past Chair of the Knowledge Management Division of the Special Libraries Association. Nerida is currently owner of her own consulting firm HartKnowledge Consulting, and a consultant with the Australian River Restoration Centre.

PATRICK LAMBE has worked in professional librarianship, learning and development, general management, education and e-learning, and for the past twelve years in knowledge management. He co-founded knowledge management consulting and research firm Straits Knowledge in 2002, and has conducted work on the use of narrative to influence culture, in communities of practice, managing change and understanding customers. Patrick is an international keynote speaker and teacher in knowledge management. He is two-term past-President of the Information and Knowledge Management Society, Adjunct Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and author of Organising Knowledge: Taxonomies, Knowledge and Organisation Effectiveness (Oxford: Chandos, 2007).

LTC KARUNA RAMANATHAN started his career as a naval officer in the Republic of Singapore Navy and became a Commanding Officer before moving to a position as Head Joint Training and Development for the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) in 2002. Two years later he became Deputy Head, Centre of Leadership Development, SAF, responsible for building future leadership development strategies and setting up projects to meet the demands for leader development in the transforming SAF. These projects include storytelling, team learning and thinking skills for leaders. Karuna is also in charge of action learning and knowledge management for leadership development. He has been a passionate supporter of storytelling, and created and popularised the “251 model” technique for storytelling. Karuna also teaches a course on knowledge management processes at the Nanyang Technological University Singapore.

MOYA SAYER-JONES was, until five years ago, known primarily in Australia as a comedy writer, performer and social commentator, working across media. She is a novelist with Penguin Books, a speaker, a broadcaster (ABC radio) and a newspaper columnist, (The Modern Guru: Sydney Morning Herald) About ten years ago she created her first collection of stories around social disadvantage and that was it: she was hooked. She went on to form Only Human Communications, a story company devoted to letting humans speak for themselves. Only Human works with Government, not-for-profit and corporate organizations producing books, films, social media approaches and web-content for e learning, training, community awareness and communication. The company is well-known for its award winning work in difficult and sensitive areas.

ANGELINA SEAH is a Consultant with Cognitive Edge. Cognitive Edge has pioneered the development of open source narrative techniques and software that leverages unstructured data, complexity and networks to provide early detection of patterns and associated weak signals, thus improving anticipation and responsiveness to change. The software has been used in projects as wide ranging as asymmetric threats to national security, to customer loyalty in the financial sector of emerging countries, to the challenges of redefining the curriculum of national education programmes in schools. Angelina has extensive experience working with the Singapore government on projects involving employee engagement, workplace culture and education.  Globally, she has worked with both private and public sector organizations on corporate strategy, culture mapping and human resource issues.

OLIVIER SERRAT is Principal Knowledge Management Specialist in the Regional and Sustainable Development Department of the Asian Development Bank, and concurrent Head of ADB’s Knowledge Management Center. He is the focal point for implementing and monitoring the progress of ADB’s knowledge management framework, and responsible for overseeing the development and delivery of ADB’s knowledge management agenda. In 2010, he produced ADB: Reflections and Beyond, an archive of the memories and experiences of senior and younger personnel of ADB, both past and present. In 2009, he wrote Learning for Change in ADB to give timely, practical guidance to support and energize organization, people, knowledge, and technology for learning. In 2008, he introduced Knowledge Solutions (2008–) to offer handy, quick reference guides to tools, methods, and approaches that propel development and enhance its effects.

ROSEMARIE SOMAIAH is a Partner with Asian Storytelling Network, Singapore’s first professional storytelling company. Since 2000 she has worked extensively with stories and storytelling in a variety of contexts including education, leadership training, skills development and community engagement using process and performance. She is a founding member of the Storytelling Association (Singapore) and has led the Storytellers’ Circle of the Society for Reading and Literacy (‘SRL’) since 2003.  She has performed in several countries and represented the SRL at international events in Hong Kong, Beijing and Budapest. In 2008 she presented work at the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival as an author and storyteller with the support of the National Arts Council, Singapore, and hosted performances and facilitated workshops at Singapore International Storytelling Festival. In 2009 and 2010, among other explorations, she has been seen telling stories on Singapore’s public television channel Okto.

VICTORIA WARD has been at the forefront of the use of narrative techniques in organisational settings since establishing Sparknow in 1997. Internationally, she was co-author of the acclaimed Story Guide: Building bridges using narrative techniques commissioned by Swiss Agency for Development & Cooperation; led the development of a set of oral histories and a story competition for Islamic Development Bank; and recently completed a substantive assignment for Asian Development Bank that entailed the creation of a Living Archive (a book, a cd and a set of reusable audio clips) to enable the organisation to see itself more clearly. Victoria recently returned from Darfur on a mission with World Health Organisation to develop an information and knowledge management strategy for emergency response developed from first hand accounts of field experience. Closer to home in the UK Victoria’s recent work includes developing a set of business narrative workshops for the The Audit Commission, creating a set of innovative communication tools to deal with organisational change, and concluding a two year narrative enquiry into the possibilities for greater knowledge transfer and innovation between businesses and the museum, library and archive sector in London.  A final independent evaluation found that “the knowledge transfer programme was innovative, willing to take risks, and leveraged an impressive amount of input from a relatively limited investment”.

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