Keynote Speakers – Lesley Carhart and Dwayne Fernandes
Lesley Carhart is a Technical Director of Incident Response at the industrial cybersecurity company Dragos, Inc., leading response to and proactively hunting for cyberattacks in customers’ life-safety impacting industrial process environments, such as manufacturing, transportation, electric, and oil and gas.
Prior to joining Dragos, Lesley served as Incident Response Team Lead at Motorola Solutions. Following four years as a Principal Incident Responder for Dragos, Lesley now is the senior technical lead in a team of digital forensics professionals who perform investigations and crisis response to commodity, state-sponsored, and insider threat incidents in critical industrial networks. Lesley is also a SANS Institute ICS515: (ICS Visibility, Detection, and Response) instructor, teaching related curriculum to a variety of audiences.
Lesley is honored to be retired from the United States Air Force Reserves, and to have received recognition such as “DEF CON Hacker of the Year”, “SANS Difference Maker Lifetime Achievement Award”, and “Power Player” from SC Magazine.
You may find Lesley organizing career clinics at several cybersecurity conferences, professionally lecturing on cybersecurity, and writing about the same. When not working, Lesley enjoys being a youth martial arts instructor and a Toastmaster.
Dwayne Fernandes is a determined and inspiring individual who has overcome adversity to achieve great things. As an Indian-Born Australian double amputee and recently diagnosed with ADHD, Dwayne has dedicated his career to improving accessibility outcomes for citizens of New South Wales. Through his consulting company, IDEA Services, Dwayne works to improve business to delivery accessibility outcomes for their customers.
In addition to his work in accessibility, Dwayne is also the co-founder of Minds at Play, a national social gaming company that helps players build essential social and communication skills through games like Dungeons and Dragons and Minecraft. Under Dwayne’s leadership, the company has grown from 4 players in June 2022 to over 650+ players from every state and timezone in Australia.
In his free time, Dwayne enjoys innovating, traveling, dancing, and setting world records in stair climbing, including at the Empire State Building in New York. But perhaps most notably, Dwayne has set his sights on becoming the first double amputee in space and is on his way to achieve it by being AstoAccess Flight 2 Ambassador. He believes that with resilient minds and inclusive hearts, we can forge the Accessible Future!
Monday 1 September 2025
| Time | Session |
|---|---|
| 09:00 – 09:15 | Acknowledgement of Country |
| 09:15 – 09:45 | IDEATE Program Overview Professor Penny Kyburz, IDEATE Steering Committee chair |
| 09:45 – 10:00 | Official opening by Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell, the Australian National University |
| 10:00 – 10:15 | Morning tea |
| 10:15 – 10:45 | Workshop: Pioneers in tech – supporting first-in-family students Professor Karin Verspoor, RMIT |
| 10:45 – 11:15 | Workshop: Diversity, inclusion and access in Work Integrated Learning Dr Anne Ozdowska, the Australian National University |
| 11:15 – 11:45 | Industry panel facilitated by Sally-Ann Williams, with Annabel Berry (Google), Rosalind Tregurtha (PentenAmio), and Rohan Pillutla (UBH Group) |
| 11:45 – 12:30 | Lab: Addressing unconscious biases in teaching Dr Josh Burridge, University of Melbourne |
| 12:30 – 13:00 | Keynote: Dwayne Fernandes |
| 13:00 – 13:45 | Lunch |
| 13:45 – 14:30 | Pixel Whisperer Cait Greenup and Rhys Fenwick, the Australian National University |
| 14:30 – 15:15 | Workshop: Safe space for First Nations Dr Cat Kutay and Alana-Maree Tucker, Charles Darwin University; and Kate Harriden, Monash University |
| 15:15 – 15:30 | Afternoon tea |
| 15:30 – 16:00 | Panel: Neurodivergent transitions from school to career Emma Davidson; Luke Ferguson, Daydream Machine; and Andrew Pfeiffer, co-founder of the Public Sector Neurodiversity Community of Practice |
| 16:00 – 16:45 | Workshop: Building shared values in the classroom for team-based software development Dr Mitchell McEwan and Dr Natasha Fernandes, Macquarie University |
| 16:45 – 17:15 | Keynote: Lesley Carhart |
| 17:15 – 18:15 | Reception drinks |
Tuesday 2 September 2025
| Time | Session |
|---|---|
| 09:00 – 09:15 | Acknowledgement of country |
| 09:15 – 09:45 | Inclusive tech futures – secondary school engagement Kylie McColl, RMIT |
| 09:45 – 10:30 | Workshop: Supporting academics with inclusive and equitable curricula, teaching and learning Associate Professor Chris Browne, the Australian National University |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Morning tea |
| 11:00 – 12:00 | Workshop: Inclusive assessment and grading practices Professor Penny Kyburz, the Australian National University |
| 12:00 – 13:00 | Workshop: Educator development Dr Charles Martin, the Australian National University |
| 13:00 – 13:30 | Lunch |
| 13:30 – 14:15 | Workshop: She Belongs – Thriving in male-dominated spaces Dr Fiona Scotney, the Australian National University |
| 14:15 – 15:15 | Workshop: Measuring success Professor Penny Kyburz, IDEATE Steering Committee chair |
| 15:15 – 15:45 | Afternoon tea |
| 15:45 – 16:25 | Workshop: Creating community and belonging Facilitated by Associate Professor Xiaolin (Shannon) Wang, the Australian National University with Lea Fallen (the Australian National University) and Patrick Hofmann (Google). |
| 16:25 – 16:30 | Closing |