The Agenda, session topics and speakers are provisional and may change.
(In alphabetical order)
SMITA BALIGA (PwC US)
Smita has advised small and large institutions on the design and implementation of their spreadsheet governance programs. This includes policy and controls development, vendor and tool selection, proof of concept, vendor tool configuration and implementation, as well as training, communications and project management. Smita and her team serve as the focal point for PwC’s spreadsheet governance efforts connecting topical subject matter specialists and vendor capabilities to our global team
ZACK BARRESSE (US MVP)
Zack started using Excel in December 2003, and he quickly fell in love and had a strong desire to learn more. He has contributing to the online community since 2004, and he has been awarded the Microsoft MVP award every year since his first one in October 2005.
Zack is a full-time consultant, focusing on Excel and related technologies, where he can make people’s lives easier and more automated—ranging from custom templates created for Microsoft, to custom-built solutions for mom-and-pop outfits, or solutions for some of the world’s largest corporations. He has been a technical editor for The Missing Manual series of Excel books (O’Reilly Publishing) for the 2007, 2010, and 2013 editions, and is co-author with Kevin Jones of Excel Tables: A Complete Guide for Creating, Using, and Automating Lists and Tables.
LIAM BASTICK (AU MVP)
Liam has over 25 years’ experience in financial model development / auditing, valuations, M&A, strategy, training and consultancy. He has considerable experience in many different sectors (e.g. banking, energy, media, mining, oil and gas, private equity, transport and utilities), working all around the globe. Liam has headed various modelling teams and presently is Managing Director of SumProduct, a modelling consulting firm based in Australia but with clients worldwide.
He is a regular contributor to the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia (ICAA), Certified Practising Accountants Australia (CPAA), the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), Finance 3.0 and various LinkedIn specialist discussion groups. He is also an experienced facilitator for ICAA.
IAN BENNETT (PwC AU)
Ian leads PwC’s Deals Modelling business in Sydney and nationally and Excel has been the primary tool of his trade for over 15 years. Ian is recognised by many as a global authority on financial modelling and regularly tutors and facilitates workshops in Australia and around the world, on topics as varied as developing modelling businesses, managing spreadsheet risk, debating the strengths and weaknesses of using named ranges or teaching alternatives to circular references.
Ian has been responsible for writing and maintaining PwC’s highly regarded model build approach/methodology and their 15 Modelling Best Practices, which Ian and his team use to provide insightful management reporting, budgeting and forecasting. They’ve been involved in over 200 transactions in a wide and diverse field of industries, and have contributed to the spreadsheet risk polices of several large financial institutions.
PwC’s Deals Modelling team is by far the largest dedicated modelling team in Australia and is proud of its commitment to developing the financial modelling profession.
INGEB
ORG HAWIGHORST (NZ MVP)
Ingeborg works for a large energy distributor in New Zealand. She loves solving problems with technology. Sharepoint is one of the main topics of her day job and after hours she spend a lot of time in online forums for Excel with the alias “teylyn”. As an end user she prefer solutions that use the built-in functionality and as little custom code as possible.
FÉLIENNE HERMANS (Delft U Spreadsheet Lab)
Félienne is assistant professor at Delft University of Technology. In her PhD dissertation she first explored the idea that spreadsheets are code, and should be treated as such: with tests, refactoring and quality metrics. She now heads the Spreadsheet Lab that continues this line of research. In weekends, she teaches kids how to program Lego robots.
BILL JELEN (US MVP)
Bill Jelen is the host of MrExcel.com and the author of 49 books about Microsoft Excel including Excel Gurus Gone Wild, Pivot Table Data Crunching, and Power Pivot Alchemy. He has made over 80 guest appearances on TV’s Call for Help with Leo Laporte and was voted guest of the year on the Computer America radio show. Before founding MrExcel.com in 1998, Jelen spent twelve years “in the trenches”, as a financial analyst for the accounting, finance, marketing, and operations departments of a publicly held company.
BRENDON JONES (PwC NZ)
Brendon heads PwC’s Deals Modelling team in Auckland. He been using Excel for nearly 20 years and has built numerous financial models over that time. Brendon helps his clients build robust financial models to evaluate transactions and key strategic decisions as well as supporting business as usual forecasting. He is a firm believer that the best models break down complex problems into a series of simple, easy to follow calculations. Brendon also reviews existing financial models to provide end users with comfort over the reliability of the outputs.
NICOLE MULLINS & ROBYN WHITE (Excel4apps)
Nicole and Robyn work for Excel4apps an Excel base software company that specialises in streamlining financial reporting by providing a direct link to Oracle EBS and SAP data. This allows finance users to design reports from beginning to end directly in Excel. An Excel front-end approach reduces errors, improves productivity and creates an environment to easily provide the right info to the right people in the right format. They enjoy working with companies to improve their reporting and help them save time each month. Excel4apps serves over 23 000 Oracle and SAP users in 67 countries, with offices in Australia, the United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and South Africa.
CARLOS OTERO (MS EXCEL TEAM)
Carlos is a Senior Program Manager on the Excel team at Microsoft. As part of the core engineering team, Carlos has been involved in all stages of the product design and development process for a variety of Excel features. Carlos in an inventor on 10+ patents and has been at Microsoft for over 12 years, previously holding various roles in Product Planning, Corporate Strategy, and Finance. Carlos has brought his extensive knowledge of the real-world usage in data analysis, reporting, financial modelling and forecasting to make Excel better for customers around the world. Carlos is originally from Lima, Peru and lives in Seattle with his wife and son Max. He earned a BS in Finance, and Business Economics & Public Policy from Indiana University.
KEN PULS (CA MVP)
Ken Puls is a Chartered Professional Accountant, blogger, author and trainer with over 20 years of business and financial modelling experience. His passion lies in exploring tools to turn data into information, and teaching others how to benefit from them.
He has held the Microsoft MVP distinction since 2006, and has been recognized as a Fellow of his accounting organization.
JON PELTIER (US MVP)
With a doctorate in Metallurgy, Jon spent over 15 years in industry performing research on advanced aerospace alloys and managing their manufacture. Jon made extensive use of Excel, Excel 4 Macros, and ultimately VBA in support of his research and manufacturing activities.
For over a decade Jon has been President and Chief Excel Officer of Peltier Technical Services, Inc. Jon has supported client Excel-VBA projects in a wide variety of industries, ranging from finance to engineering, academia to government to private sector. Jon’s activities also include training and consulting, and his Peltier Tech Charts for Excel add-in is widely popular.
Jon has been a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in Excel since 2001.
BEN RAMPSON (MS EXCEL TEAM)
Ben is a Senior Program Manager on the Microsoft Excel Team. With over 10 years of experience working on Excel, Ben has had a chance to impact a variety of different product areas, including Charting, Pivot Tables, Data Access, BI, Touch and Mobile, and Core Spreadsheeting. His passion lies in finding ways to simplify experiences in Excel, enabling more users to take advantage of the power of the product. Ben is the inventor on 10 patents related to Excel and has over 25 additional pending applications. Ben holds a BS degree from Cornell University in Computer Science.
ANDREW REVFEIM (F1F9)
Andrew is a senior energy sector professional with extensive international experience in a broad range of fields including renewable energy, conventional power, LNG and gas, CO2 capture and abatement, and non-conventional hydro-carbons. Has managed and/or participated in over 10GW of power generation development, including over $3bn of non-recourse financing. Throughout his career he has utilised based Excel for financial modelling in support of investment decisions and capital raising for major energy projects, and for a period was regional economics lead for one of the oil majors. He currently represents F1F9 in Australasia.
CHARLES WILLIAMS (UK MVP)
Charles worked at IBM for many years in a wide variety of roles in Personal Computing and Decision Support, before starting his own company: Decision Models.
Decision Models is one of the world’s leading authorities on improving Excel, VBA and UDF calculation speed. Charles is the author of the widely used FastExcel suite of products for profiling and managing Excel workbooks and the SpeedTools library of fast C++ Excel functions. He runs a website dedicated to Excel memory and calculation problems and a blog on Excel and UDF Performance Stuff. Charles also wrote the Microsoft MSDN white papers on understanding, profiling and improving Excel calculation speed. He has been an Excel MVP since 2009.
Excel Summit South 2016 