2025 JUDGES
Bree Kirkham
Bree is the Chief Operating Officer at F5 Collective, a fintech platform where capital meets commerce. F5 is revolutionising how women in business access funding and commerce - offering purpose-built financial solutions and a curated marketplace for women-owned brands. F5 is designed to meet women where they are and help them grow.
Before joining F5, Bree held strategic roles at some of the world’s most innovative tech companies - including ClassPass, Airbnb, and Uber - where she helped scale operations and bring transformative products to new markets. That experience shaped her passion for systems-level change and sparked her shift into venture capital and ultimately fintech. Today, she is building inclusive financial infrastructure that empowers women-led businesses globally.
Adam Milgrom
Adam is Partner at Giant Leap, who invests at the Seed and Series A stage in mission-driven founders solving the world's most pressing problems. Giant Leap have a portfolio of over 30 companies across their key thematics of Health, Education & Empowerment and Climate. Adam is an investor with expertise across consumer strategy, marketing and innovation. Outside of Giant Leap, Adam is a Director at Tripple and a Board Member at Future Group and Australian Communities Foundation.
Kirstin Hunter
Kirstin Hunter is the Chief Executive Officer of Birchal, Australia’s leading crowdsourced funding platform. Kirstin is an experienced start-up and high-growth business executive with a focus on fintech businesses at the intersection of activism and capitalism: former Managing Director at Techstars Tech Central Sydney Accelerator, co-Founder and former CEO at Future Super, former executive at Brighte, founding chairperson at Ocean Impact Organisation and long-time mentor with Blackbird's Giants and Startmate programs. In her spare time Kirstin is on the board of Morphic Ethical Equities (ASX:MEC), a Vinemaker at Grapevine and parent to 10 year old Elizabeth.
Murray Hurps
Murray is the Director of Entrepreneurship at UTS, with a focus on inspiring and supporting tech-enabled entrepreneurship. He also serves as the Managing Director of Startup Muster and was previously the CEO of Fishburners, as well as of a sizable ad-blocking company for 15 years. He is passionate about startups and about seeing people use technology to achieve great things.
Ben Weinberger
Ben is part of the investment team at Giant Leap, where he invests in startups having a positive impact on the world around us in the areas of climate, health and education. He has spent the last 6 years helping startup founders grow and scale their businesses, through startup accelerator programs and most recently as an investor. He loves supporting mission driven founders as they use technology to solve some of the world's biggest challenges.
2024 JUDGES
Kate Dezarnaulds
Kate founded WorkLife in 2017 to create a coworking community that balanced her consulting work in Sydney with her tree-change lifestyle in Berry, NSW. WorkLife has since grown to 120 members across two sites, with a third opening in Picton in August 2023.
Kate recently completed a 2.5-year contract to launch the Investing in Rural Community Futures Program, a partnership between the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal and the Snow Foundation, aimed at strengthening local NFPs.
She has advised various organizations, including TEDxSydney, StartupAUS, PWC, The Art Gallery of NSW, and the National Trust, on business development and fundraising strategies. Currently, she is Co-Chair of Flexible Workspace Australia, on The Shoalhaven Arts Board, and President of the Berry Chamber of Commerce.
Holly Hoad
Holly is a proud Wiradjuri woman from Dubbo, NSW. She is dedicated to empowering First Nations youth, particularly young women, to achieve their career goals through study or access to industry.
As a First Nations Project Officer for the Indigenous Women STEM & Entrepreneurship Pathways Project, Holly is committed to overseeing Awareness and Inspiration pathways for young First Nations women in secondary school, specifically those in years 9-12. This transformative program aims to foster awareness of career opportunities within the Native Ag and Food industry, encouraging and guiding these young women toward fulfilling careers
With over a decade of experience at Charles Sturt University, Holly has been actively involved in supporting students through their tertiary education journey.
Additionally, she proudly serves as the Director of Marradhali Aboriginal Corporation, where she contributes to connecting Indigenous people to community, culture, and language.
Margaret O’Brien
Co-Founder & CEO @ Young Change Agents
As one of Australia’s leading entrepreneurial-education thinkers, Margaret works closely with education departments and educators to support enterprise education. She launched the first high school incubator program in Australia for youth and the social enterprise-in-a-box initiative and was engaged to codesign the Australian Government-funded Academy for Enterprising Girls following her successful work delivering programs to 1500 girls as part of the Women in STEM and Entrepreneurship program (WISE).
Margaret is a third-year SheEO Activator, was on the Founding Board of SECNA - the Social Enterprise Council of NSW/ACT and was previously Social Enterprise Advisor at Social Traders and Seventh Street Ventures. She has previously held senior commercial roles across the edutech and property sectors in Australia and the UK.
Read more about Margaret here.
Jason Ming
Jason is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Trampoline, a Startup Investing Syndicate with a community of executives / founders / specialists helping startups defy gravity. Jason has over 15 years experience driving strategy, transformation and innovation across leading APAC enterprises including CBA, Qantas and ANZ which includes leading CBA's Product community of over 1,000 people. He has also worked across a range of early stage startups from exploring AI with NASA for space missions to improving fundraising of US social and political causes.
Azzy Light
Azzy is a young person with a passion for business. He founded his current business EasyAz when he was 14 to help small business owners get a stylish, personal and affordable experience when needing to grow their digital presence. Since then he won the Pivoting Pioneer of the Year Award at the Teens In Business Awards 2023 and has been able to help small business owners flourish online.
Jehan Ratnatunga
Jehan Ratnatunga is an engineer, turned management consultant turned social entrepreneur. Born and raised in Australia, he has a passion for tackling big social problems in a fun and innovative way.
Jehan is the CoFounder and VP of Strategy & Growth at Who Gives a Crap - a social enterprise that sells good looking, forest friendly toilet paper, paper towels and tissues direct-to-consumer and donate 50% of our profits to help build toilets for those in need.
"As much as I love toilet paper, the reason I started this business is the impact we’re having on the world—since 2013 we’ve donated more than $8 million."
Prior to his current social enterprise, Jehan was the Global Head of Programming Strategy - YouTube Originals and a Commercial Consultant at Foxtel.
Hannah Mourney
Hannah is passionate about fostering innovation in NSW and works to connect startups with the right resources through her role at Investment NSW. With a background in management consulting at LEK and a deep dive into the startup world as an Impact Investor at Giant Leap, Hannah brings a unique blend of strategic thinking and entrepreneurial spirit. She holds a Bachelor of Biomedical Engineering and Arts (German) from the University of Sydney.