Speakers
These are the Create 09 presenter biographies - in random order!
Mark McCrindle
Mark McCrindle is a qualified social researcher and runs a McCrindle Research which specialises in analysing changing generations, demographics, and cultural trends. McCrindle Research runs the national survey site AustraliaSpeaks.com and is commissioned to conduct research for some of Australia’s largest organisations including Qantas, Westpac, Telstra, Shell, Unilever, and Fairfax.
At the University of New South Wales Mark completed a BSc (Psychology) degree, and he has since gained a Masters degree (Morling College), and a Diploma in Biblical Studies (Moore Theological College).
Beyond his commercial work Mark is passionate about equipping Christians to understand the times and so share their faith in culturally relevant ways.
Mark is married to Ruth, they have four young children and are actively involved in their church: West Pennant Hills Community Church.
Lewis Jones
Lewis grew up in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in the 'New England' of the US and subsequently spent 10 years studying in South and North Carolina where he received his BA in Physics and PhD in Astrophysics. Arriving in Australia in 1996, he spent the next two years doing research on the history of star formation in large clusters of galaxies, but from 1999, Lewis started training for Christian ministry and completed his BDiv in 2005. Lewis is now employed by the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students to build a mission-minded network of Christians in academia, called The Simeon Network. In 2009, Lewis will celebrate the 10th anniversary of being married to Jenny. They have three children and live in Kensington near the University of New South Wales and they attend Randwick Presbyterian Church.
Karen Andersen
Karen Andersen (Gettens) is a lawyer working in Sydney. She has spent the last 13 years advising and defending companies in copyright infringement cases. Now she works as a lawyer for Telstra. Karen is active in workplace ministry with City Bible Forum. She and her husband Carl attend Naremburn Anglican Church.
Russell Powell
Russell Powell has worked in the media for 30 years as a journalist and in senior editorial roles, as well as an extensive career as a radio presenter. He is the Senior Media Adviser to Archbishop Dr Peter Jensen and the Anglican Diocese of Sydney and is married to Robyn with four children.
Scott Monk
Scott Monk is a journalist and author of five novels. His recently published novel, Beyond the Knock-Knock Door, is for middle school readers. He has gained a reputation for encouraging even the most reluctant teenager to read through his four gritty young adult novels, including Raw, which was on the HSC for eight years. When he isn't living as a pirate, knight or star ranger through his characters, he works full-time as a newspaper sub-editor in Sydney.
Justin Leon
Justin studied at UTS Design School and has over ten years experience as a graphic designer, primarily in printed corporate communications and branding. Justin is married to Sarah-Jane and they fellowship at St Stephen’s, Normanhurst. They have twin daughters and are expecting another set of twins any moment!
Andrew Nobbs
Andrew has experience in advertising, design and publishing. He runs Barton Design, and has worked with leading arts and business organisations as well as several churches and ministry initiatives. Andrew is married to Sonya and they attend All Saints, Cammeray with their two boys and new daughter.
Cameron Blair
Cameron trained and worked as an architect before coming to work with FEVA. Cameron's primary focus is amongst art and design students on campus. He and his wife Lara have six children and another one on the way. They attend Petersham Evening Church where Cameron is also on the ministry team.
Steve Frederick
Steve has trained and worked as a Landscape Architect (the designing side of things rather than the digging). He now works as the assistant minister at Fairfield Anglican in Sydney's South-West. He enjoys working hard at creatively employing powerpoint/keynote in a variety of teaching contexts, including weekly preaching.
Ben Cooper
Ben was converted as a post-graduate student in Oxford, England, and spent a number of years as an academic economist working on, among other things, game theory. After training to be a pastor, he served as an assistant minister at St Helen's Bishopsgate in the financial district of London. Ben is in Sydney to complete a PhD on Matthew's Gospel. He is here with his wife Catherine and three children, who all love the blue skies and interesting wildlife.
Peter Kaldor
Converted at the tail end of uni, Peter embarked on a promising career in finance. After 5 years skiing, banking and marrying in Switzerland, Peter retrained for Christian ministry and later teamed up with his old buddy Craig at City Bible Forum. Proving that you can take the boy out of banking but you can't take banking out of the boy, Peter's better moments are spent dreaming and implementing new ways of reaching people with the gospel of Jesus, both in the workplace and elsewhere.
Kerrie Newmarch
Kerrie joined the Youthworks College faculty in 2003 from her position as Children’s Worker for the Anglican parish of Yagoona. Trained as a school teacher, Kerrie has extensive experience in teaching, leading children’s ministry and writing children’s ministry curriculum. Her ministry interests focus on pastoral care and ministry to children and families. Kerrie is married to Graham and they are members of Panania Anglican Church in South-Western Sydney. They have three adult children.
Michael Anderson
Dr. Michael Anderson works in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at Sydney University where he teaches and researches in Drama and Teaching and Learning. His 2002 thesis won the American Association for Theatre Educators Distinguished Dissertation award in 2003.
Ian Foster
Ian has a degree in Architecture. He and his wife Jodi, an interior designer, run Foster and Associates, a multi-discipline design practice based in Sydney. They recently finished a redesign of Annandale Community Church where they fellowship with their four children.
Ken Dodds
Ken has spent many years ‘doing sound’ in church and non-church contexts. Now married with two primary school children the excitement no longer exudes from ‘gigging’ but in the good old days Ken toured with the likes of Gloria Estefan, Whiteheart and Petra as well as spending many days in the sun during the Sydney Festival Domain concerts and the first 10 years of Blackstump.
Toby Trappel
Toby trained in media production and advertising and has had over eight years experience in commercials, short films, music videos, feature films, and television. He has worked primarily as a video editor and camera operator. He currently works for Fremantle Media on shows such as Australian Idol, Biggest Loser, and MasterChef. Toby and his wife Sarah attend Petersham Evening Church.
Jamie Cohen
Jamie is a well established director and editor. He has directed numerous single and multi-camera shoots, for both low and high budget commercials, including International Rugby Board (IRB), Channel 9, GIO and Microsoft. Jamie is one of the partners in Clockwork Films Pty Ltd, a film production company which he established in 2003. He attends St Pauls church in Menai and is married to Lauren.
Karen Dixon
Karen Dixon is the Manager, Community Relations at Figtree Anglican Church, with responsibility for developing strategic partnerships as well as overseeing the social justice ministries of the church. Karen has a background in education, working at a senior management level, as well as experience working for a number of years as an analyst. She holds a Teaching Degree in Adult Education and an MBA, majoring in communication and marketing. Karen, together with her husband Robert, have been members of Figtree Anglican for 23 years.
Karen has regretfully had to cancel her session (Going the next step with church communications) due to a family bereavement.
Eugene Wong
Eugene is the Managing Director of Candlelight Productions, a Melbourne-based arts production company. Eugene has been performing since he was seven. His experience includes 25 years of performance, spanning live theatre, dance, music, film, TV and radio, but his passion is for building healthy community through the arts and empowering artists to thrive. Eugene combines his experience in social welfare, theology, the law and community development to build bridges between secular and church audiences.
Dallas Watts
Dallas’ love of singing and interest in the voice began as a boy soprano with the Parkes Methodist Junior Choir. After moving to Sydney to study at university he went on to be a high school teacher (History, English & Drama) for fifteen years during which time he developed drama faculties in two GPS schools. Dallas then made a career change to working full time in the arts as a singer (including twenty five operas with Opera Australia), singing teacher and running his own concert business. He has directed over fifteen large scale theatre productions and currently has a singing studio in the Haymarket where he teaches singing technique, performance and projection skills for individuals and groups as well as teaching singing at Barker College Hornsby. Dallas conducts three quite different community choirs and loves to bring people of different backgrounds and musical knowledge together. Dallas churches at St Mark’s, Malabar with his family.
Derek Higgo
After 20 years experience in the magazine industry and a 3 year stint in China as the Strategic Planning Director for a PR company, Derek moved to Australia. Derek's compassion for a hurting world and his love for Jesus, motivated him to leave corporate life and study again, pursuing a career as a Christian counsellor and psychotherapist. After graduating from the Australian Institute of Family Counselling he started his own practice. Derek is a qualified member of the regulatory body the ACA (Australian Counselling Association). Derek currently has his sights set on doing his Masters, and presently tutors and teaches for AIFC. The noticeable increase of clients with addiction to pornography has contributed to his particular interest in this area.
Ross Dungey
Ross is an Advertising Art Director from Perth, Western Australia and is married with two sons. His work has been interrupting the TV programmes of Australians, appearing unwanted in their letterboxes, intruding upon their newspaper reading and pestering them for attention on their favourite websites for the best part of 15 years - a fact for which he would like to sincerely apologise.
In an attempt to do something useful with his gift, he occasionally produces posters for Outreach Media. Currently he works for 303, the largest independently owned ad agency in Australia. Ross attends North Beach Baptist Church in Perth.
Simon McGrath
Simon studied visual arts before heading into advertising. For the last ten years he has worked as an Art Director for Ogilvy & Mather. He is married to Naomi and they have a little boy, Jasper and are awaiting the arrival of their second any moment now.
Renee Carter
With 12 years experience in Brand and Corporate Communications, Renee is General Manager of Designate Group and heads up the Online Reporting Award for Australasian Reporting Awards. She is also the Chair of Child Abuse Prevention Service (CAPS). Renee and her husband John live in the Inner West and attend Petersham Baptist Church.
Malcolm Williams
Malcolm studied Sculpture and ceramics before becoming a High School Visual Arts Teacher. For the last seventeen years he has run FEVA, a Sydney based ministry that focuses on student ministry in the arts. FEVA is the organization behind Outreach Media which runs this conference. He is also the pastor of Petersham Evening Church. Malcolm is married to Julia and they have six children.
Julia Williams
Julia doesn't go looking for events, they seem to come and find her. Being married to Malcolm who runs FEVA, the opportunities are many and varied. And with 6 children, every day is an event. Julia will be presenting on event management, with the opportunity for questions and answers.
David Horne
David has been a Christian for longer than he cares to remember. As a professional web designer and theological graduate, he has long seen the great advantages the internet offers for the Christian message. He currently runs his own web development company and is responsible for the running of www.christianity.net.au. He is married with three delightful teenagers.
Steve Kryger
Steve Kryger is passionate about communicating. In his previous career Steve worked as a marketing manager where he specialised in using the Internet and other 'new media' to develop customer relationships and improve corporate identity and productivity. Last year Steve took a new direction - commencing a ministry traineeship. He now enjoys experimenting with new techniques for engaging with the community and communicating Jesus. Steve also coordinates the marketing activities for Outreach Media. You can meet him at his blog communicatejesus.com.
Wayne Connor
Wayne's background in electrical engineering and invention, together with insatiable curiosity, high energy and technical nouse mean he's great at solving technical challenges. Reprogram the chip on the Breadmaker for a sour dough cycle? No problem! Wayne is a Presbyterian minister in Dubbo where he lives with his wife Jill and five children.
Ben Crothers
Ben has been in the online space for about 12 years, with experience in digital strategy, user research, information architecture, web design and development and online marketing. He has been involved in everything from government websites and start-up web applications, to overhauling not-for-profit organisations’ websites. Ben is responsible for our amazing Create Conference website!
Ben is passionate about uniting user experience with business performance, and church websites are no exception. He enjoys helping clients connect the dots between their team, their work and the technology they use. When not working Ben's usually lurking on Twitter, playing with his kids or painting oil paintings.
Luke Williams
Luke studied Visual Communication and started work as a designer with a focus on user friendly web interfaces for large scale sites. He spent two years in the MTS program with FEVA and a quick stint at Moore College before returning to the online industry. He currently works as an Account Director for T-bone where he is responsible for the development of online strategy for clients such as Oporto, Barbeques Galore and Allens Arthur Robinson. Luke is married to Glorya. They go to church at North Rocks Anglican with their two children.
Nathan Swift
Nate has several years experience in website content management. He is particularly keen on web usability and information architecture, and thinks websites should be easy to use for everyone. He has recently started a ministry traineeship at Lanyon Valley Anglican Church in Canberra where he continues to use these skills.
Nick Walker
Nick has been designing web sites for more than 10 years and has designed over a hundred web sites. He runs two businesses - a multimedia IT company, and a virtual tour photography company. He and his wife Yvette attend St Johns Anglican Church at Maroubra. Nick has a deep passion for using technology and media to reach people with the gospel.
Sharon Williams
Sharon is a pioneer in the Australian marketing agency industry. One of comparatively few female entrepreneurs in this male-dominated field, she established Taurus marketing in 1995 after a successful career in marketing and management, working in England, Europe and Asia. She has worked on the Jesus All About Life Campaign in Public Relations and is an experienced public speaker and trainer. Sharon attends Artarmon Community Church with her family and loves swimming and the beach.