THE ENTREPRENEURS

Dr Kate Cornick is the CEO of LaunchVic, the Victorian Government’s lead startup development agency.

Kate is deeply passionate about the role of innovation in our economy and society more broadly, and has considerable experience in technology innovation across start-ups, academia, corporates and government.

Most recently, Kate led the development of human resources technology start-up Rision Ltd, creating new products, partnerships, sales and ultimately a listing on the ASX.

Kate sits on a number of boards including the Victorian Government Innovation Expert Panel, The Charles Sturt University Council and the AIIA Victoria Council.

Kate is a telecommunications engineer and was involved in policy development for the NBN. She has held the positions of Senior Telecommunications Adviser

and Deputy Chief of Staff to Senator Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and has also worked as a General

Manager at NBN Co.

Kate Cornick undertook her PhD in optical telecommunications at the University of Melbourne and, as part of her studies, spent time at AT&T Research

Laboratories, USA.

Shahirah is co-founder of Finch, 'a financial app for your social life’ that lets you pay and request money instantly, run group tabs (think housemates or holidays) and track your social spending in one place. Finch’s behavioural approach to consumer finance landed them a spot in the #1 fintech incubator in the US, Envestnet |Yodlee, where the team won Best Product Demo. Shortly after launching across Australia in July last year, Finch raised $2.25m seed capital and was named ‘Top 10 Startup to Watch’ by Smart Company.

Emily Rich

Tech entrepreneur, investor, mentor, technical advisor and product development. Emily has extensive computer science, product and business experience from her base degree and experience having run multiple businesses.

Emily co-founded Jemsoft, a machine learning and computer vision company that adapts new innovative frameworks into many different industries ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies globally. Jemsoft was sold in 2017 into a publicly listed IoT company, whereby she then went on to look for investing opportunities in early stage tech.

Emily is an awarded innovator having won the 2015 Startup Adelaide Startup of the Year Award, Newscorp Women in Innovation Award (Technology) and winner of Young IT Professional of the Year 2016.

Emily has worked with the likes of Unilever, Google, Mars, The Federal Government and many more companies on a global scale.. 


She has notable experience in business processes, policies, procedures and governance principles. She has five years of experience in government & taxation and six years experience in technical development, business analysis and product management practices.

Emily has advised founders in formal capacities within startup accelerators Techstars and Startmate, as well as new entrepreneurs in school programs and advisor ship in non-formal capacities.