Ms Vina Varsani is a senior executive who has a passion for delivering positive outcomes for Queenslanders. Vina had ten years’ experience in corporate banking before transitioning into the State Government sector 12 years ago. Vina thrives on merging strategy and policy to create exceptional community results.

Vina is passionate about developing best practice, evidence-based strategies and policies to help communities become resilient and recover stronger from disaster events.

Katie Vines is an adaptation and resilience specialist with Aurecon. She manages large, multi-stakeholder projects that take a place-based, systems approach to effectively build resilience and adapt to climate change in complex contexts. Prior to Aurecon, in her role with Climate-KIC Australia, she led the Resilient Futures Investment Roundtable with leaders and practitioners collaborating to improve resilient investment decision-making. Katie has worked globally supporting city adaptation and resilience at the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. She has led adaptation and resilience in Federal and State Government. She is a member of Ausgrid’s Climate Adaptation and Resilience Expert Panel and is an industry adjunct associate professor at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at UTS.

Stefan Weir is the Chief of Staff at NEMA New Zealand, a role he’s held since 2022. Before this Stefan was based in the Beehive (NZ Parliament) as Private Secretary to the Minister for Emergency Management (2015-2022) and Minister for Youth (2013-15). For the last ten years Stefan has been in the "inner circle" alongside Ministers, Prime Ministers and senior leaders during emergencies including Tropical Cyclone Gabrielle, the Kaikoura earthquake, Port Hills Fires, Christchurch terror attack, Whakaari White Island eruption, COVID and many many other severe weather related events.

Andrew Williams is an Emergency Management Consultant in Victoria and a Professional Doctorate candidate examining emergency management planning for domestic family violence, before, during and after an emergency or disaster.
Andrew has a background in health (nursing) and policing. Andrew has worked for the past decade in Emergency Management areas in local government, health and education. Andrew now manages his own company.

Jane has worked in a variety of roles in Local Government for nearly 40 years including local laws, safety, community development, disaster management and recovery. Jane is passionate about participatory community development and believes in working alongside and supporting communities to ensure solutions are community owned and led which strengthen community connections, capabilities and resilience. Jane worked alongside several community groups who participated in the We Recover Better Together Project and enjoys sharing pearls of wisdom and learnings from their involvement in the project.

Outside of work Jane volunteers with rescue horses and enjoys riding motorcycles, trekking around the Himalayas and learning stringed instruments.

Brenden Winder leads the CDEM team at Christchurch City Council . He has held leadership or specialist roles in many large-scale responses, including floods, fires and earthquakes.

David Youssef AFSM has worked in disaster and emergency management in various roles both in Australia and overseas for over 40 years. On retiring from the MFB Melbourne as Deputy Chief Officer in 2016 David joined the City of Gold Coast as a Disaster Management Coordinator. Confronting TC Debbie in 2017 David quickly realised that providing timely, relevant and tailored flood warnings in a large and complex city with 20 seperate catchments is a significant challenge. The Gold Coast disaster and emergency management team prides itself on community focused innovation and collaboration and believes that this is essential to success.