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Speaker Biographies
Anna Brown, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Equality Australia
Anna Brown OAM is a lawyer, advocate and founding CEO of Equality Australia, a national organisation dedicated to equality for LGBTIQ+ people. She played a critical role in the campaign for marriage equality, co-chairing the Equality Campaign and running the challenge to the postal plebiscite in the High Court, as Legal Director at the Human Rights Law Centre where she led the Centre's LGBTIQ rights work.
In these roles Anna has been instrumental in hard fought battles to fend off regressive religious discrimination laws, as well as successful campaigns to secure federal LGBTI discrimination protections, remove discriminatory laws across the country, right historical wrongs by establishing schemes to erase historical homosexual offences, prohibit conversion practices and remove barriers to accessing birth certificates. Anna’s legal work has helped to ensure that young trans people can access vital hormone treatment without the cost and delay of going to court, advanced marriage equality and furthered recognition of sex and gender diversity.
Corrina Davison, Managing Director, American Express
Corrina Davison is the Managing Director for American Express Australia & New Zealand and Chair of the American Express Australia Limited Board.
During her time as Managing Director, Corrina has built upon a strong and purposeful market culture and enhanced efforts to support equality and inclusion in our communities. Under her leadership, American Express A/NZ has furthered its Employer of Choice for Gender Equality status, introduced a peer to peer Real Mates mental health program, launched the company’s first Reconciliation Action Plan, and been awarded Silver in the Australian LGBTQ Inclusion Awards.
Since joining American Express in 2001, Corrina has held a variety of leadership roles in both Australia and the United States spanning customer experience, loyalty, business development, strategic partner management, consumer and B2B marketing, operations and change leadership.
Before joining American Express, Corrina held leadership roles at Radisson Hotels Asia Pacific and Air New Zealand.
A graduate of Western Sydney University, Corrina is a Board Member of Australian Business Community Network and Vice Chair of AmCham's NSW Council of Governors. She and her family reside in Sydney.
Allegra Spender MP, Member for Wentworth, Parliament of Australia
Allegra Spender is the Independent Member for Wentworth. She was elected in May 2022 on a platform climate action, political integrity, future-focused economic reform, gender equity and decency.
Allegra went to Ascham School in Edgecliff, has an Economics degree from Cambridge University, an MSc from the University of London, and has completed business courses at Harvard and Dartmouth College. Before parliament, Allegra worked as a business analyst at McKinsey, a policy analyst with UK Treasury and was later the Managing Director at Carla Zampatti Pty Ltd. Allegra was also the chair of the Sydney Renewable Power Company and CEO of the Australian Business and Community Network, which addresses educational disadvantage by partnering low socio-economic schools with leading Australian businesses.
As an MP, Allegra has taken a leading role within the crossbench on climate action. This has included through the legislation of targets for reducing Australia's CO2 emissions, strengthened reforms to the safeguard mechanism, and investment in electrifying and decarbonizing households. Allegra has also been driving future-focused economic reform, by initiating her own tax review process and putting forward a citizens’ assembly to break the political impasse on housing policy. Allegra has also successfully advocated for the establishment of a National Anti-Corruption Commission, greater investment in women’s economic empowerment, and a more humane approach to the treatment of refugees and people seeking asylum.
Allegra is a member of the House Standing Committee on Economics and the Joint Standing Committee on Migration. She is also co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Uluru Statement from the Heart, the Parliamentary Friends of Entrepreneurs, Small and Medium Business, and the Parliamentary Friends of International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
Allegra is married with three children and in her spare time is a keen runner.
Dr Diana Zhang, Fulbright Scholar, UNSW
Diana Zhang, STEM Ambassador and advocate of female and CALD inclusion
Diana Zhang is an outstanding proponent of women and diverse communities in STEM, and a 2021 Fulbright Scholarship alumni working at the intersection of medical research, AI, and machine learning.
Having partnered with Boston University during her Fulbright, Diana's groundbreaking research has developed an AI tool that can identify early indicators of Parkinson's disease with an unprecedented 96 percent accuracy, paving the way for its use identifying terminal diseases at their early stages.
Diana held a position as Board Director of Science & Technology Australia, where she represented the interests of 130,000+ STEM professionals and early career researchers at Australia's peak body for science and technology.
Diana additionally serves in multiple outreach roles advocating for STEM education for girls and people from diverse and historically disadvantaged communities, including having been invited by Embassy Canberra to present to these audiences over several days in April this year.
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