
Shane Fitzsimmons
Chair of the Board
Shane Fitzsimmons AO AFSM GAICD brings over three decades of dedicated service and leadership in emergency management and community resilience to the Connectivity Innovations Network.
He has served as Chair of the NSW Telco Authority Board (2012-2023), the State Emergency Management Committee (2007-2022), and the State Recovery Committee (2020-2022). Shane led the world’s largest volunteer fire service, with over 76,000 volunteers and 1,000 staff. His work in crisis management, disaster response, and community recovery has been influential in the field.
Shane has received the Rural Fire Service Long-Service Medal, the National Medal, the Australian Fire Service Medal (AFSM), and being honoured as an Officer (AO) in the General Division of the Order of Australia in the 2022 Australia Day Honours.

Kylie De Courteney
NSW Telco Authority
Kylie De Courteney is Managing Director of the NSW Telco Authority, a role she has held since June 2019.
Leading a $1.5 billion portfolio of NSW Government connectivity projects, Kylie is committed to bridging the digital divide to address connectivity challenges and passionate about the digital transformation of government and customer-centric services.
Prior to joining NSWTA, Kylie served as the Chief Customer Officer and Chief Digital Officer at Service NSW.
Kylie has worked in the public and private sectors driving customer and digital strategy, organisational transformation and complex program delivery.

David Haigh
Optus
David Haigh is the Head of Field Operations at Optus and brings over 30 years of experience in telecommunications engineering and operations. In his current role, David leads the national strategy for Optus’ Field Operations, overseeing the mobile network, exchanges, Data Centres, technical facilities, and fibre optic infrastructure. He also manages Optus’s disaster response efforts across Australia.
Before joining Optus, David spent over 15 years in the United States. During this time, he achieved several industry firsts, served on national boards including the SCTE National Board and provided expert testimony to the US Congress on technical standards related to RFoG and FTTx.
More recently, in 2023-24, David served on an Expert Panel for the ANU Tech Policy Design Centre, where he contributed to developing a sector-wide resilience profile for telecommunications.
David has been a member of the NSW Rural Fire Service since 1989 and is also an amateur radio operator.

Vincent Hochart
Ericsson
Vincent Hochart serves as General Manager for Network Technology and Services at Ericsson Australia, where he oversees the delivery of Fixed Wireless solutions and services for nbn. Prior to his current role, he held various executive positions across Product Management, Solutions, and Sales in both Sweden and Australia, collaborating with major telecommunications providers including Optus, Vodafone/TPG, and nbn.
Vincent began his career as a Senior Security Auditor at Ernst & Young in Paris, France, before joining Ericsson in 2000. With extensive international experience and deep expertise in 4G and 5G wireless networks, Vincent is passionate about leveraging technological innovation to transform telecommunications infrastructure across Australia and abroad.

Joanna Knox
Telstra
Joanna Knox is the Executive for Product Excellence and Incubation in the Product & Technology team at Telstra. Product Incubation includes the Telstra Labs, where Telstra validate, explore, and incubate new product solutions for and with customers. Product Excellence is the product lifecycle management disciplines, including Product Architecture.
Previously, Joanna was Telstra’s Chief Risk Officer from 2017 to 2021. In this core governance role for Telstra, Joanna drove programs to uplift Telstra’s risk and compliance effectiveness and implement an agile@scale operating model for risk. Joanna led the Crisis Management team and resilience risk management, including responses to natural disasters and Covid.
Prior to joining Telstra, Joanna was a management consultant with Bain & Company for 10 years.

Darren Mills
NBN Co.
Darren Mills is Executive General Manager, Strategic Network Insights at NBN Co Limited.
Darren Mills joined nbn in 2010, holding several senior leadership roles within the organisation before being appointed Executive General Manager, Strategic Network Insights. Strategic Network Insights are responsible for ensuring network plans are fully optimised to deliver nbn’s strategic network priorities and provide expert knowledge of innovative technologies and market trends for the network technology and strategic roadmap.
During the last 13 years with nbn, Darren has been accountable for real-time availability of the nbn network, planned outages, and network security on a 24 x 7 x 365 basis. Starting from a blank piece of paper, Darren has overseen the complete development of nbn’s processes for network management and preparation for, response to and recovery from natural disaster events. This includes the building of capabilities, tools, processes, and infrastructure internal to nbn, as well as establishing external relationships and partnerships needed to optimise the uptime of the nbn network in real-time. Darren has built and led nbn’s emergency management function over the past decade.
Before joining nbn, Darren served as General Manager Bigpond, Content and Media at Telstra in the Global Operations Centre. Prior to that, Darren spent 14 years at Optus in various leadership roles including General Manager Mobile Operations and General Manager Operations Programs, where he successfully led a series of lean six sigma process improvement initiatives.
Darren began his career in telecommunications with highly specialised roles within the Australian Army and Australian Defence Industries where he was awarded the Australian Army Exemplary Service medal. He has now accumulated over 38 years’ experience in the industry with expansive knowledge of network operations, telecommunication networks and network technologies.

Elyssa Rollinson
BAI Communications
Elyssa Rollinson is the Chief Commercial Officer at BAI Communications Australia. Prior to joining BAI, she worked with PwC and in the UK for BBC Technology and Group4 Securicor.
In her current role, Elyssa is responsible for supporting strategy development and execution and for engagement across the broadcast, telecommunications and government sectors.
Having a strong belief in the value of collaboration, a key area of focus is to bring the insights that BAI has gained internationally to help drive better connectivity outcomes here in Australia.

Michael Stein
Motorola Solutions
Michael Stein brings extensive Director and senior executive experience, skills and demonstrable leadership in the information technology and communications arena with strong governance, strategic, commercial and management depth. Michael has a unique blend of skills and experience from tech start-ups to Global Fortune 500 companies.
Michael is currently a Director and Australian Country Board Member at Motorola Solutions. Prior to this, Mike held senior executive roles with KPMG Consulting, Alcatel-Lucent (Nokia), Storability (Oracle), Avaya and Ericsson.

Paul Tremlett
TPG Telecom
Paul Tremlett is the General Manager of Technology Strategy and Innovation at TPG Telecom.
With over a decade of experience at TPG Telecom (formerly Vodafone Australia), Paul has held various roles in Programme Management, Commercial & Planning and Project Initiation. Prior joining TPG Telecom, he worked in Engineering and Programme Management roles for major network vendors.
In his current position, Paul oversees the development and implementation of strategies across TPG Telecoms Technology portfolio, which includes service and product offerings, infrastructure and access networks.