Partners
Gareth Priday
Gareth is a futurist with Action Foresight. He holds director roles with the Australian Living Labs Innovation Network and Ethical Fields. His first career was with household name investment banks in the UK and Australia. He has recently worked with international political forums, state governments, cooperative research councils, and business across a range of foresight, research, codesign education and strategy initiatives. He has peer reviewed published works across futures, codesign and living labs. He holds a Master of Strategic Foresight from Swinburne University.
José Ramos
Jose has over two decades in the fields of foresight, futures studies, action research and critical globalisation studies, working with dozens of governments, agencies and communities in over 20 countries. He is co-editor of the peer reviewed Journal of Futures Studies, and has published over 70 articles, chapters and papers in a number of journals and magazines. He holds a doctorate from Queensland University of Technology, winning their award for outstanding doctoral thesis. He recently co-founded the Participatory Futures Global Swarm, to amplify the use of participatory futures around the world to intervene in and to influence the public imagination of the future.
Collaborators
Reanna Browne
Reanna holds MA Strategic Foresight (Swinburne) – Finalist Swinburne Postgraduate Medal • Grad Cert Futures (University of the Sunshine Coast) – Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence. Reanna is an academically trained and practicing futurist with experience and education spanning business and workforce futures + strategy and organisational design and development. Reanna has been a consulting and ‘inhouse’ futurist for the last six years, working with a global client based across public, private and start-up sectors. In addition to cofounding her own start-up, Reanna has also worked as an executive in a global start-up, and in a range of senior public sector roles across both state and federal settings.
Dr. John Sweeney
John is a futurist, designer, and author, with extensive experience utilizing participatory / experiential methods with a particular focus on gaming. My work has been focused on applying futures and foresight in the Asia-Pacific, Central Asian, & Eastern European regions. I’ve organized and facilitated strategic planning and foresight projects for a range of clients, including numerous humanitarian and development agencies, government innovation units, and Fortune 500 companies, and delivered keynote presentations, seminars, and training courses in over 45 countries on five continents. I currently serves as Co-Editor in Chief of the World Futures Review with Dr. Nur Anisah Abdullah. I have a PhD in Political Science from the University of Hawaii, Manoa.
Dr. Jayarethanam Pillai
Jayarethanam (Jaya) is currently a Lead Data Scientist and Economist. In addition, he is the Chief Innovation and Data Science Officer in his start-up consultancy and offers regional expertise in providing analytical and data science work for companies and government agencies alike, particularly specializing in developing strategic decisions using economics, data analytics, and AI. Jaya has done over 20 analytics-related projects and widely published papers in economic policy, digital transformation, and entrepreneurship while working and living in 11 international cities/states. He has expert-level advisory experience in the application of data analytics in embedded analytical operation systems specifically in panel data and supervised and unsupervised machine learning. He has a keen interest in the application of AI in digital transformation. His thirst for developing machine learning and econometric modeling to identify and offer solutions for decision-making puts him among some of the key regional intellectuals in the field of digital transformation. As a testimony, he attracted private sector funding, in setting up the ‘Futuristic Intelligence Institute (FII)’ at the American University of Central Asia, in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, with the aim of pushing the research, teaching, and application of Data Science and AI in the region. Jaya obtained his Ph.D. in Public Policy and Economics, a Master of Economics, and a Graduate Certificate in Data Science, in the course of doing his analytical gigs.
Mel Rumble
Mel a Sydney-based futures designer, futures researcher and UX/digital producer with a background in futures, design, strategic foresight, environmental education and science communication.
She’s an Associate at Little Owl, an ethical tech consultancy, design studio and miniature startup incubator, and the Founder of Reframeable.
She’s also a Casual Academic/Tutor/Mentor in the Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation (FTDI) at UTS, where I’ve recently taught into several foresight and futures-focused subjects including Envisioning Futures, Making Futures and Past, Present, Future of Innovation. I’m part of a team within FTDI that recently ran several of these subjects online to large numbers of students (most recently, to 250 students) after a Covid-induced rapid pivot to remote learning.
She’s recently embarked on an exciting collaboration with Claire Marshall of IfLabs, working on the next stage of the Museum of Futures. This has included the co-design and co-delivery of Futures Worth Wanting, a workshop in responsible innovation and futures prototyping for the 2020 Sydney Festival. We have also recently received a grant from the City of Sydney for a new Museum of Futures exhibition called Museum of Futures: Pandemic Pivots, which will bring artists and communities together to collaboratively co-design the futures they want amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.
She graduated with a Master of Strategic Foresight at Swinburne University of Technology in December 2018, and was awarded the prize for the highest achieving graduate in the Master of Strategic Foresight granted in 2018.
Her futures practice operates at the intersection of human-centred design, foresight/futures and systems thinking to help organisations and communities shape the futures they want, by design. She’s passionate about using foresight/futuring, design, collaborative and systems methods to co-design environments that catalyse the emergence of regenerative, flourishing, just and inclusive futures.