The payroll profession is at an inflection point. Be in the room.

Caleb Andrew is currently the Group Payroll Manager at Bild Group, a multi-disciplinary civil contractor operating across Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia with approximately 600 employees across four operating divisions. Reporting to the CFO, Caleb leads a team of five and is accountable for end-to-end payroll operations, compliance and system transformation across the group. Caleb is well versed in construction, manufacturing, transportation and retail payroll operations. With a focus on strategic, people focused leadership, governance, compliance and operational excellency. Caleb provides a wealth of knowledge on how to lead a payroll function that is optimised, productive and compliant

Carmel has over 15 years of experience partnering with organisations to provide leadership development, career, and talent management solutions. Her expertise incorporates the design, development and implementation of tailored psychological strategies and interventions. Carmel is a registered Psychologist who is passionate about converting the latest research into practical tools that help individuals and organisations to thrive and grow.

Carmel brings extensive experience in designing leadership and team learning experiences that incorporate reliable assessments to shift mindsets and maximise workplace effectiveness. She also supports individuals to enhance their career planning and wellbeing, with a particular specialisation in helping neurodivergent people thrive in the workplace, return to work successfully, and manage workplace-related stress. This experience enables Carmel to design and deliver interventions to support individuals in achieving their life and career goals.

Carmel holds a Master of Psychology (Organisational), a Graduate Diploma in Psychology and a Bachelor of Psychology. She is currently completing a Master of Clinical Psychology. Carmel is certified in Hogan and Saville profiling tools, the Strong Inventory and TalentPredix™, and is a member of the Australian Psychological Society. She is also accredited in Schema and EMDR therapy.

Maria was APA’s very first employee, and to this day, she’s still the most entertaining. Known affectionately as our resident payroll nerd, Maria has an unmatched passion for getting payroll right. She’s the person who actually enjoys reading payroll legislation in her spare time (yes, really) and her reputation for razor sharp knowledge is legendary.

As one of APA’s most enthusiastic trainers and our living, breathing knowledge base, Maria is the go to for even the trickiest payroll questions. If she doesn’t know the answer… well, no one does.

Nicole Gibson's career has been a single, evolving inquiry into what allows people, and societies, to thrive. As the youngest-ever Commonwealth Mental Health Commissioner and a former non-profit leader working in systems design for mental health care, she spent years reshaping how care is delivered at a national level.

That work led her somewhere unexpected. As a philosophy writer and speaker, Nicole came to see that her real subject was not the mental health industry but the human condition itself - and that emotional regulation and a calm nervous system are the keys to both life-changing individual transformation and a healthy society capable of compassion and generosity. She believes that, more than anything, our moment calls for leaders of strong and noble character, which is observably missing from our current global leadership.

This conviction led her to found IN TRUTH, where she now serves as CEO. An emotion bio-tech company, IN TRUTH translates data from everyday wearables into a real-time propriety Emotion Score - making our inner states measurable, and our capacity to return to balance something we can finally learn to read. This data will in time inform how we build entire systems in a way that truly supports inner and outer coherence.