Leigh Gibson
Group Owner, AI Enabled Employees, at Telstra
Leigh Gibson
Group Owner, AI Enabled Employees, at Telstra
Leigh is a technology executive who has delivered multiple global and Australian innovation ‘firsts’. She has extensive experience delivering complex and high profile tech outcomes at scale while also building and maintaining happy and motivated teams. Experienced in delivering seemingly impossible outcomes where others have failed. Leigh loves to learn, absorbs information quickly and enjoys using her creativity to challenge herself and her teams to continuously modernize technology as they build.
Starting out as an engineer, Leigh quickly worked out that architects had more influence on what was built. While working as a architect, she saw that Project Managers could have influence over architecture, and this drove her career in the direction of leading teams to deliver tech solutions. Career highlights include delivering 5 world first 850UMTS wireless devices for Telstra in 5 months while the network was being built in 2006 (typical device development time is still 18 months today!), working for the Organising Committee for the London Olympic and Paralympic Games and collaborating with MI5 to protect systems that had international profile and were a significant target for terrorists. She joined ANZ Bank in 2014 and delivered Australia’s first mobile payments platform within her first year. She later successfully migrated ANZ’s legacy Internet Banking platform from the oldest version used globally, to the newest and on private cloud within 18 months. Joined Telstra in 2022 and has significantly transformed employee device connectivity from a security perspective while also leading the work to introduce Microsoft Copilot. Currently leading tech work needed to support Telstra’s new Data and AI joint venture with Accenture. Co-founder of Technology Executive Women which started in 2023.
Awards
- CIO50 Australia 2020
- Red Hat APAC Innovation Award Winner 2020 - Categories: (1) Digital Innovation, (2) Cloud Native Development
Upcoming conference sessions featuring Leigh Gibson
High Performing Tech Teams do less 'Low Trust' Work
I’ve led tech teams in delivering multiple global and Australian innovation ‘firsts’ and want to talk about the critical relationship between trust and psychological safety for high performing tech teams. It supports deeply technical goals, is fantastic for motivating and retaining staff, and does not require any additional funding. Why wouldn’t more leaders focus on this?
Supporting a continuous learning culture
People who don't feel safe to admit personal mistakes can be motivated to look for other reasons for failure. This method of avoiding personal blame can create unnecessary work for the entire team, significantly impact the pace of progress overall and prevent others from learning how to avoid a similar mistake.
Exceptional internal collaboration
Large teams with high trust can achieve much stronger outcomes and deliver change faster for a variety of reasons. High trust teams spend more time on their highest priority work and this allows them to achieve goals more quickly.
Set the bar higher in terms of seeking excellence for ourselves and each other
Communicating strategic priorities and platform architecture goals at scale sets a strong foundation for enabling empowered team members to proactively anticipate change needed in the context of their work. With high trust teams, maturity models can be used to proactively indicate change needed and allow teams to schedule in a way that suits them, allowing increased compliance and reduction in governance work.
Get conference pass
High Performing Tech Teams do less 'Low Trust' Work
I’ve led tech teams in delivering multiple global and Australian innovation ‘firsts’ and want to talk about the critical relationship between trust and psychological safety for high performing tech teams. It supports deeply technical goals, is fantastic for motivating and retaining staff, and does not require any additional funding. Why wouldn’t more leaders focus on this?
Supporting a continuous learning culture
People who don't feel safe to admit personal mistakes can be motivated to look for other reasons for failure. This method of avoiding personal blame can create unnecessary work for the entire team, significantly impact the pace of progress overall and prevent others from learning how to avoid a similar mistake.
Exceptional internal collaboration
Large teams with high trust can achieve much stronger outcomes and deliver change faster for a variety of reasons. High trust teams spend more time on their highest priority work and this allows them to achieve goals more quickly.
Set the bar higher in terms of seeking excellence for ourselves and each other
Communicating strategic priorities and platform architecture goals at scale sets a strong foundation for enabling empowered team members to proactively anticipate change needed in the context of their work. With high trust teams, maturity models can be used to proactively indicate change needed and allow teams to schedule in a way that suits them, allowing increased compliance and reduction in governance work.
Get conference pass
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