With over two decades of expertise in the fields of Loyalty and Customer Experience, Shawn stands as a resolute proponent of leveraging insightful methodologies to curate and deliver exceptional customer journeys across touchpoints.
Shawn’s professional journey spans beyond 20 years, commencing with his graduation in 1996, from University of Oregon, USA. In 2003, he embarked on a dedicated path in loyalty marketing, aligning himself with a specialized company in loyalty program services. Throughout his career, he has successfully launched and overseen the management of over 20 loyalty and digital marketing initiatives across diverse regions including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and China, inclusive of collaborations with renowned Fortune 500 enterprises.
Spanning various industry verticals such as Telecommunications, Airlines, Oil and Gas, Retail, Media, Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), Banking, and Insurance, Shawn’s engagement has encompassed multifaceted roles encompassing strategic planning, customer success, service delivery, management, research, and operational oversight for both coalition and private label loyalty programs within the region.
In 2011, he founded Interactive Rewards with a resolute mission: to bridge existing communication gaps within the industry by implementing an insight-driven, omni-channel, personalized, and journey-centric automated approach, thereby pioneering a new era of loyalty and customer engagement practices.
Amanda Cromhout is a passionate loyalty professional, with deep experience and expertise. Her career started in customer loyalty way back in the frequent flyer arena with British Airways. Amanda is CEO and Founder of Truth – a global consultancy based in Cape Town. What Amanda loves the most is sharing loyalty expertise and helping others, whether that be through keynote speaking, hosting podcasts and webinars, as Academic Director of Truth’s international loyalty training academy, or through Truth’s consultancy work.
She has recently been recognised as International Loyalty Personality of the Year – 2023 and releases a compelling business-read called Blind Loyalty – 101 loyalty concepts radically simplified, in September 2023.
She is a judge on the our Asia-Pacific Loyalty Awards, The International Loyalty Awards and Founder and Judging Chair of The South African Loyalty Awards.
Amanda is passionate about giving back and has founded The Blind Loyalty Trust to aid financially disadvantaged individuals receive the required corneal eye-care they may need.
www.amandacromhout/com | www.truth.co.za | www.blindloyaltytrust.com
Glenn has over two decades of professional experience and expertise across Loyalty, Digital & Direct Marketing, Partnerships, Privacy, and Data. Glenn has been with Woolworths Group since 2015 and today leads Everyday Rewards, Australia’s leading Retail loyalty program. He is passionate about Loyalty, Customers, and People and is honoured to be on the Australian Loyalty Associations Advisory Board.
Jessica is a loyalty marketing specialist across Australia and New Zealand and has been an Advisory Board Member of the Australian Loyalty Association (ALA) for five years. Jessica currently leads loyalty, digital and CRM strategy for Nando’s and has won Best Loyalty Program in multiple award channels over the last two years. Jessica is passionate about promoting loyalty, especially mentoring loyalty marketers as they enter the field.
Aaron is a highly experienced leader in the art of Customer, Experience & Commercial, who helps construct great outcomes for complex organisations with the will to transform and drive customer value. He is a master of ‘What, When, Who and How’.
Aaron is driven by performance and speed to value, with deep Customer, Product, Design, Marketing and Scaled Agile experience, wrapped together with a growth DNA, strong business understanding, analytical focus, and knowledge of technologies across retail, financial services, loyalty, travel and start-ups.
He has 30+ years’ experience in orchestrating and embedding change, delivering successful customer propositions and digital businesses, and is a driven leader of multi-discipline, matrix teams with strong financial management capabilities and business acumen.
Adam Lee enjoys making marketing magic happen and has a genuine passion for brand transformation and all things digital. His strength lies in branding and marketing communications, product marketing and management and customer value management.
He joined Sathapana Bank as Head of Marketing in January 2022 to seamlessly transition a microfinance institution into a full-fledged commercial banking entity, renowned for bringing #EverydayBankingConvenience.
With over 18 years of experience, Adam has helped numerous companies achieve remarkable success and propelled brands such as U Mobile and Malaysia Airlines to win the hearts of customers and gain market share through effective and innovative marketing strategies.
Additional experience includes a stint at American technology company GoPro and low-cost airline AirAsia. He founded Profound Photos, a photography collective for like-minded photographers to market their work, seek out assignments and support each other creatively.
He earned an MBA from London School of Commerce and was a professionally trained Telecommunications Engineer.
Andrew is a leader in Loyalty with over 20 years’ experience in Commercial, Loyalty and Marketing roles across industries including Retail, Telecommunications, Airlines & Not for Profit and geographies in Australia and Europe. He is passionate about creating compelling customer propositions that solve real customer pain points by aligning customer needs with corporate strategy using human-centered design and deep customer insights. Andrew currently heads up Loyalty Program Design for Everyday Rewards – the program of Australia’s most satisfied customers – where he is charged with developing new and existing Customer Value Propositions to continually evolve the program and reward members.
Ashish has over twenty-three years of leadership, consulting and marketing analytics experience.
As the Managing Director for India, APAC & MEA, Ashish Sinha is responsible for leading Epsilon’s client services, delivery, and business operations. He works in close collaboration with the Publicis regional leadership to drive growth for Epsilon in these regions.
Ashish’s key role is enabling Epsilon’s teams to help brands personalize consumer experiences at scale, by leveraging cutting edge mar-tech and ad-tech stacks. He oversees sales and service delivery, defining and driving strategies for growing these markets by delivering lasting impact to CXOs. As a people leader, Ashish is responsible for building and empowering strong teams and leaders to sustain a culture that embodies Epsilon’s core values of Passion, Accountability and Inclusion.
His story though, began as a banker, followed by a few years in consulting. But his love for building businesses from scratch led him – in the early 2000s – to set up Rocsearch, an Analytics firm. He then joined KPMG, and as Partner, helped build their global shared services out of India. His final stop, before joining Epsilon, was as MD of AIG where he pieced together their data analytics capabilities.
Ashish is the co-author of Riding the Indian Tiger (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), which was released in 2008 and contains business strategies for tapping into the world’s fastest-growing economy.
Meet Barbara, a loyalty guru with over two decades of experience in the game, and a self-confessed points junkie. Barbara is currently Director of Loyalty Programs at IHG Hotels and Resorts across Australasia, Japan, South East Asia and Korea, and prior to this held senior commercial partnership roles at Qantas Frequent Flyer and Velocity Frequent Flyer. Barbara has worked on loyalty and partnerships across many industries, from retail and fuel to automotive and insurance. Barbara knows what makes businesses tick and how to squeeze every drop of commercial goodness from loyalty initiatives to deliver win-win outcomes for all.
Brent Trimnell-Ritchard is an experienced and accomplished digital business owner and leader with over 25 years of experience across digital strategy, solution and design. Specialising in B2B and B2C, Enterprise, advertising and media creating successful digital partnerships working with numerous leading Australian and international brands.
Brent’s accomplishments include over 20 years as Founding Owner and Director of Gruden, a digital Media & Solutions agency, listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in May 2016 under the name of The Gruden Group (ASX:GGL).
As Chief Enterprise Solutions Officer, Brent is tasked with delivering innovative customer-centric solutions, driving engagement, growth and client retention for our partners.
Chen Peng (CP) has a career dedicated to nothing but building loyalty programs across Asia for more than 20 years. He is responsible for setting up SessionM business in APAC (a Mastercard company) from scratch back in 2017 and grown it into the leading loyalty technology player in the region responsible for some of the largest programs like Central Group, Tesco Lotus, Yuu Rewards and Starbucks.
Prior to Mastercard, CP was General Manager for the world’s largest loyalty company, Aimia in Asia, managing programs for brands like Standard Chartered Bank, ExxonMobil, P&G, Samsung, Shangri-la Hotels, China Southern Airlines and PCCW.
Starting his career as a data scientist, CP has hands on experiences across the entire loyalty value chain from analytics, to consulting, technology and commercialization.
Chris has 15 years’ experience in Marketing, Digital and Loyalty strategy with his knowledge and expertise spanning markets throughout Asia Pacific. Chris is currently the Vice President of Digital & Loyalty at Accor, the largest hotel operator in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific region representing over 400 hotels, apartments and resorts. Chris is responsible for driving loyalty growth and member engagement in the award-winning ALL – Accor Live Limitless programme throughout the Pacific.
Prior to this, Chris has led the digital & mobile strategy for InterContinental Hotels Group across Asia Pacific, and was also responsible for driving digital adoption at Westpac. Chris has also participated in the Global Shadow Comex (Senior Executive Committee) for Accor, a group of 12 individuals nominated from various countries who collaborate on ideas and projects to fuel innovation within the organisation.
Currently a consultant with New World Loyalty and manager of Booklover Rewards at Dymocks, Daniel specialises in using a human-centered design approach to program design, strategy and insights to improve customer loyalty.
Additional experience includes roles leading portfolios in rewards and pricing, insights and reporting, affiliate shopping, and email marketing at programs including US Airways Dividend Miles and Velocity Frequent Flyer. Daniel is CLMP certified and holds a MBA from the University of California, San Diego.
Dani is a seasoned executive at Mastercard with extensive experience in Direct Marketing, Operations, and Loyalty. She is responsible for overseeing all of Mastercard’s Loyalty programs and products in both Australia and New Zealand. Leading a team of more than 35 Loyalty specialists, Dani ensures the successful operation of Mastercard’s financial services and merchant Loyalty programs.
With over 18 years of experience in the field, Dani has a deep understanding of the value generated by the payments and loyalty ecosystem. She recognises the crucial connection between payment partners, merchants, and end consumers. At Mastercard, Dani and her team collaborate closely with Merchant, Product, and Operations teams both locally and globally to create cutting-edge and value-driven Loyalty programs. These programs are designed to continually evolve and introduce new innovations and capabilities that are not only embedded and scalable but also future-proof. For Dani and Mastercard, Loyalty goes beyond the transaction and the issuance of points. It encompasses the entire customer experience, leveraging Mastercard’s technology and capabilities to provide relevant and timely offers, benefits and rewards. As the Loyalty and Payments landscape undergoes digital transformation and innovation, Dani is enthusiastic about expending Mastercard’s services into the future. She is dedicated to creating moments of magic within the Loyalty and Payments ecosystem because Loyalty is not just her job; it’s a part of who she is.
Darren Gunton is a passionate and successful retail marketer with over 30 years of marketing, loyalty & eCommerce experience. Darren has worked for some of Australia’s biggest brands in a variety of industries including homewares, beauty, pharmacy, gambling and hardware.
Passionate about turning customers into fans, by enhancing the customer value proposition of brands. Darren has successfully driven change in a number of organisations through agile marketing, digital focus, loyalty, innovation and a strong understanding of the customer.
Darren Jones is the General Manager for Membership at the NRMA. Darren is responsible for the My NRMA membership products, loyalty program, website and app as well as content, including social channels and the Open Road magazine. Darren has recently led a redesign of the My NRMA membership program to drive greater member growth and engagement, which included a refresh of the brand proposition, the digital UX and implementing MarTech capability to personalise the member experience. Darren has also held senior marketing and commercial roles at Vodafone and 3 Mobile in Australia and with Diageo in the UK and Singapore.
Debra Taylor is the CEO and Co-Founder of OpenSparkz, a leading Payment Embedded Loyalty Platform-as-a-Service provider. Applying over three decades of experience across startups involved in telcos, electronic payments and fintech, she is revolutionising the loyalty and payments landscapes with innovative solutions that enhance user experiences and increase customer engagement.
Debra is passionate about organisations that build and lead skilled teams, and her approach to overcoming obstacles reflects an ethos of embracing challenges and seeking opportunities to innovate. Her expertise in loyalty and customer engagement, her visionary leadership, and her commitment to building and leading high-performing teams have earned her multiple recognitions including most recently Entrepreneur of the Year from the 2022 Women in Finance Awards.
Deirdre has over 20 years’ experience leading product, digital, customer experience, and marketing teams for some of Australia’s most recognised banking and insurance brands. She is currently the Chief Customer Officer of Australia’s favourite loyalty program, Flybuys. Deirdre’s focus is on future-proofing and leading the development and delivery of the brand’s next generation customer strategy, ensuring outstanding experiences are provided to more than eight million members across the customer journey. Deirdre is passionate about driving people-centred change, and uniting businesses around a shared, authentic purpose that positively impacts their people, customers and communities. She instils the importance of going the extra mile to better understand your customers in her teams and is motivated by the impact true customer-led cultures can have in driving sustainable business growth.
Diana has over 15 years’ experience within customer-centric organisations spanning both client and agency environments, with expertise spanning across customer experience, loyalty transformation & strategic marketing. Her leadership has allowed her to drive innovation & change across many blue-chip companies to drive business success.
Diana strives to drive a ‘customer first’ approach within businesses and believes in authentic leadership for the greatest outcomes. She currently leads the My Dan’s loyalty program for Dan Murphy’s, which is one of Australia’s most beloved and biggest programs with over 7 million members.
Currently heading up the Member Benefits Marketing portfolio across B2B & B2C at RACV, Hayden has a wealth of experience working in both creative agencies and marketing roles for brands including Coles, NAB, Bonds, Carlton United Breweries & Australia Post. Throughout this time Hayden has adopted a customer-centric approach with loyalty programs at the forefront in driving commercial success.
Ian is Managing Director for North Asia, Asia Pacific at Collinson, a global leader in the provision of customer engagement, and loyalty benefits and solutions that deliver deeper, more valuable customer relationships. Collinson’s business includes the world’s leading airport lounge and experiences programme, Priority Pass.
Ian has over 20 years of experience in business and account development, specialising in leading teams that create greater end-customer value through the design and implementation of customer engagement and loyalty experiences that drive measurable business impact. With a strong customer-centric mindset, Ian has supported clients across a diverse set of industries including financial services, travel and hospitality, and insurance; and has a deep understanding and appreciation for the complex challenges faced by businesses in today’s rapidly evolving landscape.
Passionate about bringing people together, Ian exemplifies strong cross-cultural team leadership, inciting effective collaboration with teams across Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, China, Australia, Singapore, India and Indonesia – as well as Europe and the Americas.
Having worked in customer centric roles for the last 20 years, Jaimi loves to champion the customer. She spent many years working in hospitality, events management and business development both B2B and B2C, where building relationships and creating special customer experiences was key. Five years ago, Jaimi made the exciting move into the Loyalty space officially, as she knew this was her passion. Since then, she’s worked across some of Australia’s most well loved and award winning brands such as Nando’s, Lovisa, Click Frenzy and Grill’d, using data to develop loyalty and personalisation strategies, implement retention and acquisition life cycles and really focus on the fans of the brands to drive and change behaviour.
Joseph Wong FCXC, CLMP™, Network Communications & Programme Manager based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, has been working at Shell for the last 18 years. In this period of time, he has assumed various roles in both Upstream and Downstream, B2C and B2C in local, regional and global capacities. In his previous role as Business Readiness Lead, he was involved in digital transformation, change management and project management in rolling out digital value propositions like loyalty, CRM and digital payment. His involvement in loyalty include transforming Shell Clubsmart to Shell GO+ in Thailand and Philippines as well as reintroducing loyalty into Austria after a 6 years hiatus alongside CRM and digital payment as full customer value proposition into the market. Being the 1st Certified Loyalty Marketing Professional (CLMP) in Malaysia and putting Malaysia on the map as the 24th country, his passion for loyalty continues with him setting up Malaysia’s first loyalty community, “MY Loyalty Lovers” to bring together fellow CLMPs and loyalty professionals to connect, share best practices and build a strong loyalty base in Malaysia as part as enriching the loyalty community in country and hopefully across South East Asia. His “North Star” and dream is to be a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for a Fortune 500 company or a digital marketing business owner one day. Personally, besides being a father of two growing children, he moonlights as a food content creator cum micro-influencer on major social media channels under the moniker “Feeding Joeboy” with a ambitious dream to “live to eat” for a living.
Lucila is an experienced leader in loyalty and digital marketing. She has a proven track record in FMCG, contributing to renowned organisations such as Flybuys, Coles Supermarket, and Bakers Delight.
Her career includes developing and implementing fully automated customer journeys, playing an instrumental role in the digitization of Coles’ weekly catalogue, creating successful and highly segmented campaigns with Flybuys’ first-party data, all of which have yielded improved customer retention and delivered millions in incremental sales.
For her work at Coles, Lucila was nominated for the 2020 Oracle Markies Global Award, and since joining Bakers Delight, she has developed strategies and applied operational changes that have led to a 65% increase in the loyalty customer base, as well as doubling the website traffic. She’s also an avid mentor, passionate about supporting young professionals and her team.
Lucy has worked for over twenty years with enterprise level brands both in Australia and the UK creating award winning Loyalty, data and customer experience strategies.
Medibank, Citi Bank, Macca’s, Officeworks, VW, TAB, Dan Murphy’s and CBS are a handful of the brands she has brough her skills to bear on since arriving in Australia. Her passion and skill sets are eclectic, loving nothing more than when she is able to help clients specify and develop growth enabling corporate CX assets, interrogating data to create business insights and then developing, measuring and evaluating the resulting personalised & connected CX Loyalty ecosystems. In essence operating very effectively at the nexus of data, tech and communications. She likens her team as the glue between IT and marketing, speaking both languages fluently, and is reliably effective at breaking down company siloes to achieve positive tech and strategy outcomes.
Lucy leads the Customer & Loyalty Strategy team at Merkle, whilst working closely and managing all analytics projects with the Data Science and technology offerings.
Mark Kelly is a seasoned Senior Executive with over 20 years of commercial experience in Loyalty, Digital, CX, and Data. With deep expertise in loyalty strategy development, data-driven marketing, and digital innovation, Mark has played a crucial role in driving business growth for leading organisations across Australia and the United States.
Having held leadership positions at Crown Resorts, ANZ Bank, and Woolworths, Mark brings a wealth of experience in loyalty and marketing operations. He has overseen strategic transformations, agonised over refining the customer experience, and implemented innovative loyalty technologies to drive business success.
Mark has a rich depth of experience across airline, coalition, retail and credit card programmes and has been working in the field since 2007. His past projects have included design and build of loyalty programs for airlines, transport, and retail coalitions, as well as co-branded financial services product launches for loyalty programs worldwide. He brings learnings, best practices, alternatives and ideas which ensure that decisions and recommendations are data-driven and impactful.
Most recently, Mark has led the Partnerships team for the launch of yuu Rewards Singapore, the market’s largest multi-partner independent coalition loyalty program which has signed up over a million members within the first 100 days of its launch. Previously, he led the consulting and advisory practice for Ascenda Loyalty, a technology and content provider for financial services loyalty.
Mark’s wide variety of past experiences in hands-on roles across multiple industries has led him to focus strongly on designing sensible, customer-centric processes and operations. Originally from the United States, he has been based in Singapore since 2012.
Mark Elkherbotly is a loyalty, CRM, Martech & analytics leader with a passion for optimising the customer’s experience through value adding engagement and long-term relationship building strategy. With over a decade working across local and international markets, Mark knows the best way to move forward is by leveraging all available data resources to identify current and upcoming trends. Experienced in both B2B and B2C loyalty & engagement programmes, Mark has contributed to the growth of market leaders across the IT & retail industries such as GPC Asia Pacific, Nintex, Fusion Retail Brands & Munro Footwear Group.
With over 20 years in reward and loyalty marketing, Nick Merry specialises in high-end incentive events and campaigns in the B2B sector. His meticulous approach and substantial experience in managing client relationships lead to impactful and successful campaigns. Nick combines his skills as a loyalty practitioner and incentive travel specialist with his skills as a qualified executive coach, offering unique insights into motivational strategies that inspire business partners and resellers to surpass expectations. Beyond his professional acumen, Nick has completed two charity climbs of Kilimanjaro, and volunteers with FightMND, as well as coaches under-12s football.
A senior leader experienced in Loyalty, Customer Experience, Data, Digital Product development and Marketing Automation. Nicola has worked with several iconic Kiwi brands in airline, retail, and finance delivering loyalty programmes of work across both B2C and B2B. From strategy, to inception, development and launch, Nicola brings a perspective of strategy, growth, engagement, and optimisation to the Awards Judging. A firm believer in delivering value by being Customer led and delivery of relevancy in the value exchange, she is most excited about the enhancements in AI, data and digital and what this will bring to the customer experience.
Nik is an experienced consultant, loyalty outsourcing leader, offshore loyalty resource provider and strategic advisor specializing in designing, revamping, transforming, supporting and managing loyalty programs as digital and data business assets for airlines, retailers, mall operators, financial cards, loyalty management systems and many other sectors. He has a detailed understanding of the inner workings of loyalty programs together with unrivalled hands-on experience on what it takes to monetize them most effectively. His experience includes strategy, economics, technology, mobile app and digital, operations, rewards, partnerships, communications and data analytics. In addition to loyalty programs, Nik recognizes the need and opportunity with new payment methods and other financial products being fed by data-driven marketing and loyalty programs. He has extensive experience in loyalty payment cards including cobrands, new forms of payment and other financial products inclusion in programs such as insurtech.
Nik is passionate about customer loyalty and the evolution of traditional loyalty programs into lifestyle ecosystem programs as a foundation for digital and data-driven businesses. He has built high-performance teams, designing and leading for growth and managed all aspects of loyalty, data and digital businesses. With over 20 years’ experience in CRM and loyalty globally, he has consulted on all aspects of program design and management and is a regular commentator online and speaker at loyalty industry events.
Nik is an an entrepreneur and international business leader having pitched for investment successfully to build a next-gen airline led lifestyle loyalty program, creating a loyalty ventures business with a $130m valuation in the Philippines and worked on the successful spin-off into DAVI – a digital, data and loyalty business for Gokongwei Group (JG Summit).
He has global experience having lived and worked in the UK, Australia, Singapore, USA, Vietnam and the Philippines and working most extensively around Asia Pac but also in Europe, Middle East and North America
His unique talent is in thinking strategically, generating ideas, solving business issues and forming teams to build and manage a business in the loyalty, CRM and data space. Nik is analytical with business acumen and has built and managed large commercial partnerships.
Sereen Teoh was the former CEO of GalaxyJoy, overseeing the Vietjet SkyJoy Frequent Flyer Programme. Sereen’s visionary leadership was evident in her swift accomplishments, as she joined in September 2022 and successfully launched the SkyJoy App in December 2022, ultimately reaching an impressive milestone of 5 million SkyJoy members by 16 May 2023, during the official launch of the Vietjet SkyJoy loyalty program.
Additionally, Sereen held the positions of Acting Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer at the airasia rewards program, where she has transformed the airline loyalty program into a comprehensive lifestyle platform by embracing digitalization and introducing innovative cash-lite products.
Simon is a Partner with Ellipsis & Company, the loyalty experts and leads the soliutions and technology practice. He was VP Asia Pacific at Aimia and lead the New Zealand operation before joining Ellipsis.
Simon has 20 years of experience as a loyalty operator (at American Express, Woolworths Holdings and Diners Club) and as a consultant (KPMG Consulting). He’s also been an early member of customer-facing start-ups In The Bag (acquired by Woolworths South Africa) and Destiny (acquired by Verifone).
He believes customer loyalty isn’t everything but it’s way ahead of whatever’s in second place.
Warinthorn Gatephong or Gwarng, has 14+ years of experience in various kinds of positions for different companies, including five years of work in the CRM & Loyalty field, which includes customer service. She has been responsible for defining CRM & Loyalty strategy, planning budgets, designing plans for operations, closely monitoring execution, reporting insight from data analysis, and managing team and stakeholders both internally and externally.
She is currently working at Sephora Thailand, responsible for creating a tailored marketing strategy and customer engagement strategy (loyalty, CRM, and CS) to increase customer base and retention, and generating and maintaining the Sephora Beauty Insider program’s (BI) data. She ensures that customer voice is well reflected in all aspects of Sephora by overseeing all consumer and market research, and maintains and strengthens relationships with brand partners by giving them information and opportunities to develop their business with Sephora. She owns every collaborative campaign initiative to attract new members and influence the spending habits of current members while at the same time retaining a healthy level of active members.
Will is Regional Vice President of Blackhawk Australia | Incentives and is also the President of the Australian Gift and Prepaid Card Association. Having joined Blackhawk from PwC, Will focuses on the role gift cards play as an incentive in the customer lifecycle and how they can be efficiently delivered through BHN’s enterprise software platforms to unlock customer driven growth for his clients.
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