Design Declares Australia

Chairperson

RENY®

We are in the business of creative exploration, pioneering transformation for organisations & brands focused on designing better outcomes for humanity.

Co-Founder / Managing Partner

Co-Founder / Design Director

Surfrider Foundation Australia

Advisory Board Member

Chumpy Pullin Foundation

Member Board of Directors

Skin Check Champions

Advisory Board

ELECTRIC ⚡️

Partner

Eon Labs

Mr Simple - Sidelife

mwah. making work absolutely human

Luxottica Group

General Manager Wholesale

Oakley Asia Pacific

General Manager - Arnette Sunglasses ANZ

Sales Director

CEO / Partner @ RENY®Studio | B Corp

As a co-founder and managing partner at Reny ®, I have the amazing opportunity to help transform companies through Orbital Design (picking up where Human-Centred Design left off, giving Mother Nature a seat at the design table, leading to social and climate impact). 

I am an award-winning writer for my publication Uncluttered White Spaces (2009-16), and my new book, Lessons in Creativity, will be available in all good bookstores from May 2025 through Wiley Publishing.

As a certified B Corp, we design creative solutions, products, and brands that impact the community, climate, and humanities.

I have experience working with driven leaders, obsessive designers, genius engineers, demanding CEOs, ambitious CMOs, hard-driving founders, eager investors, observant writers, precise technologists, insightful artists, visionary directors, gifted misfits, hopeful students and passionate up-and-comers.

Client/Project experience: Patagonia, Google, K-Mart, Canon, Nike, Adidas, American Apparel, Dolce & Gabbana, Ray-Ban, Chanel, Prada, City of Sydney, City of Melbourne, Tourism Australia, Cancer Council, Heart Foundation, Mr Simple, Herschel, ProBuild, Stone Island, CP Company, Boxfresh, Giro, Oakley, Electric, Luxottica, Bank of SA, Westpac Bank, St George Bank, Australia Post, Land Rover, Boody, Re-Design, Vandal, Warner, Carryology, IMG.

I have advised senior executives and boards and worked with some of the world's most important brands. I currently serve as Chair for Design Declares, the advisory board for the Surfrider Foundation, and I was the founding board member for The Chumpy Pullin Foundation. 

My insights and writing have been featured in Fast Company, ABC, Inc. Magazine, and other prominent publications, earning me recognition as an awarded writer. My new book, Lessons in Creativity, will be available in May 2025.

I frequently speak on the value of Orbital Design (For Impact), creativity, and technology through platforms like TEDx and Vivid Sydney. I was also invited to speak at Parliament House with the Prime Minister and government officials on the role of creativity and design in shifting our future.

Ben Rennie

Kraken

Lead Software Engineer

Wattwatchers - Digital Energy

Wattwatchers is Australia’s leading technology platform helping households and businesses to be energy efficient, maximise renewables, achieve net zero, and electrify.

As CIO I am responsible for the design, development, delivery and ongoing maintenance of the technology stack at Wattwatchers. This includes managing the team that designs and builds:

* hardware
* firmware (the software that runs on the hardware)
* secure & efficient communications between devices and our cloud infrastructure
* data ingress and device configuration
* APIs (public and internal)
* end-user applications—smartphone and web applications

During my time at Wattwatchers I have led the development of:

A comprehensive suite of applications: Web dashboard, Onboarding, Fleet management, smartphone application (MyEnergy);

The ground-up redevelopment of the underlying infrastructure (Mercury) to be scalable, efficient and cost-effective; and

Wattwatchers’ next-generation hardware platform, the 6MW.

And we're only just getting started ;)

Chief Innovation Officer

The Wattwatchers energy data platform combines a suite of metering, monitoring and control devices with software interfaces, cloud-service management tools and Energy Service offerings.

The Wattwatchers Auditor series of internet metering devices come in 3G and WiFi versions and can bridge easily to alternative IoT communications platforms e.g. LoRaWAN.

In this role, I was responsible for the development and delivery of cloud-based solutions provided by Wattwatchers to our customers. Applications include data visualisation dashboards, diagnostic and installation tools, the Wattwatchers REST API and related data services. I also contributed to the design and implementation of the underlying infrastructure of these services.

Lead Application Developer

Blue Mountains Economic Enterprise

While in operation, Blue Mountains Economic Enterprise (BMEE) was the peak regional economic development agency in the Blue Mountains, Australia. BMEE aimed to stimulate economic development 
in the Blue Mountains through advocacy, investment and job creation.

BMEE identified four key strategic pillars, which were the focus of the organisation’s activity:
* Health and Wellbeing (including aged care and disabilities)
* Creative Industries
* Education
* World-Heritage Industry Development (including tourism, food and bushfire building)

It was responsible for a number of initiatives in the region, including the MTNS MADE (http://mtnsmade.com) campaign and creative industry cluster, bushfire conference and expo (https://bmee.org.au/category/bushfire-conference-expo/) and Feast Blue Mountains (https://bmee.org.au/category/local-food-project/)

Director

Nexergy.co

Nexergy was a startup whose mission is to enable thriving communities with clean accessible energy. We are bringing energy into the sharing economy, enabling people with solar to sell their excess energy with their peers—friends, family, neighbours and the wider community.

Our vision was a platform that provides a customer-empowering model to optimise the energy flows between distributed generation, storage devices, automated home appliances and the electricity network, reducing costs whilst strengthening network resilience, providing benefits to both customers and industry alike.  

Nexergy was formed from the Energy XO program, run by Pollenizer and supported by Horizon Power.

Co-founder + Chief Experience Officer (CXO)

BMRenew

The Blue Mountains Renewable Energy Co-op (BM Renew) is a volunteer organisation with a mission to "Inspire and facilitate local, community owned renewable energy generation and energy efficiency initiatives, for the benefit of the environment and the community."

BMRenew is working to:
* create decentralised locally owned renewable energy generation
* return financial benefits to our community
* bring affordable renewable energy to our community
* inform, engage and activate our community about our energy potential
* be a model for cooperative, inclusive and successful community driven projects

Zumio

Zumio makes products and services that connect people, technology and the physical world to encourage smarter consumption.

We help our clients to create:

Smart buildings & cities—As infrastructure becomes smarter, with sensors, automation and context-aware devices playing an increasingly prevalent role in our day-to-day lives, working out how these technical systems interact with people in the real world is critical.

Social & mobile apps—Smartphones, tablets and wearables can be powerful tools for supporting sustained behaviour change. Their place in our personal sphere, and their “always-on” nature, present an unprecedented opportunity to engage and interact.

Sharing economy—Entire sectors are being shaken up by digitally-supported business models that radically re-organise how value is delivered. These models provide an opportunity to respond to customer demand while creating positive impact.

Director, Innovation Strategy

National Centre of Indigenous Excellence

The Indigenous Digital Excellence (IDX) Initiative, a partnership between the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence and the Telstra Foundation, seeks to inspire, build and connect the next generation of Indigenous digital makers.

In this role I led the development of the IDX Initiative, comprised of the IDX Hub (an innovation and workshop space in the NCIE's Redfern campus), Learning experiences, Innovators' Lab, and Digital things (app development).

The Initiative was established using the principles of Lean Startup—guided by the ethos of “Think big. Start small. Scale fast.”—engaging community in the co-design of IDX Initiative activities.

In this role, I was responsible for three core functions:
1. Coalesce and communicate the IDX vision (concept and strategy) and Initiative objectives (incl. to key internal stakeholders);

2. Assemble the IDX team and provide guidance and support in delivering to the vision (incl. co-delivery and other partners); and

3. Manage and monitor the “bottom lines”: financial governance, social impact (evaluation), and environmental sustainability.

Indigenous Digital Excellence Director

Broadband for the Bush Alliance

The Broadband for the Bush Alliance is a group of organisations that are committed to the digital inclusion of remote and rural Australia. The Alliance brings together a range of stakeholders with expertise in communications, remote service delivery, and community engagement.

The Broadband for the Bush Forum is an engagement of remote and rural stakeholders with key decision makers to build collaboration and deliver the best possible policy outcomes.  The Alliance bills this annual event the most engaging and comprehensive digital inclusion conference focused on remote Australia.

The 2015 Forum, preceded by the Indigenous Focus Day, will be held at the Charles Darwin University waterfront campus in Darwin, 14–16 July.  More information is available at http://its.so/hardtoconnect

In this volunteer position, fulfilled as part of my responsibilities as IDX Director, I was responsible for co-ordinating the Forum committee, developing and managing the Forum budget, assisting in the securing of key sponsors and speakers, and chairing committee meetings.  I remain a committee member, and also contribute as a member of the Indigenous Focus Day organising committee.

Forum committee chairperson

University of Western Sydney

Part of the teaching team for the Design Research Training unit, working with students to explore design thinking and research methods in their practice.

Tutor

Saasu

Leading the service design practice within Saasu, developing brand position and identity, user experience, product vision and prioritisation across Saasu's platforms (web application, mobile, POS).

Chief Design Officer

Grace has a background that crosses strategic service design and web application development. With a practical understanding of the shifting economic and cultural currents of the networked and socially-aware economy, she brings a unique perspective on how businesses, services and products can thrive within it.

Grace has worked in web-based product design and development for over 30 years. She was a founder of Saasu, one of the earliest Australian web application companies, and a founding team member of Earth Hour (at WWF-Australia). She is delighted to be exercising her passion for sustainability and social outcomes in the emerging internet-enabled energy sector.

She has delivered thought-provoking public presentations at key industry events such as UX Australia, Web Directions and Enviro 2010. As a facilitator Grace has run workshops with diverse stakeholders ranging from executives to frontline employees for organisations such as the Investa Sustainability Institute and the AIDS Council of NSW.

She has the ability to synthesise multiple drivers (organisational objectives; stakeholder needs; value chain considerations; best practice) into successful services and products. She is skilled at managing the complexities of multiple stakeholder interests through project development, including how to leverage multi-sided markets for business advantage.

Grace has a strong entrepreneurial spirit and experience building teams and initiatives from the ground up.  She specialises in the application of participatory design approaches to the development of persuasive technology.

taplio

The Battle

Ben Rennie

Grace Young

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