B2B Special Interest Group

Sobia is a senior marketing professional experienced in the technology, education, and services industries. She's had both B2C and B2B Marketing experience but currently, her role focuses purely on B2B as a Marketing Manager at Trade Me. For over 9 years, Sobia has been managing advertising campaigns (digital), go-to-market projects, new product launches, market research, and working with key stakeholders to provide solutions from a marketing point of view.

Alongside her professional career, she's also active in the marketing academia. She's presented two research conference papers in Portugal and Germany. One of which she won the Best Paper Award at a Macromarketing Conference. What gets Sobia up every day is having a meaningful and purposeful life. And to her, that starts and ends with people whether it's volunteering giving back to the community, or simply helping a friend out.

Anne is an experienced Business Development and Marketing professional with over 14 years of work experience in the UK, Australia and NZ.

She has spent most of her career working for professional services firms. Since moving to New Zealand, she has worked for Russell McVeagh, Deloitte and she is currently a Marketing and BD Manager for DLA Piper.

In the last few years she has been focussing on managing key client and sector programmes for some of the following sectors: Public sector, Healthcare, Tech, FinTech and InsurTech.

Anne's strengths include providing a strategic approach, encouraging innovation and stimulating creative thinking.

Cassandra Powell drives the marketing of Assurity’s brand. Responsible for generating awareness and demand for Assurity’s solutions, she is adept in promoting the company’s unique value among clients, potential clients, and key stakeholders.

An experienced and results-oriented marketing leader, Cassandra has a solid track record delivering outstanding investment returns on integrated B2B multichannel campaigns across the Asia Pacific region. The current Chairperson of the Marketing Association B2B Marketing Special Interest Group, Cassandra sits on the Board of Governance of Crown Institute of Studies.

She was a member of the judging panel for TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards 2020, 2021, and Campaign Asia-Pacific Agency of the Year 2020.Cassandra holds an honours degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering and a post-graduate diploma in Technopreneurship & Innovation from the Nanyang Technological University Singapore.

Sam is MD at Badger Communications. He has decades of experience helping kiwi businesses do more business with other businesses.

His claim to fame is that he once stared in his own TV commercial, as an (in)famous Aussie cricketer.

Michael is incredibly passionate about the customer and their experience and believes marketing and communications have a seat at the revenue table by proving ROI on tactics and using customer data to drive insights and competitive advantage.

Michael is a qualified marketing executive with 15+ years of experience and currently heads the Marketing and Communications for Tonkin + Taylor Group. Michael and his team were instrumental in the development of the group-wide customer experience strategy, implementing new communication channels, strategic customer experience, relationship management planning, and business strategy. Their team have had good success at the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards with several Rookie Marketer of the Year nominations, finalists in a number of categories, and winners for their internal communications channel design in 2019.

Jonathan Wrait, Attain’s Head of Marketing, comes with a rich history in business. First starting at the age of 18, he started a successful school tutoring business before being named as the 2011 Global Student Entrepreneur of the Year.

Over the next 13 years, Wrait worked both as a marketing manager and headed up his own agency, Red Gorilla.

He has worked with clients in a wide range of industries including retail, property, food & beverage, technology, engineering, corporate training and telecommunications.

“I love working with businesses that are technical or complex - understanding what they do and distilling this down to a simple, effective message that resonates with their target audience.”

Bernhard is a senior marketing and innovation leader with a knack for customer centred products and experiences.

He is skilled in team leadership and coaching and uncovers customer needs and trends to generate insights then creates solutions by collaborating and creative thinking.

Tim is a direct marketing strategist who has always believed that automation is only ever part of the answer to create true customer engagement.

He takes great pride in designing and fine-tuning the model of engagement that puts our organisation at the fore front of providing digital engagement services to business in New Zealand.

PJ Morris is a creative, innovative and insightful marketing professional, who is passionate about understanding customer need to drive business outcomes and growth through all aspects of the marketing mix.

Leading change and taking stakeholders on a journey to deliver results and business growth energises me. Described as pragmatic and results focussed, my greatest strength is in building strong teams and influencing behaviour to create environments where people can grow and excel.

Having worked across both B2B and B2C brands in my career, I have a passion for B2B, and utilising technology to enable our customers growth. Currently heading up Marketing & Insights for Fletcher Building Concrete Division, across three different businesses in the construction sector to shape our market position and grow the division including portfolio strategy, brand, product development, customer communications and customer experience.

Rebecca is a freelance B2B demand generation specialist working with engineering, manufacturing and technology clients.

She is known for her practical approach to making B2B marketing work effectively in diverse client situations. She upskills in-house marketers by advocating for them with the C-suite and collaborating to deliver measurable outcomes which help to get them noticed for promotion.

Three times in her career, she's been at the forefront of leading edge marketing innovation. Professional Services marketing in the 1990s, the rise of customer relationship management in the 2000s and social media since 2005. Rebecca is an entrepreneur whose side-hustle is a sport education business for rowing. She happily uses this as the experimental sand-box for new marketing techniques. Rebecca also mentors marketers seeking career advancement through the OneUp OneDown programme.

Lone is the brain behind the content of our events, from sourcing speakers and sponsors to choosing our topics, Lone is there every step of the way.

She has extensive knowledge in the Events and L&D industry and uses this to mentor her newer colleagues.

Post work, you can find Lone lost in a good book (or two!) and spending time with her beautiful family.