Sheriden is currently the Managing Director and Company Secretary of the Cairns- based non-profit Reef and Rainforest Research Centre (RRRC) and Deputy Chair of Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef.

Sheriden has extensive experience in environmental research and monitoring management, aquaculture development, agricultural science and agronomy in the sugar cane and banana industries of Far North Queensland and served as a Director of Wetland Care Australia and has previously worked with CSIRO and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

As an extensive contributor to land and sea management policy, Sheriden has also spearheaded the development and implementation of an innovative aid development program on Australia’s northern borderlands with Papua New Guinea.

Sheriden is based in Babinda, Far North Queensland.

John Fitzgerald, founder of The Experience Era Pty Ltd (est. 2024), is a highly respected tourism executive with over 20 years of experience leading national, state, and regional destination strategies across Australia. As former CEO of Tourism Tasmania (2013–2022), John spearheaded one of Australia’s most successful tourism brands, achieving top national growth in visitor value and experience development. His leadership roles have included senior positions in Tasmania, the Northern Territory, and the Sunshine Coast, earning a reputation as a visionary strategist, change leader, and values-based decision maker. With deep knowledge of destination management and marketing, John has advised premiers, chaired state tourism councils, and shaped long-term visitor economy strategies. Since launching The Experience Era, he has worked on projects spanning golf tourism (Seven Mile Beach, TAS), fishing tourism (national), international marketing (Geelong & Bellarine, VIC), and destination planning (Brisbane to 2032), bringing a collaborative, cross-sectoral approach to sustainable tourism growth.

Dr Sarah Gardiner has over 25 years of experience in the tourism industry and a PhD in Marketing. She is the Director of the Griffith Institute for Tourism and a Professor in Tourism at Griffith University. She is an expert in travel consumer behaviour, travel trends, experience design and innovation. She regularly delivers presentations, consultancies and training for government and industry in these areas and has published in leading tourism journals. She is often asked to provide expert comments to the media on tourism issues and thought-leadership to government and industry.

Dr. Peter O'Connor is Professor of Strategic Management and Co-Director of the Centre for Enterprise Dynamics in Global Economies (C-EDGE) at the University of South Australia Business School. His primary research and teaching focuses on the effect of digital on business, particularly on retailing and marketing.  Peter has published in leading academic journals including the Journal of Marketing, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Tourism Management, the Cornell Quarterly and the International Journal of Hospitality Management, amongst others. Prior to joining UniSA, Peter founded the Chair in Digital Disruption at Essec Business School in France, where he held a variety of other academic roles. 

Siggi Gudergan is known for his work on business innovation, transformation and performance, an area of expertise that he leads as Professor of Strategy within James Cook University in Australia. He also is a Visiting Distinguished Professor at Aalto University in Finland, Visiting Professor at Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien) in Austria, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. He holds various board and professional roles, and has consulted to or worked with a broad range of organisations, from start-ups to large multinational companies. He research has been published in leading management, marketing and tourism journals.

In her role as Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellow, Dolnicar leads the Low Harm Hedonism Initiative, which leverages behavioural science insights to make tourism more environmentally sustainable. Dolnicar is formally trained in psychology & marketing; she has extensive expertise with a wide range of research methods, incl. qualitative approaches, surveys, survey experiments & field experiments. She routinely collaborates with colleagues from other disciplines (e.g. data scientists Bettina Grun, engineer Marius Portmann) and has, throughout her career, collaborated with industry partners from tourism (e.g., Airbnb, Hilton, Best Western) and other sectors, incl. foster care agencies, market research companies & energy wholesalers (Energex). Dolnicar’s work shaped several fields of research. Most relevant to this CRC are her pioneering contributions to market segmentation methodology & the behavioural sciences in tourism (a key approach to reducing emissions without forfeiting tourism revenue).

Dr Billy Sung is a Professor at the School of Management and Marketing, Curtin University. He specialises in digital marketing and consumer psychology, consulting for many local, international, and multinational industry partners. His research to date has been based on the study of emotion and the application of psychophysiological methodology in multiple disciplines including psychology, marketing, tourism, health, nursing, and robotics. He also leads the Consumer Research Lab at Curtin University, which specialise in the use biometric measures such as eye tracking, facial expression, and brainwave analyses to conduct consumer research.​

Kirsten is the Director of Curtin University's Tourism Research Cluster and past Chair of the Council for Australasian Tourism and Hospitality Education, which represents institutions that teach and research tourism, hospitality and events in Australia and New Zealand. An experienced project manager with over 20 years’ experience delivering outcomes for industry, government and the community, Kirsten’s expertise is in events and festivals - both large scale mega events and smaller community events; and issues related to sustainability, event volunteer programs and event legacies.

Daniel Gschwind was the CEO of Queensland Tourism Industry Council (QTIC) from 2001 to 2022, representing the industry in numerous committees and forums. In 2022, he was appointed as Professor of Practice for the Griffith Institute for Tourism at Griffith University. He has been an Adjunct Professor at the University of Queensland since 2002.  Daniel is the Chair of Trade and Investment Queensland (TIQ), the Chair of QMF: Qld Music Trails; the Chair of the Tourism Reef Advisory Committee of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA);  a director of the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre (RRRC); a Director of Tourism Whitsundays; and a Director of the Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival. Daniel is also the Honorary Consul for Switzerland in Queensland. Earlier in his career Daniel was involved in yacht charter operations in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean before relocating to Australia where he completed an Honours Degree in Economics at the University of Queensland. He worked as a Senior Economist for the Queensland Treasury for six years before taking on his tourism roles.

Susanne Becken is a Professor of Sustainable Tourism at Griffith University in Australia where she focuses on research related to the science-policy-practice interface of transforming tourism. Susanne is globally recognised for her work on sustainable tourism with over 150 peer-reviewed outputs and 25 years of experience in managing multi-disciplinary projects, including for the United Nations, OECD, Asian Development Bank and South Pacific Tourism Organisation. She has held influential roles in public and private sectors, working with leading organisations such as Amadeus, WTTC, PATA, Air New Zealand, EarthCheck, Travalyst, the Whitsundays Climate Innovation Hub, and Te Araroa Trail. She is an elected Fellow of the International Academy of the Study of Tourism and one of only 16 recipients of the prestigious UNWTO Ulysses Award for her contribution to tourism knowledge.

Professor Alan Liew is Head of the School of Information and Communication Technology at Griffith University, Australia. Before joining Griffith in 2007, he was an Assistant Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a Senior Research Fellow at City University of Hong Kong.

His research focuses on AI, machine learning, medical imaging, computer vision, and bioinformatics. He leads the AI4Health lab and co-leads the TrustAGI lab, collaborating with Gold Coast University Hospital and Queensland Health. He has published over 300 journal and conference papers, authored two books, and holds three international patents. His work appears in high-impact journals, with an H-index of 48 (Google Scholar). Professor Liew serves on editorial boards, research grant panels, and conference committees. He is an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, Springer Nature Computer Science, and International Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems. A Fellow of the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Australian Computer Society, he is also listed among Stanford University's Top 2% Scientists for career-long impact in AI and image processing.