In an entrepreneurial life driven by purpose, Christine has tackled all of her campaigns with gusto, adopting an approach, which is alternative, sustainable, innovative, and just plain different. The causes may have looked disparate, such as what links riding a horse at the Olympics and building up a multiple bottom line property development!

In wildly different disciplines, she consistently faces the future seeking to uncover where it is leading and has always been willing to stand out from the crowd and point the way. A personal mission is to be part of creating a Tablelands which thrives economically without sacrificing its exquisite environment and cohesive communities.

She sees that the 21st century offers new business-based avenues to achieve that goal by incorporating purpose, design and technology. Christine promotes Start Up Weekends as one of the bootcamps to shape the apprentices who will build that vision along with her and other innovative, entrepreneurial spirits collaborating for a vibrant Tablelands.

Seamus has been a driver on the Startup Tablelands committee for 3 years now.

His working life has included labouring and various semi-skilled jobs, working for 8 years in Govt, working in the book trade as bookseller, publishers agent, and owning bookshops, as well as several internet-based-businesses.

He has owned and run Boldacious Digital since 1998 (last century!). Boldacious Digital consults and trains small businesses in Cloud Collaborative Software and Business Apps, as well as building bespoke website for businesses.

He is also the Vice-chair on Social Enterprise Network for the Tropics (SENT)

Lara Wilde is the independent Regional Innovation Coordinator for Ignite FNQ in a part-time capacity.

Lara has successfully worked in local Government, project management, recruitment and retention, economic development and her own private businesses in remote, rural and regional parts of Australia. Throughout her career, Lara has honed her commercial project management skills in the areas of community resource projects, infrastructure and agriculture amongst others.

Currently, Lara is the Regional Innovation Coordinator for Ignite FNQ fostering innovation the Far North Qld region and supporting stakeholders to develop innovative services and products and engage with markets such as Asia. Lara’s work with partners such as the FNQ Food Incubator has resulted in new opportunities and new strategies.

Lara also owns Wilde Drive, a business focussing on providing support and advice for people to have safe, simple, stylish adventures on the road. Through Wilde Drive, Lara writes articles for a number of publications and speaks at a variety of events. Wilde Drive also has an online store Wilde Garage that provides performance parts and accessories for automotive enthusiasts. Lara works closely with automotive enthusiasts and innovators throughout Australia to commercialise new products for the industry and develop manufacturing and export options internationally.

Alison Eaton comes to Startup Tablelands with a long manufacturing, wholesaling and retailing history, both in New Zealand and Australia.

With varied interests in the Ageless Wisdom teachings and meditation, she is bringing the insights garnered from these practices to two new businesses that she and her team are bringing to market shortly.

Alison also brings a cornucopia of organisational and other skills that have already been of service to Startup Tablelands in recent years.

George Corea has become a startup whore in the last year, winning both Cairns SWT events. He is co-organising this event but will be helping teams that lack hackers and hipsters with free online solutions that will help them put together a stellar pitch.

His experience is in conservation and community development, with a keen eye on disaster response and GIS.

To feed his family and to help people who are tech averse, he runs Get Back 2 Basics. A consultancy in Spatial problem solving, tech enablement (IT, webdesign, digital marketing) and Skilled travel.

Paul Flynn is originally from the UK. He migrated to Australia in 2000 (Sydney) and has lived in Cairns since 2006.

Paul is a fully-qualified commercial Accountant, adding further and broader finance, leadership, management, coaching and training qualifications progressively over time, whilst working across different sectors.

This has encompassed over 25 years of delivering successful solutions within large, complex, listed organisations in both countries, as well as within SME’s and NFP’s in Cairns.

Paul has drawn upon that background to form his own business ‘PRF Business Solutions®’, which brings the benefits to small companies of what big companies often do well – processes and practices, whilst dealing with the particular individual needs of a small business.

PRF Business Solutions® uses Xero, providing business advisory, consulting and bookkeeping services to small businesses in Cairns and the Atherton Tablelands, supporting them to do the things they might need to – like BAS and with those they may wish to do like improving business performance.

Paul is married to Sureyya, who both enjoy the opportunities that living in such a beautiful place as FNQ provides, whilst also enjoying their return trips to their native countries of England and Turkey to visit family.

Kimberley Gillan has more than two decades experience in Local Government across three eastern states.

She has qualifications in town planning, strategic planning, economic development and community development.

In 2015 she completed a Master Degree looking at the future of agriculture in Northern Australia.

More recently Kimberley worked for the Queensland State Government in Cairns in Workplace development, identifying new and emerging job growth areas for Far North Queensland.

In partnership with her husband, Kimberley is also a successful author with a total of four novels for publication in 2018.