Jessica Fealy is a qualified Chartered Accountant, farm wife at Blue Sky Produce, mum of four and business owner at Back Paddock Business.

Jessica is a volunteer driving team member for community organisation Startup Tablelands – focused on empowering rural startups. Jess organises and facilitates the group’s social media workshops on the Atherton Tablelands and administers its social media handles along with those of her farm and several local community groups.

Jessica is passionate about the value of small business in rural communities and the absolute benefits that can be realised in business when profit and purpose combine. Her work is driven by the belief that social media is important in any industry – be it farming, photography or selling a product into an export market – social media provides a worldwide presence and the chance to connect to valuable networks and markets.

In her role as a volunteer, Jessica is integral to delivering programs in Far North Queensland that instil an entrepreneurial mindset and digital skill set and that offer opportunities.  She creates and delivers programs using social media to enhance business, community groups and charity outcomes in the local area.

Some of the topics Jessica covers in her workshops are:

1. Why small business needs social media
2. Facebook for farmers/business/community groups/charities
3. Instagram for business
4. Blogging for business/fun
5. Social media 101
6. Twitter basics
7. Creating digital content

Jessica also blogs regularly and produces relevant content across a number of digital platforms.

In her spare time, Jessica volunteers as Blogger Team Director for ‘Country to Canberra’ which is a youth-led non-profit group that empowers young rural women to reach their leadership potential.

In 2016, Jessica has been recognised for her work and was announced as an Advance Queensland ‘Community Digital Champion’, helping Queensland to thrive in the global digital economy.

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.

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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.

Jean Thomas is an award winning conservationist who is passionate about creating change. She has over 25 years experience working in the community development and conservation sector within Australia and Papua New Guinea. Her experience has given her a wide range of skills but her key strength is her ability to transform complicated text into a simple format. Her work with the Tenkile Conservation Alliance (www.tenkile.com) has lead to community engagement and mobilization among 50 villages and the protection of 200,000 hectares of rainforest. Consequently she was awarded the Future for Nature Award in 2010, Australian Geographic Conservationist of the year 2013 and the Telstra Business Womens Award in 2015.

Jean believes that in order to achieve success in any area of life, the essential ingredient is to build your capacity in emotional intelligence (EQ). This is sometimes referred to as your “soft skills” or your “inter and intra personal skills”. Whatever terminology you use these skills are the key to achieving success in any field.

If you feel stuck, experience emotional outbursts, feel stressed and overwhelmed, are burdened by office gossip and backstabbing, lack clarity about what you want to achieve in life or business then Jean will have the perfect training program just for you or your business. Jean’s training programs are experiential so be prepared to jump in, go on a life changing journey and learn by doing.

www.urgeconsulting.com.au

Wilfrid Russell-Smith has a background in economics and is passionate about creating innovative businesses that are sustainable in an environmental and economic sense.

Amongst many interests Wilfrid operates a sustainable timber plantation and is excited about the options for agriculture and forestry in Australia with new technologies and markets opening a multitude of opportunities globally.

After being involved with startup ecosystems and entrepreneurial hubs in NSW Wilfrid is extremely excited to be part of the Startup Tablelands team and help build our very own ecosystem on the Tablelands!