Advisory Board

Quest Events would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the official 2024 event advisory panel who contributed their valuable time and expertise to ensure the agenda for this event was timely and relevant for all stakeholders working in the energy sector.

 

  • Terence Alvares
    GM Operations Retail, ENGIE Australia & New Zealand

    Session: PANEL DISCUSSION: How can regulation, codes and standards be built so that they are responsive to the needs of future consumers without putting a heavy compliance burden on retailers?

    In a career spanning 20+ years, Terence Alvares has led large retail customer operations in market leading organisations spanning diverse industry sectors including energy, telecommunications, media, utilities, private health insurance, health, business process outsourcing and science and technology centres.

    Terence has led transformational change in contact centre and customer experience teams including technology, process, products, operations and people. He is a keen ‘digitisation and AI’ enthusiast.

  • Claire Elkin
    GM Victorian Network Services & Delivery, Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)

    Claire is a values-driven Executive Director with an impressive background in strategic and transformative leadership within the energy, resources and utilities sector. She has led diverse global and national teams within United Kingdom, Iran, PNG and Australia. With a particular penchant for scaling-up world 1st innovative technologies.

    Her experience includes M&A, Strategic Asset Management, Operations & Maintenance and delivering large infrastructure Projects ($40M- $26Bn).

    Claire is known for her remarkable success in turning around struggling organisations into profitable entities and promoting women in STEM.

    Key to Claire's success is her demonstrated ability to influence a wide range of stakeholders; from ASX listed Boards in complex strategies through to Government Entities in legislative reform.

  • Bec Jolly
    Director of Collaboration, Energy Charter

    Bec has over 15 years’ experience enabling sectors and communities to work together. Her background spans from all levels of government, not-for-profits and the private sector. She is motivated by systemic changes that work to support all people (leaving no one behind). Fundamentally, she is a community development practitioner who relies on her curiosity to continually learn and her positivity to identify possibilities. This commitment extends to the for-purpose group Hive that she founded in 2008, connecting communities with their services, businesses, institutions and sectors.

  • Peter Lambert
    Partner, McKinsey & Company

    For over 25 years Peter has helped some of the world’s largest energy companies and institutions create and deliver long term value. He is a Partner based in McKinsey & Company’s Sydney office since 2015, and leads the Firm’s Energy Practice in Australia and New Zealand. Prior to this Peter spent almost two decades in London, serving clients on issues related to performance and growth across the energy value chain.

    Peter has worked as an economist for Ofgas, the UK gas industry regulator, developing competitive markets in gas supply, trading and shipping, and in negotiating price controls.

    Peter holds an honours degree in Economics from Trinity College, Dublin, and serves as an advisor to Australian Energy Week

  • Alex Leemon
    Flexibility Markets Lead, Gridcog

    After a decade working for some of Australia’s leading energy sector innovators, Alex joined Gridcog to help our product team and customers maximise the market value of the projects being simulated and optimised in our software platform.

    While Alex originally has a hard engineering background, conducting power station condition assessments, he is now firmly an energy markets and flexibility services specialist focusing on demand side aggregation, frequency control services, battery storage systems, and demand response.

    Prior to joining Gridcog he was a core member of the team that brought the first aggregated demand response-based frequency control portfolio to Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM); and he’s managed demand response portfolios in all mainland states and across every type of demand response possible in the NEM; and, he’s a self-confessed “completely tragic NEM nerd”.

  • Stephen Quilter
    Executive General Manager Commercial Strategy and Energy Futures, Stanwell

    Mr Quilter was appointed Executive General Manager Growth and Future Energy at Stanwell in December 2021. Prior to this he held the role of Executive General Manager Energy Trading and Commercial Strategy.

    Mr Quilter joined Stanwell in February 2012 as Swanbank Power Station Manager and was appointed General Manager of Stanwell’s gas and hydro generation portfolio in May 2013.

    In a career spanning more than 20 years in the energy industry both in Queensland and New South Wales, Mr Quilter has worked in various operational roles including senior engineering and management positions.

    In his current role, he is responsible for the origination and oversight of the growth of Stanwell’s diversified generation portfolio and the development of Queensland’s premier renewable hydrogen export project.

    From January 2022, for a period of eight months, Mr Quilter was seconded to the Queensland Department of Energy and Public Works to work on the development of the Queensland Energy Plan and Infrastructure Blueprint.

  • Chris Streets
    General Manager Policy and Market Regulation, AGL

    Chris is an experienced energy professional with a passion for pragmatic, sustainable and strategic solutions to the current energy transition.

    He has a broad backround working in all aspects of the energy sector, which drives his enthusiasm for strong market design that delivers on the technical, environmental and affordability needs of all users of the NEM.