Keynote Women Speakers

Expertise: Innovation

Engineer by nurture, feminist by nature; Her first award-winning keynote, aged 20, was titled “Am I Being Too Ambitious?”, referring to comments she received for studying engineering. Her decades of keynote and panel moderation experience range from Cloud Asia and TechXLR8 to teaching Cloud and AI at the Singapore Council of Women’s Organisation’s ITHub.  She was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in Australia, and now resides in Singapore. Shehara’s relentless passion for innovation enabled the design of game-changing digital experiences. She has taken leadership roles at SingTel, Telstra, and Cisco, in Cloud Computing, Security, and Software. She was the Head of International Cloud Portfolio at Telstra, helping the company create award-winning differentiation in Asia Pacific’s highly competitive cloud market, resulting in 6 industry awards.  Shehara recently served as Vice-Chair of the Asia Cloud Computing Association and is now a Lead Advisor for Cisco APJC.   
Natalie is an experienced innovation specialist having spent over 25 years working as a corporate innovation director, a business consultant, and an entrepreneur. She has worked for and consulted with some of the world’s leading organisations including Cisco Systems, GSK, LEO Pharma Asia, Edgewell, and the Singapore Government, helping them build innovation systems, culture, and capabilities as well as generating new ideas to help them grow their teams and businesses. She has been featured in The Sunday Times, British Airways Inflight Magazine, Blomberg TV, and many other media, and is an Award-winning author for her book Yes, You Can Innovate and a contributing author to Unleash Your Voice – Powerful Public Speaking for Everywoman. Natalie is the inventor of The Six ‘I’s®, a Model that helps people measure their innovation strengths so that they can harness diversity and have a greater impact on new ideas.