TLDR
Three brand-side marketers from Unilever, Amazon and Telstra have joined the HumAIn 2026 speaker list, all in heads-of roles rather than CMO titles. The two-day Sydney conference runs 13 to 14 October at Stone & Chalk, Haymarket, built around four themes including 'The Taste Gap' and 'Culture as Training Data'.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Who is speaking and what they do
Three brand-side marketers have been added to the HumAIn 2026 speaker list. Kate Westgate, Head of Marketing for Home Care at Unilever ANZ, is on the programme,[1] alongside Megan Ormsby, who leads Communications for Devices and Services at Amazon, and Oren Fixler, who runs External Channels and Media at Telstra.[2]
None of them holds a Chief Marketing Officer title. All three sit one level below, in heads-of roles where the day-to-day AI adoption decisions actually get made.
The three join a line-up of more than 40 speakers and 250-plus delegates.[1] Earlier announcements included agency voices at the global level, so the organiser is deliberately mixing brand-side and agency perspectives on the same stage.
What the programme is actually asking
HumAIn founder Cat McGinn said there is no shortage of people showing what AI can generate, but what remains in short supply is anyone willing to show the working: what they decided, what did not hold up, and what it took to fix.[3]
That framing runs through the four confirmed programme themes: AI and Creative Work; Brand Discovery in the AI Age; The Taste Gap; and Culture as Training Data.[1] "The Taste Gap" puts a name to what AI cannot yet judge: quality, tone, the instinct that makes a piece of work good rather than merely plausible. "Culture as Training Data" points at who decides what gets fed into the models shaping brand voice.
McGinn also said that three years ago, people came to HumAIn to understand what AI could do.[4] The question now is execution.
How the two days are structured
HumAIn expands to two days for the first time in 2026, a structural change from the single-day format of earlier editions.[4] Day one runs as a single-stream conference covering case studies, demos, debates and Chatham House Rule roundtables, where delegates can speak freely without being quoted by name. Day two shifts to workshop-based masterclasses aimed at moving practitioners from experimentation into actual adoption.
The conference runs from 9 am on Tuesday 13 October to 5 pm on Wednesday 14 October 2026 AEDT at Stone and Chalk Tech Central, 477 Pitt Street, Haymarket, Sydney.[5][6] Tickets are available through the event's Humanitix page.
SOURCES & CITATIONS
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Who are the three new speakers at HumAIn 2026?
When and where is HumAIn 2026?
What are the four programme themes at HumAIn 2026?
How is the two-day format structured?
James Dore is Strategy Director at Bushnote, a leader in SEO and AEO in Australia. He writes on search, AI and the technology decisions shaping government and industry.
