Kate Carruthers

Kate Carruthers is a technologist, marketer, entrepreneur, and educator who blogs at katecarruthers.com.

Kate is Chief Data & Insights Officer for UNSW Sydney, is the Head of Business Intelligence for the UNSW AI Institute and, until recently, was an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science & Engineering at UNSW Sydney. She was a foundation member of the NSW Government Data Analytics Centre Advisory Board and is a member of the Microsoft Regional Director* program for cybersecurity.

Kate was certified in information security in 2017, was awarded a Graduate Diploma in Terrorism and Security Studies in 2022, a Master of Tertiary Education (Management) in 2020, and a Master of Management in 2014.

She is co-founder of several startups, and has extensive experience in senior executive roles, working for diverse organisations such as Citibank, General Electric, AMP, Westfield (now Scentre Group), Metcash, Genea, and NSW Treasury. Kate has extensive experience in the successful delivery of digital, data, ICT, and change projects across organisations of diverse sizes.

Previously Kate lectured in postgraduate information systems and accounting at Macquarie University. She also delivered TAFE level courses in business and management in the NSW Department of Finance, Services and Innovation.

Kate has always been a strong advocate for women in STEM, having previously served on the management committee of Females in Information Technology and Telecommunications (FitT), and has been a mentor for young women in technology and engineering for many years.

Kate was co-founder of two Internet of Things (IoT) startups (Moorescloud with Mark Pesce, and IoTM) and is currently an adviser to several IoT related startups. She was also co-founder of Social Innovation Sydney (with Selena Griffith from 2005-2017), a group that helped change makers connect with one another and built-up networks to drive social innovation in Australia.

She started a podcast with Annie Parker in 2020 – Conversations with Annie & Kate – to profile interesting women around the world.

In 2023 she started the Data Revolution podcast. The Data Revolution podcast is about exploring the intersections between business intelligence, data analytics, AI, privacy, data protection, cyber and information security.

Kate is:

a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers
a member of the Australian Information Security Association (AISA)
a member of the Australian Women in Security Network
a member of the Royal Society of New South Wales
a Fellow of the Governance Institute of Australia

She was:

a foundation member of the NSW Data Analytics Centre advisory board
a member of the Advisory Board for the Faculty of Informatics at the University of Wollongong for several years before joining UNSW Sydney
a member of the Telstra Industry Advisory Board

In 2014 Kate was named as one of Australia’s most powerful women in technology by Smart Company magazine. More recently, Kate was named among the 2021 Constellation Research Business Transformation 150 (BT150), which is an elite list that recognizes the top global executives leading business transformation efforts in their organisations. She was also named on the:

In 2023 she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by B&T at the Women Leading Tech awards.

Over the past few years Kate has been working on the front lines of the intersection between data analytics, AI, ML, privacy, data protection, cyber and information security.