Influence and Leadership Masterclass: Manage your influence

Dr. Catherine Ball is an author, founder, executive director, and ethics advocate working across global projects where emerging technologies meet humanitarian, education and environmental needs. Catherine also likes to create businesses.

A sought-after voice across the start-up and tech world, Catherine works globally across a wide range of global projects from creating world leading conferences and events, to using drones to kill weeds on rocky cliff faces. Catherine is a proponent of community engagement with technology and likes to demystify emerging tech.

Catherine has been called a social architect and likes to connect people from different backgrounds across common themes. A champion of diversity and inclusion, Catherine believes we need points of difference to truly innovate and curate the changes we want to see in the world.

Catherine continues to support Australia as being the world leader in the non-military application of drone technology, also known as “drones for good”. As such, Catherine has co-created a new, global congress to be held annually in Brisbane which started in August 2017. The World of Drones Congress runs annually and is the first significant global drone conference to focus on all parts of the drone economy, and the future of the industry.

Catherine has most recently created “World of Drones Education” which is set to be the ‘Netflix’ of STEM resources for teachers, educators, corporates, and parents. It includes lesson plans on demand and a Podcast you can download from the Apple Store.

Catherine holds a BSc Honours (Environmental Protection) and a PhD (Spatial Ecology, Descriptive and Predictive Statistics) from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the United Kingdom. 

Some of the awards Catherine has won include:

• 2015 AFR’s BOSS Magazine Young Executives of the Year - Winner

• 2015 Telstra Australian Corporate and Private Award winner 

• 2015 Telstra Queensland Business Woman of the Year

• 2015 Telstra Queensland Corporate and Private Award winner

• Innovator of Influence, 2015 at Innovation Week.?

• Courier Mail Q Magazine: Queensland 50 Best and Brightest, 2015 

• Westpac 100 Women of Influence 2016 (Innovation) 

• Top 25 Women in Robotics List- 2016

• 2017 Women in Leadership Awards – Finalist Innovation Category

• 2018 Global Contribution to UAV Industry award from Shenzhen UAV Industry association

Sonia is a professional actress and tv host based in Los Angeles from Australia. She is one of Australia's top travel & lifestyle live streamers with 30 million hits, a travel Vlogger with 23k followers and a producer of 4 films and an original travel web series. She is globally known as one of Australia's top Travel Bloggers, Vlogger and travel hosts. She is currently in production for a Amazon Prime series she will host in LA in 2019.

Sonia is a master in the art of presenting to camera, finding creative ways to brand yourself and create content. She has successfully been granted an actors/ tv host visa for the USA, only given to the most extraordinary talent, proving she has the skills and abilities to help you master your own social media profiles, branding, become an expert in the field of presenting travel content online, content creation, becoming a natural on camera and master the world of media.

Sonia is also a former Microsoft Australia technology training specialist and technical writer. She has presented numerous technology presentations, has been the voice of over 300 training videos and is an expert in creating corporate content for the roll out and adoption of technology into the workplace.

Sonia will be developing further classes incorporating presenting, travel blogging, travel content creation, media masterclass, how to be a tv host, technology and media masterclass and more.

She has created a career that incorporates both technology and the creative arts making her very unique and highly specialised.

You can find her on Instagram and join her fun community @SoniaCarroll