Meet The Persuaders

Matt Taylor has been a part of Sydney’s animation scene for 15 years, in many guises – character designer, director, graphic entrepreneur, studio manager and more. He’s also won his fair share of awards and spoken at fancy conferences both in Australia and overseas.

Following a BA (Visual) in Graphic Investigation at the Canberra School of Art, Taylor went to work with pioneering online video company KGrind and then co-founded award winning animation studio Sixty40. He has received awards from Promax, AEAF, D&AD and Good Design Australia.

In 2013 Taylor founded The Explainers, a digital communications studio helping clients engage, inform and persuade. Formed in response to the explosion in online video, The Explainers have a desire to create clear communications within complex storytelling. The first project was explaining The NBN one of the biggest infrastructure projects in Australia’s history since the Snowy Mountains scheme.

Since 2013 The Explainers have become a leading communications studio producing and have explained digital transformations for Westpac and IAG, training videos for NSW Health, sales videos for Telstra, innovation for The Department of Industry, Innovation and Science and service design for The Digital Transformation Office. 

One of his country's most noted writers, broadcasters and filmmakers, Adams was elected a Living National Treasure in an Australia-wide poll conducted by the National Trust.

200 of Australia's most prominent academics voted Adams one of the top five of the country's public intellectuals.

His many honours include two Orders of Australia, four honorary doctorates and the Human Rights Medal, Australia's highest award in this category, awarded by the Federal government's Human Rights Commission. He has also received Australia's top honours in journalism, broadcasting and film making.

Described by Prime Minister Whitlam as 'Australia's most perceptive social critic' he is Australia's most widely published columnist. In his 50 year career his writings have appeared in most major Australian newspapers and journals, and in major papers around the world. He currently writes two weekly columns for the national newspaper The Australian.

He is the author of twenty books, many of them best sellers. Called 'the godfather of the Australian film industry'  he has written, directed or produced over a dozen feature films many of them recipients of major awards at local and international film festivals. They include Don's Party, Lonelyhearts, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, We of the Never Never and The Getting of Wisdom.

Dee Madigan is an award winning creative director with over 20 years experience in advertising. She has been a winner or finalist at most major awards, including Cannes.

She has been Creative Director on 7 election campaigns for the ALP including the 2013 federal campaign and the recent 2015 Qld State election.

She runs her own Advertising agency, Campaign Edge, is a panellist on Gruen as well as a political commentator on Sky and ABC’s The Drum.

She is also a guest host on Studio 10. She writes for a range of publications including The Drum and Mamamia and is the author of The Hard Sell (MUP 2014) and a contributing author on Mothermorphosis (MUP 2015) and Perspectives on Change (ANU 2015).

Michelle Law is a Brisbane-based freelance writer with experience in journalism, screenwriting and playwriting.

As a journalist, her writing has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, Daily Life, frankie magazine, and The Drum.

She has also had work published in Women of Letters, Growing up Asian in Australia, Destroying the Joint, Griffith REVIEW, and many Australian literary journals. In 2014, she co-authored the comedy book, Sh*t Asian Mothers Say.

As a screenwriter, Michelle has written multiplatform content for Flashforward (ABC), worked in the writer’s room for The Family Law (SBS), and developed story and interactive media for Slide (FOX8), for which she won an AWGIE. More recently, she wrote Bloomers, a short film, and Suicide and Me, a half hour broadcast documentary which screened on ABC2.

Michelle is also well known as a speaker on social issues concerning race and gender in Australia, with her TEDxSouthBankWomen talk ‘A Bald Woman’s Guide To Survival’ having been viewed online almost 30,000 times.

Most recently, Michelle has been working on Single Asian Female, a play commissioned by La Boite Theatre.

Tim Levinson, better known by the stage name Urthboy, is an Australian hip-hop MC and. He is widely known for his solo music under the moniker Urthboy, as a founding member of the hip-hop group The Herd.

In 1998, Levinson co-founded Elefant Traks, an Australian hip hop record label based in Sydney initially started to create a mix-tape as a going-away present for a friend of the artists. Elefant Traks have since signed numerous artists and groups, and have produced over 50 releases. The label was nominated for "Best Independent Label" at the 2006 Australian Dance Music Awards and won the award of the same name at the 2012 Jägermeister AIR Awards. 

Yassmin Abdel-Magied wears many hats, including a hijab. She's a mechanical engineer, writer and activist who campaigns for tolerance and diversity.

She is on a mission to promote diversity throughout society, however and wherever she can. Born in Sudan, she moved to Australia when she was two years old, and trained as a mechanical engineer. She now spends her time both working as an engineering specialist on oil and gas rigs - and heading up Youth Without Borders, the organization she founded to enable young people to work for positive change in their communities.

Named the 2015 Queensland Young Australian of the Year, Yassmin advocates for the empowerment of youth, women and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. In 2007, she was named Young Australian Muslim of the Year. She also really like motorsports.