With 30 years of corporate experience, working in a range of industry sectors and in academic positions, Dr Gunilla Burrowes has enjoyed an engineering career which has taken her on a parallel journey of supporting female engineers and as a role model in the academic and corporate domains.

Gunilla is an enabler. She is the inaugural Chair of the Eighteen04 Inc, an incubator and co-working space for start-ups in the Clean Tech and Smart City sectors. Gunilla co-founded and was the inaugural Chair of Rights House Inc, an Angel Investing organisation based in the Hunter Region and is now a board member of Hunter Angels. She was past Chair of Australian Science Innovations, President of the Newcastle Division and National Vice-President of Engineers Australia. She is a Graduate Member of GAICD, a Senior Member of IEEE, an Honorary Fellow of Engineers Australia and also the 2016 winner of the NEWi ‘Joe’ Award.

Gunilla is a nationally recognised leader in gender diversity with a focus on bias training through her consultancy Gender Matters and has managed Women in Engineering and Diversity in Engineering programs at University of Newcastle and Victoria University.

Drawing on her experience in establishing her own technology company, Blue Zone Group, Gunilla is setting her focus on the Newcastle innovation ecosystem in seeing technology based start-ups choose our region as the place to grow their businesses. Hear from Gunilla at Three76 as she tells the Eighteen04 and Gender Matters story along with her vision of the Hunter as a place of high-tech creators, manufacturers and makers.