Naomi Simson OAM

For more than 25 years, Naomi Simson has been bringing people together — through her experience businesses, her keynote speaking, and her writing. She is one of Australia's most passionate advocates for business owners, founders, and the leaders navigating a world changing faster than any of us have ever seen. After a successful corporate career with Apple, KPMG, IBM and Ansett Australia, Naomi founded RedBalloon in 2001, bootstrapping it from a spare room into one of Australia's most loved experience brands. In 2017, she co-founded Big Red Group, now the largest experiences platform across Australia and New Zealand. Beyond building businesses, Naomi is a prolific blogger, the voice behind the podcast Handpicked (six seasons), and a regular business commentator. Many know her as the #RedShark from four seasons of Shark Tank Australia. She has authored two bestselling books, Live What You Love and Ready to Soar. Naomi currently serves as a non-executive director at Big Red Group, Colonial First State, and Weebit Nano [ASX:WBT]. She is also a Governor of the Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation. With more than 2.6 million LinkedIn followers, Naomi is a trusted voice on the forces reshaping business right now — from AI leadership and the future of work, to customer obsession, entrepreneurship, and building organisations that last. Her gift is the ability to take complex, fast-moving ideas and make them feel immediately relevant and actionable, no matter the audience. She takes a very human approach. She is engaging, humorous, and direct — a speaker who draws on deep lived experience rather than theory, and who leaves every audience with both the inspiration and the practical tools to act. In 2026, Naomi was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for her services to business as an entrepreneur, and to leadership.