Presenters

Rochelle Castro, Principal Lawyer, RC & Co Lawyers
Rochelle Castro is a strata, construction and conveyancing lawyer and owner of RC & Co Lawyers. Prior to practicing law, she was a university instructor before dedicating her service to law. Whilst working to further improve her legal skills, Rochelle saw that she could better serve her clients by not only advising and advocating for them, but also educating them. She works with her team at RC & Co Lawyers, through constant rigorous training, so that they could provide effective, resourceful and clear legal service to clients. Rochelle appears in tribunals and various court jurisdictions to advocate her clients’ rights. She presents papers on strata, construction and conveyancing in local and international forums. Rochelle is a committee member of a few organisations including Law Institute of Victoria Building and Construction committee and Property Law committee. She is also the current president of the diverse association Filipino Australia Lawyers Association. Rochelle is also active in social media to provide bite size tips to those who are in need of guidance about contract law and legal disputes. Rochelle believes that good practice of law requires effective communication and education to achieve for clients the best result.


Katherine Shamai, Partner - Risk Consulting, Grant Thornton
Katherine has over 17 years of professional experience in providing governance, compliance, internal audit, and risk management services to a range of clients including federal, state and local government agencies and departments, not-for-profits, ASX listed companies and private companies. She has extensive experience assisting clients with governance reviews, risk assessments, reviews of key internal processes and controls, recommendations to strengthen control weaknesses identified, drafting of policies and procedures as well as being seconded to clients to help implement recommendations. Katherine brings a combination of industry and professional services experience to her clients. This is reflected in practical and pragmatic advice and recommendations tailored to suit the unique environment of each client. Expertise: Governance reviews and advice including Board maturity assessments, governance arrangements and structures, and succession planning; Internal audit programs and reviews; compliance reviews against legislative and regulatory requirements, funding agreements or service agreements; enterprise, project and subject-specific risk assessments; anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) services from advisory services through to Independent Reviews; design of governance, risk and compliance frameworks, processes and tools; and authoring of frameworks, policies and procedures. Experience: leading AML/CTF risk assessments for a federal government agency; leading AML/CTF independent review for a complex reporting entity; design and pilot of compliance program at National Disability Insurance Agency; develop and manage internal audit programs for a range of public sector and not-for-profit entities; lead Board governance review at a large national not-for-profit organization; reviews of third-party supplier's business practices for a large multinational company and large retailer and lead a review and quantification of an incorrect application of legislation at a public sector agency.