Founder & CEO, Oceania Marketing Group - Bio

Karen Lewis has spent more than 20 years building digital capability inside some of Australia's most complex organisations, before founding Oceania Marketing Group to bring that same rigour to Queensland SMEs and mid market businesses navigating AI adoption and digital transformation.

Her early career was built at enterprise scale. At TAL, she led the redesign of the organisation's entire digital ecosystem, delivering a website recognised with a Best UX in Insurance award and establishing her reputation as a customer centric digital leader. At MetLife, she strengthened capability in customer insight, digital experience design and global alignment within one of the world's largest life insurers.

That grounding in regulated, high stakes industries carried through the next phase of her career. At Employsure, Karen managed a $4.5 million a month revenue channel, brought paid media in house and delivered $600,000 a month in organic revenue growth. At Hireup, Australia's leading NDIS technology platform, she delivered a 4X uplift in growth metrics and led the organisation's nationwide go to market plan. At HICAPS, part of NAB, she defined and delivered the digital, brand and customer experience strategy across the business.

Karen has also led at agency scale, managing a nine person digital and ecommerce department at NetStarter, later Salmat, delivering omnichannel strategy and multimillion dollar P&L outcomes for national retail brands, including bringing the Lasoo Voice app to market with Google.

Beyond individual organisations, Karen has shaped the digital industry itself. From 2017 to 2022 she served as Vice Chair and Board Member of the D+T Collective, part of ADMA, one of Australia's leading digital associations. In that role she drove a 30 percent increase in digital talent membership, revitalised the national AMY Awards, and provided strategic advice to the Australian Government on building a competitive, digitally enabled economy, a rare vantage point that few marketing leaders bring to a stage.

Karen is also a long standing advocate for women in the industry, serving as a mentor and awards judge for Women in Digital, and was herself nominated Digital Leader of the Year in 2019.

In 2022, Karen founded Oceania Marketing Group, since named Best Digital Marketing Agency Australia 2025, to apply this enterprise level thinking to businesses that rarely get access to it. Her current focus is helping Queensland SMEs, starting with professional services firms, understand and prepare for how AI is reshaping the way customers find and choose them, work that culminates in the Queensland SME AI Readiness Report, launching October 2026.

Karen speaks on AI adoption, digital transformation and marketing leadership, drawing on two decades of enterprise experience and a genuinely current view of how AI is changing search, marketing and customer behaviour for Australian businesses.