Disability Employment Australia
2024 Conference

Presentations

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Adversity, Resilience and Success

Bala will be discussing his life journey from refugee to CEO. Bala arrived in Australia in 2000 without money and unable to speak English. Twenty-four years on, he is a successful tech entrepreneur who has founded multiple companies employing hundreds of staff.

‘Bala’ grew up on Sri Lanka’s Jaffna Peninsula amid a civil war that lasted three decades. Caught in crossfire during the brutal conflict between Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan army, he was wounded several times. Bala lost his mother when he was just two years old and the war robbed him of any meaningful education and the chance of a bright future. Arriving in Australia as a refugee has allowed him to rebuild his life. Bala will share his story of starting a successful enterprise called GetMee; a world-leading artificial intelligence company that helps people learn the English language and core communication skills for employment.

Presenters

Bala-Thavarajah

Balendran Thavarajah

CEO, GetMee

As the CEO, Balendran leads the company’s product and commercialization strategy. His extensive experience in building and growing startups combined with the experience in corporate leadership helps him drive the company’s vision. He is passionate about helping people understand themselves better using ‘Get Mee’ so they can become outstanding communicators, experience amazing lives, and improve their career prospects.

Having founded successful startups himself, Balendran was most recently the founding CTO of Bluedot Innovation, leading the engineering, commercialization and expansion of the company.

He is also a casual academic and an advisory board member at the Western Sydney University. His deep understanding of Artificial Intelligence, Commercial opportunities, Applications of AI and related technologies make him a leader in the Artificial Intelligence industry. He holds a Masters’ degree in Information Technology from the University of Sydney and a Bachelor of Computer Science degree from the Western Sydney University.

If Balendran is not hard at work, you will find him spending time with his family or sharpening his flying skills on a Sling-2 aircraft.