Bella Bain

Design Director, Co-founder, World Champion Athlete and 2021 Young Australian of the Year finalist: Bella Bain is on a mission to inspire and connect imagination workers globally to design and build the experiences for tomorrow. As the current Head of Product & Design at Macquarie, Bella designs with empathy and inclusivity through deeply understanding users’ needs, desires and expectations to fill the gap in the Financial Literacy of our society. Previously she used her impact and approach to coach global enterprise teams in the methods to innovate from anywhere in her former role as the former Asia Pacific Director for Customer Success at MURAL. Then as the Former Design Director at IBM, Bella lived this mission using the potential of artificial intelligence and data modelling to help clinicians treat COVID-19. Working with the Critical Care Consortium, the former IBM associate design director developed a system that uses de-identified COVID-19 patient data to help clinicians identify better patient outcomes. Now it is used to save lives in more than 400 intensive care units across 51 countries. Bella graduated from The University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Design Computing, making the Dean’s list of excellence in academic performance. Where she now Tutors in UX design to the next generation of change-makers. Bella co-founded design start-up Ambient & Co, which creates interactive outdoor light sculptures for festivals such as VIVID Sydney and I-Light Marina Bay in Singapore. Her work ‘1,000 Cranes’ won second-best installation for VIVID 2018 after the Opera House. Representing Australia, Isabella has won five world championship gold medals across two international campaigns for dragon boating and now has switched sides and won gold at the 2022 Australian Masters Rowing championships. One of Sydney University’s International Women’s Day ‘Women to Watch’, Bella uses her talents to create a better world.