Mr Brown has been Amazon Web Service’s Australia and New Zealand head of data and AI for the past 15 years. The company was a major sponsor of the Great New Zealand AI Roadshow, which visited the city.
"I love Southland and I wanted to be with Southlanders for the day," Mr Brown said.
He is proud of his Otautau farming roots and Southland schooling.
A degree from Otago University polished his Central Southland College education while term breaks were spent on a tertiary student summer internship working at the aluminium smelter at Tiwai Point for three years.
"Going off to Dunedin is one of the best things that happened to me.
"I am definitely proud of the way Southland schooling and my time at Tiwai taught me to work hard, be humble, and always be a good human first."
Home visits were not as often as he would like, but
he was proud he had retained his ability to roll his Rrrs.
Mr Brown has lived in Melbourne for the past 20 years with his wife and two children since being offered his role with Amazon.
He admitted life had changed a lot since his boisterous couch-burning Otago University days where he initially studied maths and computer science. He later switched to chemical engineering.
After graduating, he worked for Carter Holt and Fletcher Challenge in the North Island where they noticed his gift of the gab.
"You’re a bit talkie, can you do the account manager stuff?’, and I wasn’t that good at the engineering and they’re like — ‘maybe less of the engineering and can you be a salesperson?’."
The offer of a new company VT Commodore was enough to secure a firm "yes" from him.
"I was kid. So imagine, in 1999, three years out of university and they give me a brand new VT Commodore. Blue. Metallic."
It was too good to refuse.
"I took a guy skydiving on my expenses and it was all above board — it was a million-dollar contract."
For the next 10 years, the sales bonuses and expenses account were double-pluses of the job. Then came the move to Australia.
His transition from chemical engineering to information technology (IT) came after a friend opened an IBM partner interview opportunity selling large IT servers.
"I was lucky enough that I’d just done IT the second year [of university]."
After three years, providence opened another door when he discovered Amazon was planning to launch into IT.
"That weekend a recruiter rang the IBM guy, who I had been helping, and went, ‘Hey we were looking for someone to start Amazon’.
"So I got really, really lucky.
"Because I have been there 13 years, I get left alone to go out and talk about AI."
He credits the real knowledge to his team.
"My team are experts in data. I’m not the expert, I’m reasonable.
"I’m actually a people manager ... and they do a lot of the presentations.
"So I look after a team of AI experts — they know what they’re doing."
- By Toni McDonald
