A founding Director of PropTechGuru, a strategy and marketing agency specialising in the PropTech (Property Technology) sector.

Interested in commercial adviser and strategy roles for SMBs in the technology space

This is an industry body representing the political and commercial interests of newspaper publishers, and their portfolio of print and digital products.I re-invigorated a moribund organisation, implemented budget cuts with no loss of services, managed multi-million budgets to ensure surpluses each year and consistently achieved stakeholder agreement on projects despite the competitive environment. I led a re-branded “newspaper industry” to “news media” to set expectations around changing industry dynamics from print to digital, negotiated historic five-year environmental agreements with federal and state governments to avoid recycle levies on news print and created a world-first, industry-wide revenue reporting discipline to provide market transparency.I also introduced the Code of Practice for Sports News Reporting, forged commercial strategic relationships for industry-wide work conducted by research and data companies, improved non-competitive commercial areas, launched a website considered to be amongst the top three in the industry globally, and oversaw the production of several industry events to a wide range of audiences.

This company is a joint venture between four major Australian newspaper publishers and the world’s third largest research company, Ipsos, based in Paris. It operates Enhanced Media Metrics Australia, a readership metric for print and digital audiences that quantifies the size of audiences, their locations and their behaviour to provide advertisers with data on which to base investment decisions.I oversaw a Board comprising the Chief Executives of all major newspaper and magazine publishing companies to ensure the provision of a world-class metric to support a $2.5 billion a year industry. The data service was used by all key publishers (for selling) and major media agencies (for buying on behalf of advertiser clients).

Business Events Sydney’s Ambassador Program is an initiative that brings together industry leaders to help champion NSW and Sydney as premier business event destinations. Ambassadors work alongside BESydney to open doors, provide insight and intelligence or lead bids for international business events. I have done this for media and technology events, visiting target organisations when overseas.

This is an Australian Government committee established to ensure press freedoms. Signatories to the Code include News Ltd, Fairfax Media, Cricket Australia, the Australian Football League, the National Rugby League, Tennis Australia, the Australian Rugby Union, News Corp, Fairfax Media, West Australian Newspapers, APN News & Media, Australian Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Getty Images.I have mediated Mediated to resolve disputes between publishers and sports organisations over breaches of media accreditation rules, the access of reporters and photographers to officials and players, ground access for photographers, the use of video on websites that a sport believed infringed agreements and potentially compromised license agreements with TV and radio stations.

Chief ExecutivePacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association2008 – 2012I managed a multi-million-dollar year association representing the major newspaper publishers in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Hong Kong and Taiwan.The scope of my role encompassed industry representation, government lobbying, representing publishers at Senate hearings, conducting public awareness campaigns about industry issues, formulating policy on Freedom of Information, defamation and copyright laws and providing a regular presence on television, radio, the press and the internet. I was also a speaker at industry and economy-related events, including the World Association of Newspapers World Congress.The membership base and revenue grew 10-fold and the cash organisation’s position was healthy despite a deep market downturn.I orchestrated three-day events, featuring high profile speakers, including the Prime Minister and industry thought leaders, established and convened an Editors’ Forum, an exclusive gathering of newspaper editors which provided a unique opportunity for rival editors to discuss common issues, and this practice encouraged other associations around the world to adopt a similar approach.

I managed a commercial organisation across eight countries – Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand to deliver an average compound annual revenue growth rate of 25%+. I embedded a value-based sales methodology which re-focused efforts from selling product to delivering value, and becoming a trusted partner to open additional business opportunities which led to additional revenue, increased client retention and created more time to prospect.I established the sales force in India and a distributor relationship in China which significantly elevated profitability. Creating business expansion plans for the Asia-Pacific region led to rapid expansion in India and China.I worked with Marketing / Product Management to deliver localised products which led to revenue increases by providing the salesforce with a more relevant narrative for local clients, which was particularly important in China, Hong Kong, India and Australia.

Gartner is a $US1 billion a year global leader in consulting, research and insight for the information technology sector.As a member of a global team that created and launched a new product and services value proposition for clients, regional revenue grew by 26% in 2005/06. We addressed the challenges associated with the downturn in the technology sector and a strong US dollar by increasing the sales effort in the government sector. I managed the Content Marketing/Publishing unit across the Asia-Pacific region to deliver margins of 35%.I spoke on technology and associated management issues at hundreds of events across the Asia-Pacific portfolio, led the Asia-Pacific implementation of a new website and publishing system to enable research to be delivered electronically and was a regular media columnist in The Australian, CIO Magazine and MIS Magazine.

As a two-term director, I made a pivotal contribution to the technology implementation of the Foundation’s work and library management at the Australian Embassy in Tokyo.

This was a start-up dotcom, partly financed by Oracle to offer an online loyalty program system in exchange for internet users joining mailing lists. Australia / New Zealand was the only region to make a profit in the first year of operations and company generated 50,000 early adopters for the technology/service.

I was Technology Editor of the IT Section of The Australian, leading this area of the newspaper to record revenues during the dotcom boom of the early 90s and the first-generation of adoption for technologies such as CRM, networking and much more. This role provided scope a weekly column that ran for 7 years, as well as multiple engagements as a public speaker.This role followed others at The Australian, including Foreign Editor.