Mark works as a Strategic Advisor and Global CFO to help business owners build management capability and discipline to foster growth and scale. Mark provides strategic insights and creates good governance to improve decision making. He specialises in businesses with $1m to $30m turnover.Mark takes what works in other businesses and applies it in a practical way that suits his clients. He works closely with the management team, using his experience and independence to see through the mess to find clarity.Using his business experience and Chartered Accounting background, Mark provides strategic advisory and CFO support including: advisory board support, strategic planning, mentoring, financial reporting, advanced management reporting, management of finance department, analysis, implementation of improvements and HR advice.

The Advisory Board Centre supports Entrepreneurs through effective, commercially focused board structures. We work with businesses to provide Advisory Board solutions that not only help to create healthy revenue streams, but peace of mind for evolving organisations that are ready to achieve their strategic vision.As Certified Chair, Mark helps owners develop insights from an independent perspective and action plans to fast track business growth. Using his in-depth financial acumen and business experience, Mark is Certified Chair who helps owners identify the right priorities., I am a specialist in three key areas: 1. Growing businesses with turnover $1m to $30m2. Strategic growth 3. Financial and business acumenI work with an exclusive, carefully selected team of Entrepreneurs, Advisors and Experts in building tailored Advisory Boards for growing businesses. Our core capabilities stretch from commercially focused advisory board structures, expert advice and enablement of considered goal realisation.Please get in touch to explore how an Advisory Board can help your business fast-track its goals.

Director and Chair of Board (2020 onwards). Mark combines his educational background and business experience to provide good governance. Iona is an independent Catholic College for young men within the Archdiocese of Brisbane.

Director and Chair of Board (2020 onwards). Mark combines his educational background and business experience to provide good governance. Iona is an independent Catholic College for young men within the Archdiocese of Brisbane.

Two and a half years ago we joined the Zepto journey as their part time CFO. Back then there were only 12 staff. Our goal at Intellective has always been to boost the financial skills and commercial acumen for scaling businesses. At Zepto this meant pulling together a budget (scary for a start-up) and cash flow forecast, managing the audit, and working collaboratively with Legal, Technology, HR and Sales to work through problems as they arose. Zepto has had rocket-ship growth over the last two and a half years growing from 12 staff to almost 100 in this time. With rapid growth comes the need for more financial control and business intelligence to make the right decisions. This was a period of immense change and we had to lean in at crucial times to support the entire finance function of the business, while a finance team was recruited. Now our time has come to leave Zepto in the capable hands of Head of Finance Rahul and his team.

This property development company was growing rapidly and Mark joined as their first CFO. Mark applied his previous experience and went about establishing financial controls and systems to aid the Company in its growth. Cash flow management was crucial in this industry, so Mark established tools to forecast cash flows for projects and the Company in total. He set about improving the relationship with their Banks and re-arranged the debt financing to better suit the Companies direction. Mark worked closely with the CEO and Owners in shaping the Company’s strategic direction. He established a Building Company and streamlined business processes from initial quoting to final payment and all the compliance requirements between.

As the Business Manager, Mark’s role was primarily as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for this large boarding school. Mark was responsible for the 65 non-teaching staff and the ambitious School Building Master Plan. He was also responsible for all the business aspects of the College including: financial reports, cash flow management, insurance, IT, payroll, bursaries, budgeting, marketing, WH&S, strategic planning, banking, loans, capital expenditure planning and building master planning.Mark quickly learnt the role and developed his team’s capabilities to handle the normal accounting and finance tasks. He then set about improving the budgeting and financial control function of the College. He met with Heads of Department frequently, designed monthly reports to improve budget management and transparency, made process improvements and delegated accountability.The non teaching areas of the College were largely working unsupervised and uncoordinated – Kitchen, Laundry, Cleaning, Maintenance, Grounds, IT. This was costly, causing conflict and inefficient. Mark started weekly meetings with the Heads of Department working with their teams to coordinate activities, improve rostering, work practices and workplace health and safety, in line with other school activitiesMark was passionate about improving the business side of the College and made special efforts to visit other schools looking for ideas to implement at the College. One major improvement was to implement Monthly Dashboard Management Reporting at the other Christian Brother Colleges.

On returning to Australia, Mark continued to work in project management roles and rejoined KPMG in the Consulting Division. He specialised in Business Process Improvement projects, e-commerce, best practice management accounting methods and project management.All projects involved a wide consultation with clients, workshop facilitation, documentation of findings, writing up recommendation reports and managing the change. The projects were in a range of industries that included state and local government, property development and electricity retail/generation.Some projects included:• Review and redesign the business processes for managing up to $100m p.a. of infrastructure charges for Brisbane City Council and Maroochy Shire Council.• Review of the monthly management reporting system at Forrester Kurts Properties Ltd, identify the cause of the issues being faced, and recommending improvements, which the Management team adopted.• Business analyst for the e-Commerce project at Energex to provide an online customer service experience. Mark's role also encompassed change management and communication needs of the project.• Prepared a complex financial model to support the business case to redevelop the Mercy Centre laundry. The model provided a sensitivity analysis, which together with advice about financing options and GST helped the client to proceed with the redevelopment.• Review and redesign the core process of Correspondence Management with the Department of the Premier in Queensland. This core process was used by 400 staff. Mark was part of the team that through an extensive consultation process, built a strong momentum for change within the Department. The project was also successful in transferring skills to the client team, who implemented all recommendations.

Mark worked as a Business Analyst in 3 different roles at Natwest Global Financial Markets.The roles were to act as the representative of the finance department on the IT development team responsible for migrating the equity derivatives to an upgraded system, and in upgrading the front office trading system to accept new interest rate products.Mark initially worked with Natwest Markets preparing daily profit and loss reports for Traders in London, New York and Milan.

After joining the Private Business Division as a graduate, Mark gained diverse experience working on a wide variety of small business clients. The experience gained during this role included: accounting, preparing tax returns, financial reporting, feasibility studies, cash flow forecasts, budgeting, business cases, business planning and designing reporting systems to monitor business performance.