Past Battles

Companies built, roles held, ideas tested. Outcomes listed honestly.

SEEK

Senior Strategy Manager · 2020–2025

Five years inside one of Australia's most important digital marketplaces, learning that a 'simple job site' is anything but.

employment#strategy#marketplace

Environment Education Victoria

Worked

President & Board Member · 2019–2022

Took the presidency of a cash-strapped environmental education NFP and learned that polished communication and genuine communication are not the same thing.

nonprofit#governance#nonprofit

Gibber

Mixed

Head of Strategy & Product · 2021–2022

A B2B analytics platform that made sense of Twitch chat - one of the noisiest, most chaotic data streams on the internet. The tech worked. We were chasing one customer, not a market.

startup#saas#analytics

Anika Legal

Worked

Strategy Workshop Facilitator · 2021

One strategy day with a legaltech NFP. Taught me more about communication than anything else that year.

advisory#facilitation#legaltech

Semar Tea

Didn't work

Founder · 2020–2021

Built a premium saffron tea brand during COVID lockdown. 15 product iterations. Killed it before launch. Worth it for the process.

startup#ecommerce#product

Deloitte

Worked

Manager – Tech Strategy & Innovation · 2015–2020

Zero big office experience to national AI/blockchain SME, promoted to Manager at record pace, and peer nominated for values and achievement in five years.

consulting#strategy#consulting

GramWorthy

Worked

CEO & Co-Founder · 2017–2018

A micro-influencer marketing agency that was profitable within two months. We chose not to quit Deloitte to scale it — because we didn't want to run a labour-heavy agency full-time.

startup#marketing#creator-economy

C5 Network

Mixed

CEO & Co-Founder · 2013–2015

A global esports content and consulting network built from a bedroom during uni -- 50M visits, 40+ person team, and an exclusive interview with Faker.

startup#gaming#analytics

University of Auckland — Robotics

Worked

Web Consultant · 2012–2014

Unified the Robotics research centre's web presence from scratch. First taste of making technical work visible to a global audience.

consulting#web#seo

Reign of Gaming

Worked

Columnist & Editor · 2012–2013

Turned a League of Legends obsession into a paid column and then a full editorial role -- growing the site from 2M to 8M monthly views.

employment#gaming#content

Leveling Up

MBA — Melbourne Business School

Worked

Melbourne Business School · Copenhagen Business School · 2021–2023

Went back to study seven years into a career to get the formal strategy vocabulary to sit alongside the practical experience. Both things happened — plus six months in Copenhagen that I'll never forget.

education#strategy#mba

Software Engineering — University of Auckland

Worked

University of Auckland · 2011–2014

Four years learning how systems work, while discovering my real calling was running them -- not building them.

education#engineering#systems

Achievements Unlocked

IET Present Around the World — NZ National Champion

2015

Won the New Zealand regional and national heats of the IET's global public speaking competition, then represented NZ at the APAC finals as one of 8 countries. Presented on AutoMate — a machine learning research project using behaviour pattern recognition and routine learning to automate smartphone workflows.

#public-speaking#machine-learning#research#IET

Research Cited in Google Patent US 12,287,827 B2

2025

Co-authored "Automating SmartPhone Automation" (ASWEC 2015, pp. 108–117) with Ted Chen and Rashina Hoda — research on a behaviour-learning, context-aware smartphone automation system. A decade later, the paper was cited as prior work in a Google patent: "Automatically Suggesting Routines Based on Detected User Actions Via Multiple Applications" (Google LLC, granted 29 April 2025).

#machine-learning#research#ASWEC#patent