Grant King – Advisory Board, Non-Executive

Grant is helping the team develop analytics that matter to board members and management teams. He views Forum 360 as a stakeholder solution, not just for investor relations and believes there are multiple use cases for management teams and board member to more effectively engage their stakeholders.

Grant currently serves on the board of HSBC Australia. Prior to this Grant served as chairman of the Business Council of Australia. He has also served as chairman at Contact Energy and Australian Pacific LNG and Oil Company of Australia and the Energy Supply Association of Australia.

He has been a board member at BHP and Envestra and at Origin Energy where he served as Managing Director for over 16 years and at Boral Energy where he also served as Managing Director.

Rowland Hirst – Co-Founder and CEO

Rowly has over 20 years experience in equity, equity derivative and investor relations advice.

Rowly and his team have designed and developed Forum 360 to address key deficiencies in the way that meeting performance is measured. He firmly believes that relying on broadcast techniques as the basis for a relationship, such as market and product releases, is outdated thinking. That group virtual meetings are a far superior method to make that human connection but also to measure meeting performance and relationships over time. By improving the standard which active asset and product managers engage their stakeholders, this will lead to growth in their business.

Prior to this Rowly lived for twelve years in the US. There he launched a business for CBA before joining Macquarie where he built relationships with key decision makers from over 100 fund managers in the USA and Canada

He delivered best practice marketing roadshows on behalf of Australia’s largest listed companies and his team was awarded 2015 Best Overall Offshore Australian Equities Sales Presence from Australian Investor Relations Association (AIRA)

Prior to this he was part of the start-up team that established AOT Securities. AOT was bought by Commsec after the development of a successful institutional and retail straight through processing interface.

Geoff Blaisdell – Co-Founder and CTO

Geoff is the technologist on the advisory board helping the management team with product development and infrastructure.

Geoff is an experienced digital leader, executive, advisor, and investor, with over thirty years practicing at the intersection of finance and technology, including twenty-plus in global CIO roles.

Prior to joining Forum 360, Geoff served as Head of Technology at Western Asset Management. Prior to that as CTO at FFTW (BNP Paribas) and also served in senior positions at Putnam and Blackrock.

Geoff has developed expert knowledge in critical business domains including portfolio management, trading, client service, risk management, and operations. Geoff has designed, developed, and led dozens of large-scale efforts, achieving outstanding outcomes in these business domains, while applying leading principles from organizational design, data, application development, and infrastructure disciplines.

Geoff is a recognized change leader and innovator, with significant proven successes deploying modern digital strategies including agile, data science, business intelligence, citizen enablement, RPA, cloud, and design thinking.

Alan Darwin – Co-Founder and Legal Affairs

Alan has over 25 years experience in financial services in the Asia Pacific in investment banking, derivatives, asset management, financial product development, investment platform management, corporate strategy, governance and legal regulatory compliance.

His experience includes the issuance of structured products, managed investment schemes and superannuation products. Some of his key roles include:

• Director and Responsible Manager and CEO at Linear Asset Management;
• Executive Director in Equity Derivatives at J.P. Morgan;
• Head of Asia Equities Compliance and Head of Australia Equities Compliance at J.P. Morgan;
• Regulatory Policy Lawyer at Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

Ian Brightwell – Advisor, Information Security

Ian provides advice on Forum 360’s security framework, our control mechanisms and compliance so that Forum 360 can continue to deliver best practice technology governance.

Ian is a consultant, academic and experienced CIO. He specialises in technology governance with a particular focus on information security. Ian is certified by ISACA in the Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT – retired) and a trained Gateway Reviewer for NSW ICT programs. Ian was CIO and Director of IT at the New South Wales (NSW) Electoral Commission in Australia.

Timothy Cheung – Advisory Board, Director, Company Secretary

Tim has over 15 years experience as a portfolio manager, analyst and more recently, as CEO of Mantis Funds, a neo-fund model with a vision to connect investors with alpha via technology.

Tim is a Director of Forum 360 and Company Secretary. Tim also sits on Forum 360’s Advisory Board providing treasury advice. He is a firm believer in the importance of adopting new technology to improve investor outcomes.

Tim is also on the advisory board of Payreq and a partner at LSL Partners. Prior to this Tim was a global equities analyst at Perpetual, Head of Research at Morphic and a portfolio manager at CCM. He was a client of Rowland’s at Octavian in New York and they became friends working together at Commsec prior.   

Matt Chin – Analyst, User Centred Design

Matt supports Forum 360’s IT, UI/UX design and research analytics teams as an analyst, User Centred Design.

Matt is a recent graduate of design computing. He has a passion for customer experience and enjoys creative pursuits.

Vineeta Kumar – Advisor, USA and Canada

Vineeta Kumar is a senior executive in the Advisory industry with a focus on Financial Services. Over a career spanning 24 years, Vineeta has worked with and supported clients in their most strategic technology and operations initiatives. She is recognized for her customer-centric approach, excellent relationship management skills and delivering results through a consultative, mutual-value based approach.

Vineeta was the Global Head of Business Development for the Securities & Capital Markets division of Wipro where she led the strategic client acquisition function. Before that (at Headstrong) Vineeta started then scaled and managed the Buyside Capital Markets Unit for the firm – working with leading Asset & Wealth Management companies.

Sean Kos – Advisor, IT & Strategic Partnerships

Sean leads Forum 360’s growth into sectors outside of financial services. Sean will build strategic partnerships with organisations looking to modernise their distribution methods following a structural shift to virtual meetings . Sean is also on the team to manage Forum 360’s infrastructure development. 

Sean has an IT strategy, planning, transformations and project consulting background with over 20 years experience across a broad range of industries, in particular Building Materials, Manufacturing, Retail and Distribution, Financial Services and Health Care.