LAKEBA has expanded its management team to optimise its marketing, sales and business development capabilities. A new head of marketing, head of sales and chief business development officer have been appointed to augment Lakeba’s business building disciplines for its next phase of growth.
“As soon as the Financial Times ranked us as a high-growth company for the second year running, we initiated the next business building phase. Critical to this is our increased calibre in marketing, business development and sales,” says Giuseppe Porcelli, Group CEO of Lakeba.
“It’s the perfect growth trinity,” comments Porcelli on the simultaneous appointments of each of the executives.
Lakeba’s growth plans always included the appointment of all three roles. Thereby ensuring that the business development, marketing and sales portfolios optimise at the same pace.
“I’ll admit the plan hoped to start them in the same quarter. But in our typical Lakeba way, we nailed it by having Carmen, Mark and Tom join on exactly the same day. Part by design, bit of luck and lots of can do – it’s how we always operate,” adds Porcelli.
Carmen Kalinowski Weaver joins Lakeba as Head of Marketing, working across all of Lakeba’s businesses and the wider Group. She’ll be accelerating each of the brands, drive customer demand generation and develop Lakeba’s marketing teams.
She joins Lakeba after having held senior marketing roles at Perpetual, Equifax and Rabobank.
Mark Hughes joins in a new role as Head of Sales for the Group, with an initial focus on building out the sales disciplines and international infrastructures for Lakeba’s most mature financial services ventures.
He joins following a successful sales career in technology and data services.
Thomas Bender is Lakeba’s newly created Chief Business Development Officer. He joins to broaden the scope of Lakeba’s partnerships programs reaching grassroots start-ups while also integrating Big Tech internationally.
Bender brings his entrepreneurial experience to Lakeba, following the successful commercialisation of several of his own ventures and consulting to businesses scaling theirs.
All three join the leadership team at Lakeba, expanding the international perspectives, growth precedence, energy and best practice of Lakeba, its ventures, scale up fund and partnerships.
Each of the new executives will be based at Lakeba’s international HQ in Sydney, Australia.
Lakeba (lakeba.com) is a privately held business builder. Its portfolio consists of 15 businesses, with 12 in production and three exited. Lakeba conceives their opportunities, create their operational models, and commercialise them into mature revenue and profit-generating companies.
Founded in 2013 and awarded Microsoft Gold Partnership status in 2018, The Financial Times recognised Lakeba as an Asia Pacific High Growth Company in 2020 and in 2021.
Lakeba builds from its headquarters in Sydney, Australia and its offices in India, Italy, the UK and the US. With a team of 160 specialists in capital funding, coding, financial management, marketing, operations, public relations, risk management and, of course, technology.