Chris joins our team as CEO after a 25+ year career largely focused on the Angel, venture capital and private equity investment and technology innovation spaces. His roles have covered a wide spectrum within those areas including venture capital market development, venture and seed fund management, Angel investment, place based community development, mentor, lawyer and corporate adviser.
Chris was born in Oamaru and grew up in the rural community of Duntroon in the Waitaki Valley. After leaving high school Chris initially worked as a stock and station agent in South and Central Otago before studying law and commerce at Otago University.
The main roles he has undertaken since returning to NZ in 2002 (the New Zealand Venture Capital Association, New Zealand Venture Investment Fund and New Zealand’s largest innovation precinct development, GridAKL) have been ones where he has been able to add significant value to communities of highly energised and focused people coming together to create and do something exceptional with long term views and impacts in mind.
Chris has a healthy appetite for career risk and has demonstrated in the past that when Chris believes in something he is more than happy to take it on, build things up from the bootstraps if necessary and basically just get on with it. Chris doesn't see this new role as necessarily being a huge departure either from much of the work he has done in the past, more as an important shift for him personally from a focus on long term financial capital investment to long term human capital investment.
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