Tell us about your personal connection with UWA and a little bit about your experience here

I completed my BCom/BEcon degree at UWA in 2011. It feels like a lifetime ago now, although it's only been nine years. Beginning university at 18, you know nothing… about the world or yourself. I didn’t really take it seriously and my first year marks were a reflection. I’d partially like to thank Selby Lee-Steere and Marcus Stoinis for this as we spent more time in the gym than the lecture theatre. Fortunately, I realized I wasn’t quite as athletically talented as those guys and that I was better focused on exercising the grey matter in between my ears. Luckily, I still had three years left at UWA and I made those years count.

How was your time at UWA important to your life today?

My time at UWA was very important because it gave me the opportunity to fail fast – then reflect, recover and grow. As I alluded to previously, I was a terrible student to begin with. However, it’s difficult to have the foresight and focus at such a young age to drive good results if you don’t know what your goal is. UWA provides an incredibly broad range of academic curriculum and an environment in which learning is celebrated. Because I had no idea what I wanted to do, I was able to follow the subject areas in which I was stronger or found interesting – macroeconomics and finance. This naturally led me to my career today – I invest in growth businesses across Australia and New Zealand.

What is your passion and how do you want to make a difference in the world?

It took several years of my career to work this out – but my passion is growth investing. Through my time in banking, I came to realise that to truly add value, you need to be in the business, seeing and understanding the people, setting goals, implementing strategy, and driving outcomes. This is the beauty of growth investing – you are backing an idea, a new business model, a spark in the founder’s eye – and helping to fuel growth via your skills and your capital. Realising growth as a partnership whilst having a positive impact on the people and ecosystem surrounding you is the ultimate reward – this is my passion and the difference I hope to make.

What has been the most interesting aspect of your career and where can it go from here?

The most interesting (and fortunate) aspect of my career has been my role thus far at Tanarra Capital. We are a growing fund manager investing in alternative assets across Australia and New Zealand. Unlike most of the fund managers across Australia, we have a presence in WA. Shortly after beginning my role at Tanarra, the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Witnessing the steepest decline in investment markets in the last 100 years was interesting, to say the least. Having the opportunity to learn from my talented peers and interpret what was happening was something I will not forget in a hurry.

Where can it go from here? I really think the sky is the limit. There is a hugely growing pool of superannuation capital in Australia; we are fortunate enough to be stewards of a small slice of it. There is tremendous opportunity currently in technology, agriculture and Australia’s eventual (hopeful) energy transition. I’m lucky enough to have a critical role to play – to enable growth in the brightest ideas, people and businesses around the country, whilst generating positive risk-adjusted returns for retirees. It’s a great job and I hope to do it for a very long time.