About Us

Garry Sladden

Executive Chairman

Garry is a business and strategic adviser who has a diversified business background in the areas of real estate, private equity, business operations, banking and finance, and equity raising. He was General Manager Operations at Consolidated Press
Holdings for six years.

During the last three years Garry has been a director of listed companies Vision Eye Institute Limited (resigned January 2016) and Folkstone Limited. Garry is currently Chairman of Folkestone Limited, Chairman of Ashton Manufacturing Pty Limited, Chairman of FivePointFour Holdings Pty Ltd and Chairman of Star Car Wash Café Holdings Pty Ltd.

Garry is Chairman of the Board of Directors, a member of the Board Audit, Risk and Compliance Committee and a member of the Board Remuneration and Nomination Committee.

Mahendra Tharmarajah

Chief Financial Officer

Mahendra Tharmarajah is the Chief Financial Officer of the Company responsible for leading the shared services function including credit, finance, human resources, information technology and legal/commercial.

Mahendra is a transformational finance leader with over 25 years’ strategic, commercial and operational experience in building, growing and selling businesses in Australia, Asia/Pacific, UK and US across diverse sectors, in both entrepreneurial and multinational corporate environments.

He commenced his career in the accounting profession, spending 5 years with Arthur Andersen gaining experience in audit and corporate finance. After moving into commerce Mahendra spent 3 years with pay TV group Austar in various commercial finance roles and the next 9 years in head of finance roles with several fast-growing venture capital backed businesses including travel ecommerce operator Viator. At Viator Mahendra was instrumental in overseeing 200% compound annual revenue growth and expanding the business to the US and UK. In 2010 Mahendra joined the Couriers Please Group and oversaw a significant restructure, turnaround and eventual sale of that business at 12.5x EBIT in late 2014.

His core competencies include providing financial and commercial leadership, developing and executing strategy, managing change and building and growing businesses. Mahendra is a Chartered Accountant and holds a Bachelor of Economics and a Masters in Applied Finance.

Brad Shotland

General Manager, NSW

Career Snapshot

Following an entrepreneurial background in South Africa, Brad entered the recruitment space in 2000. He has since spent nineteen years spearheading recruitment initiatives in some of Australia’s biggest agencies.

Reputed as an industry change agent, throughout his career history Brad has restructured and grown businesses, developed new verticals and turned around poor performance.

Top achievements

• Turning around loss-making businesses into profitable ones.
• Setting up new businesses as well as offices and making them profitable.

Laila Billberg

Acting General Manager, ACT

Career snapshot

Following a career in marketing, Laila has worked in recruitment, in both Sweden and Australia, for close to twenty years.

During her fourteen years working in recruitment in the ACT, Laila developed a reputation for transforming verticals and growing teams at an impressively rapid rate.

Over these years, she has gained a solid understanding of the ACT market. Her knowledge extends across various sectors including ICT, information management, accountancy and finance, marketing and business support.

Top Achievements

• Managed the newly created information management vertical in Canberra. Within three years, it was one of the strongest performing desks nationally.
• Grew the business support team from two to twelve consultants in just three years.
• Has given a number of presentations on analysing various industries from a recruitment perspective.

Something nobody knows about you

I started my career as a ski bum, travelling and working in ski resorts around the world. My passion is telemark skiing.

Recruitment philosophy

“Attitude beats aptitude”

Roubina Giragol

General Manager, On Demand

Roubina Giragol is the General Manager of Ignite’s On Demand contingent workforce division, providing organisations with qualified resources on a Project-by-Project basis whether for short term or long term engagements.

Roubina has been with the organisation for over 10 years and together with her loyal and robust team has successfully delivered numerous projects for the major clients of Tier 1 System Integrators such as IBM, DXC Technologies, TATA Consultancy and a plethora of Large Corporations. She is a solution focused leader who understands business needs and how to navigate complex environments to drive outcomes which successfully deliver large scale, national and ANZ outcomes for our clients.

Roubina has a consistent relationship focused approach enabling the formation of deep, long term partnerships with organisations and individuals. These relationships are supported by the senior teams she leads that provide consistent delivery and outcomes that effectively support the tactical initiatives and strategic objectives of our clients.

Roubina has qualifications in Psychology, Business, Sales Management and Marketing and combined with her background and her genuine caring personality has made her to be unwaveringly loyal and committed to the teams and Individuals that she leads and provides her with a understanding of the responsibilities and accountabilities necessary to deliver success.