About Us

Tim Moran

Tim is a highly experienced industry CEO with exceptional international and Australian recruitment experience.

Tim has specialised across permanent and contracting recruitment in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and finance sectors. During his 20 year career, he has held a number of senior roles including Business Manager, Country Director and Regional Director at leading recruitment agencies across the Asia Pacific region.

Tim has built an impressive and proven track record for leading organisations and managing people to sustained success. He has been responsible for managing day-to-day operations, supporting large teams of people, implementing new business strategies and running multiple specialist recruitment brands simultaneously.

This combination of knowledge and leadership experience will be key in leading the Ignite business into the future.

Garry Sladden

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

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.

Nikki Grech

Career Snapshot

Nikki has a diverse background in both contingent and managed service staffing solutions with experience gained both locally and overseas. She has an outstanding track record of executing successful go-to-market strategies that delivered sustained growth. Prior to Ignite, Nikki was most recently the NSW General Manager of a large IT recruitment agency and National Director of its talent solutions business.

As an experienced industry leader, Nikki will play a key role building our national talent solutions service offering under the People Services banner and contributing to a broad range of other strategic projects across the Ignite group.

Laila Billberg

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”

Bernt Schindler

Bernt has over 20 years’ experience in recruitment and staffing leadership across the Asia Pacific region with a high level of exposure to global implementations. He has direct experience in agency, internal, RPO and contingent workforce solutions.

Bernt specialises in people development and engagement, and is passionate about diversity and inclusion initiatives. He also has a strong track record in designing sustainable solutions, building collaboration across multiple stakeholder groups and executing proactive staffing services.

Prior to his role at Ignite, Bernt was the head of talent acquisition for a number of multinational tier 1 organisations including IBM, Allegis and GrainCorp. He also has experience as an executive and non-executive director of multiple businesses and a large Australian charity.

Based in NSW, Bernt will manage our NSW, VIC and WA specialist recruitment teams.

Gavin Caine

Career snapshot

Gavin has an extensive background in specialist recruitment, project management and leadership, with over 20 years of recruitment experience. After several years working across the mining and FMCG sectors, Gavin moved into the recruitment industry where he quickly progressed to the role of National Manager and then General Manager at one of Australia’s largest recruitment agencies. After 15 years in this role, Gavin was approached to join another agency where he would eventually become the Director of Strategic Account Operations in a newly formed division serving major local and international clients across technology and financial services.

Gavin is a proven leader of people, with a strong reputation for improving business inefficiencies by streamlining operational functions, empowering staff, building networks, targeting business growth pathways, implementing new tools, systems, processes and procedures that drive business success.

Top Achievements

• Successfully growing a team of 87 staff to 1,100 staff nationally over 15 years
• Establishing and maintaining strong local and international client relationships
• Improving business efficiencies to drive growth and success