Board of Directors

Sam Hazledine

Executive Chair

Sam Hazledine is a New Zealand doctor and entrepreneur whose  medical recruitment service, Medrecruit, has helped ensure that healthcare providers, across New Zealand and Australia, are connected with well-trained, qualified medical staff to ensure the very best patient care. Sam spearheaded lobbying the World Medical Association to amend the modern-day Hippocratic Oath, the Declaration of Geneva, to include the health and wellbeing of doctors.

Richard Clark

Managing director

Richard has a broad range of experience working for multinational corporations in the recruitment industries, and leading teams in sales and financial services. Richard founded his own financial services business which was acquired by the group. He has a Bachelor of Business Studies (Finance) from Massey University and is in the final stages of completing his MBA from the University of Canterbury. Richard reports to the Executive Chair and is responsible for the Senior Leadership Team and business performance.

Neil Jacobstein

Non-executive director, chairman of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Track at Singularity University

He is a founding faculty member and past President of Singularity. He is a mediaX Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, where his ongoing work focuses on augmented decision systems.

Aaron McDonald

Non-executive director, CEO Centrality

Aaron is a 20 year tech industry veteran with leadership experience across a broad spectrum including managing portfolios over $1b in revenue. Most recently Aaron founded Centrality - a blockchain venture studio that partners with innovators in key industries to create a decentralised peer-to-peer marketplace of applications. In 2018 Aaron was awarded EY Entrepreneur of the Year for the technology and emerging industries category. In 2019 he was also named one of the top 50 technology leaders in IDG’s CIO50.

Senior Leadership Team

Jennifer Goddard

Chief Risk Officer & Company Secretary

Jennifer is a finance, compliance, and risk specialist with over 26 years broad commercial experience working for multinational corporations in banking, retail, media, and healthcare. She has a Bachelor of Commerce and Administration (Finance and Commercial Law) from Victoria University and is a Chartered Accountant.

Siobhan McDonald

General Manager Medrecruit

Siobhan’s career has spanned over twenty years across sales, recruitement, local government and sales management and she has been with Medrecruit for almost nine years. She has led the Australian arm of the business since August 2017 where she was responsible for increasing market penetration across all states and territories, winning key business, and executing strategy to deliver results. She was promoted to GM of Medrecruit Australia and New Zealand in 2021.

Ryan Judd

Head of Marketing

Ryan has over 17 years of experience in marketing and advertising. In this time, he was involved in founding two agencies and personally provided consulting services to over 258 different brands in marketing, digital, advertising, and media based growth campaigns.

Jakub Jurkiewicz

Chief Technology Officer

Jakub’s career consists of software engineering and agile coaching/consulting roles in multinational companies and startups. The highlights of his career include working for IBM, Air New Zealand, ASB and Visa. Jakub also founded his own training service, called Agile Coaching Lab, offering training, coaching, and mentoring. He has a PhD degree in software engineering from Poznan University of Technology, Poland.

Kate Batkin

Head of Human Resources

Kate is a senior human resources professional with over 10 years’ experience in local government and commercial privately owned organisations. Kate has a Bachelor of Tourism (hons) and Bachelor of Commerce (Management) from the University of Otago. Kate is a Chartered Member of the Human Resources Institute of New Zealand, a Licensed Immigration Adviser, and has completed the Graduate Diploma in New Zealand Immigration Advice (Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology).

Lalao Rakotoniaina

Chief Experience Officer

Always the visionary, Lalao started a website design practise during the burst of the dot-com bubble. He subsequently worked for a wide range of industries, from defence to utilities, retail chains and transportation as a design lead, a design manager, and lastly as a regional design director. He has a BA in Arts and Archaeology from Paris-Sorbonna and an MS in Advanced Design Methodologies from ENSCI-Les Ateliers (France).

James MacAvoy

Chief Product Officer

James has 20+ years as an experienced senior manager including at Xero and Trade Me (and involved in both IPOs). He has founded technology businesses including; Movieshack (sold to SKY), Hoist, Goodnest, Treat Me (sold to LUX Group). James is highly experienced working in technology businesses as a CEO, COO, and CPO, specialising in start-ups, marketplaces, and SaaS. He has a Bachelor of Business majoring in Information Technology and Business Management from Auckland University of Technology (New Zealand).