“He shaped the redesign of our product and brought skills our team was missing, particularly in pitching to and negotiating with enterprise clients.

When we went through a capital raise, his experience was invaluable, both in investor meetings and in preparing the documents behind them.”

“The most genuine compliment I can give Mark is that I felt relieved when he walked through the door. He was the right person, with the right skill set, at the right time.

My time working with Mark at LeapForward was short but extremely enjoyable. It was my first foray into tech start-ups, and we were very much riding the bike as we built it. Amidst the entropy of building and running a healthtech start-up, Mark was an important and informed centre of gravity.

We had people bringing very different experiences and skill sets across tech and development, sales, service delivery, science and academia. Mark brought it all together.

His ability to paint the future picture of the product, map out how we would get there and work, seemingly simultaneously and absolutely seamlessly, across the macro, meso and micro was something I’m not sure I’d experienced before. It’s a skill set I’ve certainly searched for since.

When people are pulling in different directions, each with their own objectives and priorities, having someone who can calmly zoom out, bring everyone into a shared picture of the future and connect that picture to the detail of what needs to happen is enormously valuable. Mark did that beautifully.

Mark is clearly very intelligent and articulate. He’s also warm, kind and a really lovely bloke. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversations and getting to know him and his life beyond work.

I really enjoyed working with you, Mark, and I hope we get to do something together again.”

“Mark is an exceptional strategic program lead who translates well defined concepts into rigorous business cases and executable roadmaps. He is one of the sharpest thinkers I know who understands the macro and the micro. He is an innovator who understands the complexity of transformation. He operates well in complexity and is a both a systems thinker and a design thinker who can chart a well defined course for delivering impactful results, adapts to change along the way and develops the governance and ethical AI frameworks required to do it. His lateral thinking and drive to succeed are amongst the most valuable assets he brings to a business or program.”

“What a privilege it is to work with Mark—insightful, generous, creative and collaborative! Working together on redefining the Store of Tomorrow, Mark is a seasoned senior transformation consultant whose ability to tune into customer expectations and client needs ultimately culminates in Design Thinking and Innovation best practices. Yet, he is no-nonsense, bringing clarity to the details of any discussion while maintaining a solid grasp of the big picture.”

“While I only worked with Mark for a short time, it was highly productive. He is able to wrap his head around complex business problems and lay out a plan that deconstructs the riddle into actionable chunks. He asks great questions and is impressive with how quickly he gets to the heart of a business need - be it resolving consumer pain points, internal operational glitches or marking the next horizon. He would be an asset to any business trying to unravel the challenge of significant change.”

“Mark is one of the few people I have worked with who is a real big picture thinker. He has the ability to quickly understand the issues and succinctly outline unique ways to deliver a superior outcome for clients and the business. Mark is a digital native who has worked with numerous clients to deliver complex transformational projects that not only changed the way companies work internally but how they deliver products and services to their customers. I truly enjoyed working with Mark, and hope we get to work together again in the future”

“I worked with Mark on a series of workshops to help an organisation develop a strategy for a new offering they were considering. Mark brokered agreement between folks in the organisation with very different preferences regarding the new offering - not an easy task when some team members objectives could be made more challenging by decisions regarding the new project. Mark focused the team back on the good of the organisation, rather than any individual or department. Mark questioned several unspoken assumptions the team had made regarding the strategy which also helped to strengthen the overall strategy. He left the team with a clear picture of an agreed plan to move ahead.”

“Mark is a creative strategic thinker with a strong ability to make concepts "real" for clients. This is especially true when he is presenting to non-technical executives. Mark's insights on how to apply non-traditional ideas to an industry are very valuable.”

“I believe digital media projects should be provided with an exact understanding of their operational and technical environment; and that this insight should be used to build a future-proofed roadmap that changes the way an enterprise does business. I started the strategy department to make Hyro think beyond the requirements document and how its work could be made benefit the client more. I also expected the strategy department to provide the executive management within Hyro's clients with a more professional level of council than any other agency they dealt with. Mark was the only person I considered to launch and manage this department. His first task was to save a $800k project that had gone off the rails. Moving on from there he quickly gained existing client's trust, and helped Hyro gain many (if not most) of its new clients over the next two years. His team grew quickly, and was not only very profitable, but usually increased the size of the projects they were involved in. Digital media brings in a new age; and the same old ways of doing things don't work anymore. We need someone who can make this future happen for us. Mark Neely is that man!”

“I’ve worked with Mark for 2 years. He has a great understanding of all things digital and is able to take any business problem and turn it into a strategic direction. He thinks big picture but can also drill into the detail. He is also great to work with.”

“Mark has a great ability in being able to truly digest and understand the heart of a business issue and/or problem placed in front of him, creating transformational ideas and solutions that change the way people interact with a product, experience or brand. It was not only great to watch him in action, but to also learn about what it takes to be a true consultant from one of the best in the game. It’s been a pleasure to work with and learn from Mark over the last 2 years, and I look forward to hopefully working with him again in the future.”

“Mark is a big thinker who understand the power of digital for business transformation. His unusual skill is in being able to translate the big picture into service products and to develop commercial service offers which will engage a client's attention - and sell. He works best in an environment where has wide degrees of freedom to act and can cope with high risk and will emerge from that with a practical and often exciting service offer. As a service provider to Mark (working in conjunction with IBM Australia) I enjoyed his style.”

“Mark led an engagement to introduce Agile to Coles. What impressed me was Mark's ability to lead and synthesize the outputs from a diverse and complex range of stakeholders to distill into a simple and complete outcome. Would hire again.”

“Mark is an expert in helping companies understand the value that they can create in the Digital space. In particular, he has a real ability to help organisations translate their vision into a coherent Digital Strategy. As a prime example, Mark was the lynchpin in a sales process that I was managing with a leading sporting organisation last year. He was able to articulate a clear path forward for the organisation as it developed a new 5-year Digital Strategy. Based largely on Mark's efforts, we secured a high-profile client who we now been partnering with for over a year. I look forward to the opportunity of working with Mark again in the future.”

“Mark was pivotal in redefining Hyro's digital business model. His innate understanding of this new digital world in which we live not only helped Hyro reposition itself to seize the opportunities but many of its customers as well. One of the best strategists I have worked with and would be privileged to work with again.”

“I have known Mark for more than 5 years, having worked with him when he was the New Media Strategist at Austereo and I have had ongoing dialogue over the years on all aspects of technology strategy. Mark possesses a broad yet deep understanding of the technology commercialisation process and is able to provide unique insights into the key drivers of successful technology strategies. A great communicator as both a speaker and writer, he is readily able to disseminate this understanding to others.”

“Mark is best described as a unique combination of thinking and doing. Not only could he articulate the vision for the CRC Foundry project, but he can also design the processes that will bring Smart Services CRC innovations to life. It's good to find someone else who works the same late night email routine as me (!) and shares my passion for innovation and entrepreneurship.”

“Mark and I worked together on a licensing deal between Austereo and CastMetrix. I enjoyed working with him very much, even though we were on opposite sides of the table, as it were. I quickly came to admire Mark's razor sharp industry insight and technical vision. In every discussion with him, I have been impressed by the consistency and clarity of his thought process. I also appreciated his candor and sense of fairness during our negotiations. I highly recommend him as an individual and a professional.”