Delegate Connect, the world’s leading end-to-end event platform, has made two key appointments to help fuel the global growth of its hybrid and virtual events solution.
The Melbourne-based company has appointed James Law as Chief People Officer and Chris Davies as Chief Operating Officer, effective 1 February. In the past year, the number of Delegate Connect employees has more than quadrupled to nearly 100, with about 20% based overseas.
Davies brings more than 20 years of experience in customer, digital technology and operations leadership in both growth and more established organisations to the COO role. In his previous role leading Sales, Design & Customer Service at the mobile phone and internet provider Belong, the customer base tripled in size via a combination of digital acquisition, partnerships and telesales.
He was also Head of Operations Delivery during Jetstar’s early period of scale up and international expansion and he brings strategic capability from his time at Boston Consulting Group.
Law brings a diverse experience in human resources roles in start-up and scale-up businesses, having been Chief People Officer and Executive Board Member at the construction industry digital platform EstimateOne for nearly four years. Before that, he was Chief People Officer at Envato (a marketplace for the sale of digital assets), Director, Human Resources, for the betting exchange Betfair, Head of Human Resources at realestate.com, and Head of Human Resources at the online employment site SEEK.
Delegate Connect’s proprietary technology Platform, combined with the unique offering of end-to-end event delivery has seen rapid uptake over the past several years, signalling a global, longer-term shift to virtual and hybrid events where location, audience, venue and time zone barriers don’t exist.
Jordan Walsh, Co-founder and CEO of Delegate Connect, says: “The conference and events industry has undergone a radical and permanent transformation over the past couple of years. We’re seeing organisations across all sectors, which would traditionally hold in-person events and conferences, utilise technology to engage with attendees, sponsors and stakeholders through a combination of hybrid and virtual event formats.
“Finding this balance is much more complex than simply deploying a piece of technology and handing it over to clients to use. At Delegate Connect we carefully curate a bespoke experience for speakers and attendees, tailoring each client’s platform, supporting event production and on-the-day delivery and, in doing this, we’ve found a way to maximize attendee accessibility and participation while ensuring their events are engaging and seamless to run.
“2021 saw Delegate Connect transform. We have more than quadrupled staff numbers to meet the growing demand for our services, especially from overseas and raised $10 million seed in funding to underpin our rapid expansion.
“To ensure we continue with the rapid product development and global expansion, we needed to bring in exceptional talent to fill key roles and we couldn’t be more excited to have James and Chris join us.
“When making these hires, we have deliberately looked for leaders with experience growing digital and customer-focused solutions to fill positions in our Melbourne, London and Norway offices, as well as in the US where we are expanding now.”
Davies says: “It’s exciting to join a company that is both growing rapidly on a global scale by providing a solution that is clearly needed to help organisations, customers and staff engage and connect through hybrid and virtual events. I love the intersection of customer operations and digital technology and I love helping companies grow. I can’t wait to help the Delegate Connect team realise their full potential during this exciting growth phase.”
Law says: “For the past 20 years I have worked with exceptional organisations growing their teams globally and I am excited about the opportunity to do the same with Delegate Connect. From the moment I met Jordan and the rest of the team, it was obvious that there was a magical culture at Delegate Connect that I wanted to be a part of continuing to grow it around the world.”
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