Big Red Group – About Us

As Group CEO and Co-founder of Big Red Group (BRG), David leads the experience marketplace in its pursuit to deliver an experience every second across the globe sustainably by 2030.

With a background in management consulting and following on from success in building a large-scale international retail network after 8 years at the helm, David co-founded BRG with the belief that with state-of-the-art technology, great people and a clear strategy to acquire new audiences for its supply base – transformational growth would be delivered to stakeholders.

Under David’s guidance BRG initially acquired RedBalloon, and it continues to add other leading experience brands to its marketplace, including Adrenaline and Lime&Tonic.

David and his leadership team has grown BRG into the largest experience marketplace in Australia and New Zealand. David has a strong ESG agenda, and provides thought leadership on strategy, corporate culture and business growth in times of perpetual change.

BRG is partner to 2200+ experience suppliers and it has a world class marketing stack, platforms and customer insights to continually push for growth. BRG is Australian owned and operated, with the purpose to shift the way people experience life. Headquartered in Sydney’s CBD Australia, in 2021 BRG serves an experience approximately every 30 seconds.

Naomi is an influential business leader who is obsessive about the Experience Economy. Her growth obsessions is centred around how customers and clients use experiences. Experiences at work is a key area of focus as she enquires into the relationship between corporate culture and the experience of work. Naomi is a prominent business blogger at naomisimson.com; keynote speaker and author of a number of best-selling books including Live What You Love, and Ready To Soar.

She has almost 2.7 million followers subscribed to her opinion and thought-leading posts on LinkedIn. Naomi sits on a number of boards, including governor for the Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation and a director on the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Business and Economics. She is a passionately curious individual, known to ask frequent and tough questions that challenge the status quo. Naomi’s role at the BRG is a fundamental value-add to the businesses within, as she drives authority – both internally and externally – by supporting the experience marketplaces on brand development, as well as audience reach and engagement.

After beginning her career leading teams across a range of digital agencies in the UK, Jemma emigrated to Australia in 2001 and joined start-up RedBalloon. Where she oversaw the rapid expansion of the business across Australia and New Zealand. Working closely with co-founder Naomi Simson, Jemma became CEO of RedBalloon in 2011, guiding RedBalloon through its fast-growth years, seeing RedBalloon be awarded BRW ‘Best Place to Work’ award five consecutive years in that time.

As Chief Operations Officer of the BRG, Jemma leads the Technology, Supply, Data, and Salesforce divisions, tasked with driving innovation across product and operational functions for BRG to continue to serve as the leader of sustainable development and innovation within the Experience Economy both locally and globally.

Matt is the Chief Growth Officer for the Big Red Group house of brands which include iconic e-commerce marketplaces RedBalloon, Adrenaline and Lime & Tonic.

Matt sets the vision, strategic direction and growth agenda for the brands in-market, driving our expansion and innovation initiatives within the experiences category both across existing markets in Australia and New Zealand and globally as we expand further. Matt is a spirited and talented leader; passionate about people, brand strategy and innovations and shifting the way our customers experience life. Matt is the force behind BRG’s purpose of delivering an experience every second, somewhere on Earth, bringing our vision to reality.

Matt’s career journey has spanned three continents and multiple industries working for some of the world’s most well-known and trusted brands across Financial Services, Media and Technology, from start-ups through to multinational conglomerates. Matt holds a Bachelor of Psychology from the University of Michigan.

Kevin is the Chief Financial Officer of the Big Red Group of companies, outlining and implementing the financial growth and maintenance strategies of The Big Red Group. Tasked with managing and measuring our real-time financial performance, Kevin leads the BRG Finance team.

Kevin brings more than 30 years of financial management expertise to BRG, having lead teams across industries including Financial Advisory, Healthcare, Technology and Core Service Industries. Kevin brings a unique skill set, having directly worked across a range of corporate finance specialities including business turnarounds, major M&A assignments, due diligence, private equity raising, financial modelling, core business management and rapid business development for major institutions including Big 4 Advisory firms, EY and PwC.

Madeleine serves on the BRG Senior Leadership Team as the Director of People, Culture and Communications, overseeing how BRG’s teams connect and influence each other to be the best they can be – operating with purpose thanks to an optimised growth culture and expert team communications.

Madeleine is accountable for strategic People and Culture initiatives across all BRG business operations including managing mergers and acquisitions, implementing ultimate best-fit organisational design and sourcing the talent we bring into our business while managing their performance and unlocking their ultimate potential.

Madeleine is also responsible for designing our Executive training, growth and development programmes, ensuring BRG coaches its executive leaders on getting the best from their teams, themselves and each other.

Prior to the Big Red Group, Madeleine was the Head of Employee Experience at RedBalloon, an Australian-owned business listed on BRW’s top 50 Best Places to Work, and served as HR Manager for Groupon AU where she was responsible for all aspect of organisation HR in a high-growth business including Compensation & Workforce Planning, Engagement and Career Development alongside core Policy Development.

Madeleine graduated with Honours from Manchester Metropolitan University and holds a BA majoring in Criminology and Sociology.

Tim Bennett serves as BRG’s capital advisor, using his decades of experience to support our corporate development both locally and abroad. Tim also serves as Managing Director of Capital for ASX-listed Prime Financial and in a corporate development role for firms including Limepay, Aspen Medical and Investible.

Prior to joining Big Red Group, Tim was a partner at EY (formerly Ernst & Young) and led the Sydney-based Mergers & Acquisitions division. With over 13 years specialist M&A experience, Tim has advised on a range of transactions, across all industry sectors, covering complex business and asset carve-outs and divestments, mergers and acquisitions, private company capital raising (debt and equity) and IPOs, together with a range of financial sponsor (private equity) transactions.

Prior to EY, Tim worked at other Big 4 accounting and advisory firm PwC in Mergers & Acquisitions in both the Sydney & Melbourne offices.