Jackie Taranto is a seasoned business executive and entrepreneur with over thirty years’ experience across a range of industries including technology, advanced manufacturing, international trade, medical, finance & investment, research, and infrastructure. She specialises in creating business collaboration opportunities and platforms to extract and build economic value out of timely deployment of technology and talent. Jackie has an extensive industry, research, education and government business network, expanding beyond Australia - to Germany, India, China, Israel and USA, where she has facilitated state-level delegations, visits and cooperative agreements.

Jackie currently sits on the board of ARM Hub, an agile technology centre in robotics and design-led manufacturing. She is an advisor to the board of Gilmour Space Technologies, Australia’s leading launch services company.

Gilad Grinbaum is a passionate strategist possessing an entrepreneurial mindset with over 15 years of experience in emerging technologies verticals and markets. Educated as an electrical, computer and PV engineer in Ben Gurion University, University of New South Wales, he has worked in Four continents focussing on paradigm shifting tech - crypto & blockchain, smart cities, cyber & intelligence, energy, advanced manufacturing, synthetic biology and longevity.

Gilad is an informed technology evangelist with an extensive network of internationally recognised thought leaders, authors, futurists and investors who operate in advanced technology industries. He has years of experience in formulating strategies based on analysis of global trends and geopolitical developments.

Gilad serves as an expert for Israeli and Australian government think tanks, and has been a valued advisor to a number of committees and boards.

Yaniv Izaki is an impact driven venture capitalist, backed by over 10 years of high-tech minded business development and entrepreneurship since serving in an Israeli Defense Forces elite intelligence unit in his early 20’s. His academic background, B.A. in Economics and Sustainability at Reichman University (IDC Herzliya), paved his way into the world of sustainability, and to find ways to sustain it financially too.  His problem-solving attitude and critical thinking changed the way organizations and companies overcome challenges.

Izaki Ventures, founded and directed by Yaniv, is the high-tech investment arm of his family’s office - Izaki Group Investments (IGI). IGI is one of Israel’s largest and longest-established private real estate development companies. With over 60 years of experience and a proven track record in real estate, IGI has built a strong global presence, with investments and teams in New York, London, Tel Aviv, and Warsaw, with landmark projects such as Hilton Warsaw and over 1000 residential units in prime locations. Izaki Group Investments is owned and managed by his father, Ron Izaki.

Monik Kotecha has 25 years of funds management experience in international and Australian equity markets, including 15 years of managing top-quartile performing portfolios. He is the co-founder and CFO of Insync Funds Management Pty Limited, an award-winning Australian fund manager established in 2009. Insync was the 2020 Emerging Fund Manager of The Year as awarded at the Money Management Fund Manager of the Year Awards.

He has worked in London, New York and Sydney. He spent over 7 years as a Senior Portfolio Manager at Investors Mutual Limited, 5 years with BT Funds Management Limited and 3 years with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Monik was a Senior Portfolio Manager of the Australian Share Fund at Investors Mutual Limited and a key member of the Investment Team which was awarded Fund Manager of the Year Australian Equities in 2002 and 2003 by Money Management.

Prior to this Monik was the lead portfolio manager for over 5 years at BT Funds Management Limited on a number of international equity funds and was a member of the asset allocation team. Monik spent the first few years in funds management as a Pan European Equity analyst at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority in London.

Anthony Fleming is the Managing Partner of Launch | Financial Services Lawyers and the Chair of our Compliance committee.  Anthony draws on over 30 years’ experience in financial services founded on his time as a financial services partner in the Sydney office of the (then) world’s largest international law firm Baker & McKenzie, and before that, at Australia’s leading law firm King Wood Mallesons (formerly Mallesons Stephen Jaques).

Anthony has been involved with more than 50 issuers and more than 500 securities, debt and managed fund issues over a 30 year career covering an estimated $20 billion of fundraising. He has board and head compliance positions in highly successful funds management and trustee operations.

For more than a decade, Launch has built a strong reputation on sensible, understandable advice and on documents delivered by Anthony in a style which few lawyers manage but more than too many imitate. His client base is dominated by fund managers, which represent the full spectrum of the investment universe including private capital, ESVC and VC, ESG, fixed interest and equities, real property, alternatives, derivatives, digital, hedge and distressed, both listed and unlisted, local and offshore.

Dr. Roey Tzezana is a futures studies researcher at Blavatnik Center at Tel Aviv University, and is currently acting as a futurist in SparkBeyond – an AI startup that uses the power of artificial intelligence to provide answers to complex questions. Before that, he had been a lead researcher in XPRIZE – an organization that creates massive competitions with tens of millions of dollars in prizes, to solve humanity’s greatest challenges. Dr. Tzezana led the research in the organization about human longevity, which should eventually, hopefully, lead to the development of treatments to stop and reverse aging. He is acting as a scientific consultant to several firms and international organizations (including the prestigious World Future Society), and is a member in high-ranking future-focused bodies like TechCast and the Millennium Project.

Graham Smith is a business professional with over thirty years’ experience and with qualifications in Electrical Engineering and Master of Business Administration (MBA).

Throughout his career, Graham worked with top technology firms in Australia (Telstra), Germany (Siemens) and Japan (NEC) with a deep understanding of the factors that drive a successful technology development, innovation, technical expertise and growth in a transition to a new generation of tech.

Graham brings his extensive experience in management, engineering, business development, media, marketing and contract negotiation.