Our Team

Alex has 12 years experience across the UK, Europe, Australia and NZ of leading award-winning teams that have successfully redefined how the sport, leisure and fitness sector uses data and plans investment into community programs and infrastructure. This is underpinned by the development and application of innovative market and business intelligence platforms that have been used by multiple governments, 100+ sport governing bodies, 3,000+ facilities, and influenced how over 17 million people are active today.

Martin Sheppard is Managing Director of Smart Connection Consultancy, Founder and Curator of the National Sports Convention and sits on the Board of EngageRM. 

With over 40 years in the leisure industry, initially in the UK, working and managing Community Leisure Centres, then developed the Client function for contracting facilities out,  Chairing the UK’s ILAM Contracts Panel before emigrating to Australia in 1997.  

His networks within sport, government and with leisure venues together with his understanding of sports technology places him in a favourable position to understand the transformation that data management and evidence based decision making can have on the planning and management of organisations. 

James has grown up in the industry, starting on the frontline of his local leisure centre in 1998. Since then, he has worked in senior executive roles for some of the largest leisure operators across Australia and New Zealand including the YMCA and Belgravia Leisure and is actively involved in industry bodies, and a member of the Academic Board of ACPE. 

James has built an extensive understanding of the challenges and opportunities that collaboration can bring across Private, Not for Profits, Government, Health and Sport. Passionate about leaving a legacy of change in how our sector is understood, valued and funded, James is committed to harnessing the power of data to drive decision making to foster earlier activity, intervention and health outcomes for all ActiveXchange partners.

With over 20 years experience in the sport and leisure industry, Simon has developed a vast range of expertise. He has frequently demonstrated strategic leadership through an ability to identify opportunities and cases for change.

 Over the past 4 years, he has managed a range of project engagements as a strategic consultant. This has included working with local government, state government and state sporting organisations on analysis, strategy and implementation of sport and community infrastructure initiatives.

Tom has worked both in, and as a consultant to, the leisure industry for almost 20 years in the UK and across APAC for industry heavyweights such as Virgin Active, Next Generation and Crunch.  During that time he has led many digital transformation projects with a track record for delivering world class consumer facing applications within our industry.  

Tom is committed to delivering our next generation platform and working with our technology partners to empower ActiveXchange to drive real world business insights for our customers.

  Karen Slabbert brings more than 20 years' experience in executive leadership across the hospitality, marketing and retail industries to her position as Head of Product for ActiveXchange's SportsEye. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Financial Management and is known for her entrepreneurial approach, solidified by her training in Lean Start-up methodology from Flinders University. She has worked with top international brands, including the Nelson Mandela Children's Foundation, LG Electronics, Cartoon Network, Procter & Gamble, HP and Qualcomm.  

 Robert has a strong background as Managing Director of Champions International, building extensive relationships for over 15 years with club, state and national sporting bodies across Australia and New Zealand.
Prior to that, the Chicago native worked for MLB’s White Sox to partner with local communities across the American Midwest to develop one of the largest youth grassroots sporting outreaches in the United States at the time, with the program later being adopted by the NBA’s Chicago Bulls. Robert also served as the vice president of the American Women’s Baseball Federation. 

Ben comes with a wide-range of experiences from a football coach, to a consultant, to a digital project manager. This makes for the perfect foundation for his role at Activexchange; from having been personally involved in the sport, leisure and fitness sector, strong client management skillset and ensuring the successful delivery of projects both internally and externally. 

Ben’s passion for the industry will ensure the best product is delivered and maximum value is provided to our clients.

Jithin is a computer science engineer whose experience includes developing and delivering business intelligence services for Oracle. He is an exceptional data analyst who is able to identify and extract the value from extensive databases, in order to develop powerful solutions for ActiveXchange's partners. 

Part of the team since 2018 and after pioneering a new way of absorbing and modelling data and predictive analytics, he now leads our team of analysts to draw tangible insights around business performance and social impact, to help shape the operational and strategic capability of ActiveXchange’s partners.  

 Karthik has a Masters Degree in Information Systems from the University of Southern Queensland, and a strong statistical and predictive modelling background, which includes the automation of analysis. This includes developing feedback loops on outcomes to support the ongoing progression and accuracy of our models and client solutions. 

Since joining the team in 2018, Karthik has supported the delivery of more than 150 Investment Planning Models, supported the development of our Retention Algorithm and continues to support our core Research and Development work. 

Akshay’s talent in Mathematics and Statistics helped propel him into a career in analytics, with his beginnings as a Mathematics tutor and his Master’s Degree in Business Analytics, also presenting him with many opportunities within the field. His experience across an array of projects (especially in retail, digital web and dashboard applications) have allowed him to approach every challenge with a result-oriented and data-driven mindset. Akshay’s passion lies in using Data Visualization to tell stories within data and to develop targeted insights for business success.  

Faiza has a Masters Degree in Information Technology and has a very strong understanding of how to build, develop and manage SQL databases which underpin predictive modelling and business intelligence services.  Faiza supports manages ActiveXchange's overall databases bringing about standardisation and efficiencies

 Tom is a front end developer who builds with Angular. Prior to this role, Tom has been a teacher, developer, engineer and worked in over four countries. 

He has worked for Woolworths Limited, Isentia, CodeCamp and Auth0. He loves to code and technology. 

His COVID hobbies include soap making and spending time with friends. He also enjoys volunteer work and has worked in Myanmar and with Vinnies outside of lockdown.  

 Li has previous experience in data analysis and business intelligence within the banking industry. She has a Master degree of business from the University of Sydney and a bachelor degree in software engineering. 

With combined knowledge, Li is able to translate data into impactful insights that supports business decision making. She is skilled in various data analysis and visualization tools, including SQL,R/python programming and dashboard setups. 

 Kelly is currently completing her master’s degree in data analytics. 

She has strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills which allow her to extract and capture useful insights from large data sets. The analytical tools she uses are Python, SQL, Tableau and Data Robot. 

She can develop high quality digestible visuals and graphics to enable effective communication of business insights gained from the data.  

Sports have always been part of Angela’s personal and professional life.

This brought her to build her career within the sports industry with experience in a number of media and communications roles, and across large events such as the Commonwealth Games, FIFA Women's World Cup, and most recently the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. 

Away from her professional life, she enjoys learning new languages - currently studying Japanese and Korean - as well as cooking. 

Blake has provided Facebook ad and social media campaign consultancy for several large brands across the APAC region (Disrupt Social). Over time this developed into a portfolio of over 30 clients and 5+ years experience in building Facebook ad funnels and ROI focussed campaigns for e-commerce and lead generation campaigns. Blake uses SportsEye insight and spend optimisation techniques to reduce the cost of member acquisition for ActiveXchange partners.

Garry Henshall has been a key person of the Australian Sport and Leisure industry for over 40 years. He has worked at Local Government and State Government level, before going on to establish his own consultancy practice in leisure management.

He is well known as the past CEO of the Australian industry body, Parks and Leisure Australia, having established and held the position for many years. He also served as CEO of former national organisations: The Australian Leisure Institute; and the Royal Australian Institute of Parks and Recreation. He has also been an executive member of the World Leisure Organisation.

He has been a director and co- owner of a number of national and international companies operating in Australia; New Zealand; Hong Kong and The United Kingdom.