Meet the Xero Beautiful Business Fund judges

Meet our global judges

Our global judges will select one winner for each of the four categories, from the pool of regional winners across the globe.

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy

CEO, Xero

As CEO, Sukhinder leads the growth and performance of Xero globally. With more than 25 years in Silicon Valley as a CEO, digital leader and board member, she has experience building and scaling global companies including Google, Amazon, Yodlee, Joyus and StubHub.

James Bergin

EGM, Technology Research & Advocacy, Xero

James is responsible for exploring and understanding technology trends, and providing insight and advisory to senior leadership teams across Xero, as well as our customers and partners. His role entails keeping an eye on the future, and helping others understand how technology can unlock new opportunities and capabilities for people in small business, their advisors and communities around the world.

Mike Cohen

Global Head of Partnerships, Square

Mike is the Global Head of Partnerships at Square. In this role, he oversees the business development, partner management, and partner operations teams that are responsible for growing an ecosystem of partners that enable Square to reach and serve businesses around the world. Prior to Square, Mike held senior product and partnerships roles at Facebook, InMobi, Qualcomm and Nokia. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science from UC Berkeley. Mike lives with his family in the San Francisco East Bay area.

Kate Dundas

Executive Director, UN Global Compact Network Australia

Kate is the Executive Director of the UN Global Compact Network Australia (UNGCNA), which is the Australian local network of the United Nations Global Compact. As Executive Director, Kate leads a team of experts across the fields of business and human rights, environment and climate change, anti-bribery and corruption and sustainable development. Kate is an experienced and well-regarded executive leader with 20 years of experience across the public and private sectors in sustainability, strategic foresight, strategy and city planning. She holds degrees in industrial design, landscape architecture and urban design, is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, Cranlana Centre for Ethical Leadership, Harvard Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership program and is an Executive MBA candidate. 

Melissa Laurie

Founder & Managing Director, Oysterly

Melissa is the founder of Oysterly, a leading social video agency based in Singapore that specialises in creating User-Generated Content (UGC). The agency's innovative work led to Oysterly being selected as a winner in the 2023 Xero Beautiful Business Fund. Melissa has also been recognised as a Woman to Watch in Asia and was shortlisted for the Women Leading Tech Awards by Atlassian.

Lara Brennan

Partner, Advisory & Outsourcing, Forvis Mazars

Lara leads the mid-market advisory and outsourcing business for Forvis Mazars in the UK and is the global relationship lead for Xero. She specialises in working with fast-growing businesses, helping to develop strategy and drive business performance. Lara has a passion for innovation and enjoys building technology-enabled solutions for clients.

Meet our New Zealand judges

Our NZ judges will select one winner for each of the four categories, from the pool of entries across New Zealand.

Bridget Snelling

New Zealand Country Manager, Xero

Bridget is the country manager for Aotearoa New Zealand, responsible for overseeing the execution of New Zealand’s go-to-market strategy, revenue, market share, and advancing Xero’s brand as a leading small-business platform.

Madeleine Hakaraia de Young

Director, Māoriland Film Festival

Madeleine is director of the Māoriland Film Festival and Kaiwhakahau Hōtaka for the Māoriland Charitable Trust. She’s also a board member of Ngā Aho Whakaari, representing Māori in screen industries. Madeleine leads festival programming and international industry outreach for the Māoriland Film Festival which is now the largest international indigenous film festival in the world. Her work also includes rangatahi training programs and arts industry development initiatives. Madeleine has been a juror for the Show Me Shorts and LAAPFF festivals and a programmer for the imagineNATIVE Film Festival. Since 2020, she has produced 10 short films, which have screened at over 20 festivals internationally.

Jenny Rudd

Founder, Dispute Buddy

Jenny is the founder of justice tech startup Dispute Buddy and head of product for Sydney-based legal tech startup Workzilla. She's been voted in the world’s top 1% of mentors at Techstars, is on the board of Enterprise Angels, and is co-author of The Gender Investment Gap NZ report. Equality and efficiency are Jenny's deep loves.

Manoli Aerakis

Director, Malloch McClean

Manoli grew one of New Zealand's fastest growing accounting firms over the last seven years. Manoli specialises in helping business owners run smarter, better businesses via coaching and planning sessions. Before his journey in accounting, Manoli was in the banking industry for 15 years.

Andrew Punnett

Senior Engineer, Xero

Andrew is a senior engineer at Xero who is passionate about making Xero's range of products something customers love to use. He looks forward to being part of the judging panel to understand our customers better and learn how to build products they love.