Meet our NAB Ventures team

Meet Todd

"I've spent the past 20 years being part of the disruption of media. But over the next 10 years, I believe the opportunity will be in the financial services sector and I want to be part of that."

Todd Forest is the Managing Director of NAB Ventures. Through his experience as a start-up CEO and in senior leadership positions at large media and technology companies, Todd knows how a large company can be instrumental in the success of early stage businesses.

Todd was previously the CEO of Clipp Pty Ltd, a mobile payments and data business with a focus on hospitality. At Microsoft, he was the Head of MSN Asia Pacific, based out of Singapore and the Head of Digital at 9 MSN. Todd also held senior management positions in Nike and AOL in the US.

Todd has been a successful angel investor over the past 12 years via Tasman Ventures Fund where he invested in over a dozen companies in the US and Australia. He has served on the board of several venture backed start-ups. Todd relocated to Australia from the US in 2007 with his wife and two children. Todd has a BA from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Kellogg.

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Meet Amanda

Amanda Angelini is a Managing Director of NAB Ventures.

Amanda’s worked as an entrepreneur, investor and operator, spanning startups to the largest financial institutions and corporations. As a result, Amanda’s developed a unique insight into the power of founders, strategic partnership and how the right investors can drive value.

Amanda’s founded and led corporate teams and startups focused on sports/media innovation and fintech innovation, including Major League Soccer, Gannett's digital sports business and TaxDay. Amanda’s also an active angel investor in New York's fintech and tech ecosystem.

Amanda brings a large institution perspective to opportunities due to extensive experience as an investment banker at Citi and an Entrepreneur-In-Residence for Citi Ventures D10X and Mastercard Innovation Lab. Prior to that, Amanda was an executive with First Data’s (Fiserv) Business Development team covering strategic clients and creating partnerships with payments/fintech startups and companies, and was a manager of Commerce.Innovated, an accelerator in partnership with Silicon Valley Bank.

Amanda started as an attorney at Milbank and Arnold Bloch Leibler.

Amanda holds an LLB from Queensland University of Technology, and finance and marketing degrees from Securities Institute of Australia and New York Universit.

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Meet Hermia

Hermia Leung is an Investment Manager at NAB Ventures.

Hermia started her career in investment banking at UBS, based in Hong Kong, where she focused on Financial Institutions advisory across Asia. Hermia was also part of the corporate finance advisory team at Grant Samuel, successfully completing mergers and acquisitions and capital markets transactions across Australia.

Prior to NAB Ventures, Hermia led business operations and strategy at Kokoon Technologies, and corporate strategy at ZEAL Network SE. Hermia relocated back to Sydney to join NAB Ventures.

Hermia holds a BCom and LLB from the University of Sydney.

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Profile of Jessy Wu

Meet Hayden

Hayden has nine years of experience in investment, operational and finance roles across various technology verticals within startups, growth and late-stage companies, both in Australia and the United States.

Before relocating from New York to join NAB Ventures, Hayden worked across Planning, Strategy and Revenue Operations for pymetrics, a behavioural science and audited artificial intelligence, series B Enterprise SaaS startup. Prior to pymetrics, Hayden led Investments and Operations for CoinList Capital, a seed-stage blockchain technology investment startup spun out of AngelList. Hayden also spent six years in professional finance with Credit Suisse's Investment Bank in Sydney, and at LionTree, a New York-based Merchant Bank, executing over thirty transactions.

Hayden holds a Bachelor of Commerce, with majors in Investment Finance, Corporate Finance and Quantitative Finance, and a Bachelor of Economics, with majors in Quantitative Economics, Economics and Money & Banking, from the University of Western Australia. Hayden also co-founded the Finance Association of Western Australia.

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Meet James

James Johnston is an Associate Director at NAB Ventures.

James began his career as a lawyer at Ashurst, a global commercial law firm. James transitioned into consulting and joined Strategy&, PwC’s strategy consulting arm. In this role, James gained broad experience in growth strategy, technology enhancement and operational transformation, with a focus on banking, insurance and other financial services.

Most recently, James worked as Strategy Manager at InnoWell, a healthtech start-up providing a B2B SaaS platform to enhance treatment of mental health.

James holds Bachelors in Economics and Law (Hons) from the University of Sydney.

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Meet Paolo

Paolo Cabrini is a Venture Leverage Consultant at NAB Ventures.

Paolo began his career as a junior accountant in Italy. Paolo transitioned into strategy and innovation consulting at Deloitte, where he helped to implement the strategic consolidation of Deloitte’s member firms across Europe. He was also involved in the definition and implementation of the innovation strategy across Deloitte NSE.

Additionally, as a Strategy and Innovation Senior Consultant, Paolo worked with different early-stage venture-backed companies to develop and implement business plans, financial models and growth strategies.

Paolo holds a Master of International Business from the Melbourne Business School, with a major in Strategic Management.

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Reasons to partner with NAB Ventures

A dedicated investment fund icon

A dedicated investment fund

The fund will further accelerate our focus on customer-led innovation to make banking easier, better and simpler.

Innovating for our customers icon

Innovating for our customers

We want to work with the best minds and cutting-edge ideas to find new capability, technology, and intellectual property and to improve our customer experience.

Emerging business models icon

Emerging business models

Our key areas of focus are mobile platforms, payments, data analytics and technology solutions for SMEs, as well as the broader fintech market.

Leverage into NAB icon

Leverage into NAB

NAB Ventures will help its portfolio companies leverage their solutions into NAB and its vast network of customers and partners.

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Need to get in touch with us?

We’re here to help. You can contact us at nab.ventures@nab.com.au, remember to include the following details in your email to us:

  • Your name
  • Contact information (email address and phone number)
  • Website address
  • A description of your venture

If you have a pitch deck or other information that outlines your venture, please attach it as well.

We're ready to help you