Meet Our Leadership Team
Like-minded experts and entrepreneurs that lead with transparency while primed for growth.
Dr Rob Newman
Chief Executive Officer.
Rob Newman has been CEO of Nearmap since October 2015, after having been a non-executive director for almost five years. He has established a unique track record as a successful Australian high technology entrepreneur in both Australia and Silicon Valley.
Rob is a trained engineer who has spent his career in marketing, business development, and general management as well as ten years as a venture capitalist.
Andy Watt
Chief Growth and Operations Officer.
Andy provides strategic leadership to the finance and investor relations groups. Andy has a proven track record in Australian and the UK of step-changing companies’ performance and increasing shareholder value in growth companies across technology, media, gaming, and professional services.
Following six years at the Walt Disney Company managing the global finances of the TV distribution business, Andy moved on to Betfair, the market disruptor in the highly competitive gambling and gaming sector. At Betfair, Andy accelerated top line growth whilst building scalable solutions to allow the business to expand rapidly into the global marketplace. Andy then joined tomwaterhouse.com as CFO during its high-growth phase prior to its acquisition by a major European competitor, and then moved on to Decimal Software Ltd, an ASX-listed fintech company providing a disruptive SaaS solution to the financial planning industry.
Simone Shugg
Chief People Officer
Simone was appointed CPO in 2019 to spearhead a people and culture agenda that enables Nearmap to become a global leader in aerial imagery and location intelligence through its greatest asset – its people.
Simone brings over 20 years of people leadership across multiple industries and scale of businesses. She has a track record of converting business vision into people and culture initiatives that directly improve profitability, performance and customer and employee engagement in fast-paced high growth organizations. Simone was most recently Executive Director of People and Culture at Foxtel, one of Australia's most innovative and dynamic media companies. Prior to that she spent 8 years as Vice President of People and Culture with Carnival Australia where she was responsible for shoreside operations and the P&O Australia fleet, and was a key member of the Executive team that transformed the cruise industry in Australia. Prior to this, Simone held senior roles with Halifax Bank of Scotland Australia, across a number of its brands including St Andrews Australia and BankWest.
Simone holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Western Australia.
Tony Agresta
General Manager - North America
Tony leads our North America team backed by 35 years of experience in product management, product marketing, marketing and sales engineering. Early in his career, Tony was VP of Consulting Services for Inforum which achieved a successful IPO in 3 years.
He managed Group 1 Software’s Database Marketing product line for 7 years and later served as VP of Product Management at Paragren Technology where he was instrumental in the sale of Paragren’s campaign management and segmentation technology to Siebel Systems. Siebel Marketing and Analytics grew from $10 million to $70 million with the help of Tony’s product marketing team in 1 year.
Tony has held worldwide management opportunities at SPSS and Siebel. His entrepreneurial spirit and drive have helped companies reach new levels of success. Tony holds a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and a Master of Arts in Demography from the same institution.
Harvey Sanchez
Chief Marketing Officer
Harvey was appointed Chief Marketing Officer in 2018 to spearhead Nearmap’s global marketing and brand initiatives.
Harvey has over 25 years in senior management roles for some of the world’s most iconic tech companies and brands.
Previously, Harvey was the Chief Marketing Officer for Accenture Interactive Asia Pacific and Japan where lead Accenture’s Digital marketing capabilities across the region.
Harvey was the Marketing Director at eBay ANZ for 3 years where he led Australia’s largest ecommerce platform to a pure data driven marketing model.
Before joining eBay, he worked as CEO for ClickView. An Australian Edtech company focusing on video and curriculum mapped content for the education market. ClickView was awarded Australia’s Most Innovative Company in 2012 by BRW Magazine.
Previously to ClickView, Harvey worked at Microsoft for 20 years in numerous roles, culminating as Marketing Director. Harvey was responsible for launching some of Microsoft most important and iconic products including Windows, Office and Azure.
Penny Diamantakiou
Chief Financial Officer
An accomplished C-level having operated extensively in stand-alone rapid growth environments - Penny is a Corporate Executive with a passion for digital, media and tech orientated businesses.
Penny prides herself on building the foundations of a high performing team and leveraging this talent and IP to create an agile, customer orientated and strategically led financial and operational function. This was particularly prevalent in the unprecedented growth experienced during the COVID pandemic where Penny drove the accelerated expansion, capability build, data, insights and system implementation of the finance and operational functions.
Penny's unique global forte offers extensive experience in the areas of business transformation, agile execution, data, and insight led analytics with extensive experience within Australia, North America, and Asia.
With more than 20 years’ experience in Senior Corporate roles, dealing with local ASX, US global multinationals, wholly owned subsidiaries, scale ups and Asian operated headquarters - Penny loves working in fast moving, rapid growth and technology-led businesses.
Dr Tom Celinski
Chief Technology Officer
Tom has a successful track record and over 18 years' experience in technology innovation in leadership roles across Australia, Silicon Valley, and the UK, both in start-ups as well as large multi-national organisations. His broad experience includes software and hardware for networked consumer electronics, automotive systems, cloud-based machine learning for “big data” energy analytics and optimisation, cloud-based video security, and casino gaming products.
In 2004, Tom co-founded and was the CEO of venture-backed Avega Systems, which developed the world’s first Wi-Fi compliant home media distribution platform. Today, Avega powers the highly successful Denon HEOS range of networked audio products. More recently, Tom held the position of director of software at Aristocrat Leisure Limited (ASX: ALL), where he managed software development teams across Australia, India, and the US during a period of transformation and rapid growth in shareholder value.
Tom was attracted to Nearmap as it is one of the few Australian companies built on “deep tech” – a combination of hard science and engineering that is extremely difficult to replicate. He is passionate about extending Nearmap’s competitive advantage through aggressive technology innovation while maintaining laser-sharp focus on commercial outcomes.