By Sue White
With university qualifications from both Stanford and Columbia in the United States, it might seem odd that American-born Rachael Neumann ended up in Australia.
But two situations conspired to make that happen: meeting her now Australian partner in New York, and graduating from business school in the middle of the global financial crisis.
American-born Rachael Neumann says she looks for team members who are "scrappy and resourceful".
"As a consultant, Australia was a much better place to do business and do more exciting work," she says.
Now with Aussie kids adding to her local roots, Neumann has taken on the role of global events marketplace Eventbrite's first Australian managing director. Still, her US experience is undeniably useful.
"I watched the Silicon Valley bubble form and burst. All of a sudden all my fellow students who had left university to go to Silicon Valley came back, so very early on I was exposed to technology and start-up life," she says.
But while Eventbrite may be tech based, it's hardly at start-up stage. The online ticketing and events company processes around $1 billion a year in gross ticket sales across the 187 countries where it operates, including Australia where over 75,000 events have been run through the online platform. Many of these are free, as the booking system is available for organisers whether they are charging for entry or not.
"The free component is something I love about our company," says Neumann.
"I think it encourages experimentation and playing. Many of our customers start out as free organisers, where they get to explore the product and understand its power," she says.
It's a product difference which may be partly responsible for Eventbrite's rapid growth. But regardless of the "why", the fast pace of the online world continues to work well for Neumann.
"I drive to completion and would rather see something get done, get feedback and build on it than wait and build the Taj Mahal all at once," she says.
CURRICULUM VITAE
Name: Rachael Neumann.
Current position: Managing Director, Eventbrite Australia.
Responsibilities: Inaugural leader of Eventbrite's Australian operations.
Education: BA, Stanford University; MBA, Columbia University, Columbia Business School; MPH, Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health.
Additional training/courses: Situational Leadership, qualified facilitator; MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) facilitator.
Professional associations: I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.
Strength: I look for people skilled and accomplished in their function, and who hold the values and attributes of a start-up – hungry, have a can do attitude, scrappy and resourceful...Then my job is to stand out of their way and remove roadblocks for them.
Weakness: I have a real bias towards action, and I can at times get quite impatient. Some people need to process information longer and I need to learn how to have more tolerance for that.
Management style and tips: My management style has evolved from doing it pretty poorly to looking ahead at examples of managers I most wanted to work with and trying to emulate some of their attributes.
Work motto: I'm aligned to the Eventbrite motto: Make it happen.