Our Team

Fiona Robson

Managing Director, Rocketseed UK

• Fiona, a Cambridge University graduate in Modern Languages, built her career in a range of sales, ecommerce and marketing functions, with Hilton, Thomson Holidays and Walt Disney Co. Fiona is responsible for developing direct sales and the channel partnerships across the UK & Europe.

Fiona is an elected member of the DMA Email Marketing Council, and works on the DMA Email benchmarking Hub, delivering research and commentary on current email marketing trends.

John Cooper

Executive Chairman and controlling Shareholder, Rocketseed Group

John is a Chartered Accountant, graduate of Harvard Business School, former Regional Managing Partner of Arthur Young (now Ernst & Young) and former Chief Executive of Chesterton International plc. He specializes in the development of early stage businesses. John became involved with Rocketseed in South Africa in 2005 as non-executive Chairman. He subsequently acquired control of the Group from the founder shareholders in 2007. He has been involved in the expansion of the Group out of South Africa, initially into United Kingdom, and subsequently into Australia and USA. John is resident in London.

Scott Ellis

Managing Director, Rocketseed US

Scott is based near New York. Prior to joining Rocketseed, he was Sales & Marketing Director for Goodform Ltd, Marketing Director for Hilton Hotels Corp. in London. He has more than 13 year experience in sales, business development, and digital, channel and search engine marketing. He is currently closely involved with a specialist Search business, Adworthy, based in the same offices as Rocketseed. Scott is on the Board of the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation, based out of New York.

Robyn Woods-Child

Managing Director, Rocketseed AU

Robyn has a diploma in business management. She started her career in advertising with a focus in direct marketing. After leaving the advertising industry Robyn started her family and ventured into a long career as a self- employed business person spanning several industries. Robyn directed the marketing and go-to- market channels within her various ventures and it is her love of marketing that lead her to Rocketseed.
Robyn is responsible for developing direct sales and channel partnerships throughout Australia and New Zealand.

Tess Sulaman

Managing Director, Rocketseed SA

Tess has a passion for all things innovative and technologically brilliant, and is a seasoned digital and business specialist with experience spanning most disciplines within Digital and New Media, including a trail of Blue Chip Client projects. She believes in developing people as a key ingredient of business success. Tess has been responsible for the re-engineering of the South African business, negotiation and development of key partnerships, and revenue growth within South Africa and into Africa.

Mitchell Talisman

Chief Technical Officer

Mitchell has spent over 25 years in software development and technology consulting. He holds degrees from Columbia University in engineering and applied physics. Mitchell oversaw the development of derivatives pricing systems for several Wall St. analytics firms, and created mobile-based social networking applications. Mitchell was VP Engineering at Liberty Travel, where he oversaw all software development.
Mitchell oversees software development, system administration and technical aspects of product strategy. He serves as liaison between technical and business functions.

Nicolette Rotter

Chief Financial Officer

Nicolette oversees the Group Rocketseed finance function, now entirely based in Cape Town. She moved to London for 8 years after qualifying as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young in Cape Town. In London, she gained a wide breadth of experience in the banking industry including Lloyds TSB as Financial Controller, and RBS as a Business Analyst.
Nicolette is responsible for all aspects of Group finance including accounting, financial planning and analysis, payroll, tax and treasury.

Janine Beard

Director of Development

Janine, based in Cape Town, has been involved in the business analysis and end user testing of Rocketseed applications for the last 10 years. She is a specialist in email applications and enhances Rocketseed functionality to ensure that all applied branding adheres to W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) compatibility restraints and renders across all major platforms. Janine is customer focused and understands the importance of building easy to use systems. She is committed to ensuring that Rocketseed remains a world-class product, scalable, useable and adding value to customer marketing.

Charles Oertel

Chief Architect

Charles, based in Cape Town, graduated in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Wits University. After research in the Antarctic, he was a senior manager in technology at Andersen Consulting. He operated several ecommerce websites and provided Linux systems administration services to several small businesses. Charles is the lead developer and technical Architect of Rocketseed software, responsible for architecture, design and on-going development. His experience in Database design and Drupal development ensures the Rocketseed platform is robust, scalable and secure.

Wade Willingale

Sales Director, Rocketseed SA

Wade is based in Johannesburg, a graduate with a marketing degree from Mid-Rand Graduate Institute. He has been involved in the sale of RocketSeed into the corporate sector in South Africa since 2004. He was primarily involved in the original establishment of the RocketSeed brand throughout South Africa, and subsequently building both the business and government customer base of clients with a multitude of recognisable and respected corporate brands.