Movac Limited - Te Aro

Lisa is an accomplished finance and business development executive with nearly 25 years of global operating experience across the technology, software and financial services industries. Lisa’s experience spans companies of all sizes – from early-stage, high-growth startups to mature, multi-national corporations.

Lisa joined Movac’s advisory board in 2020 and currently serves as a strategic advisor to a variety of organizations around the world including venture capital and private equity funds and early-stage startups. Prior to this, Lisa spent almost 15 years at Microsoft where she co-founded the company’s first venture fund, M12. Under Lisa’s leadership, M12 became one of the most active corporate funds in North America, deploying several hundreds of millions of dollars across 80+ deals in less than three years.

While at Microsoft, Lisa also held executive roles across investor relations, corporate accounting, finance operations and business development. Some of her other achievements and experience include developing and leading the execution of priorities for the 1k+ person finance organization, building a new 300 person business development team to redefine Microsoft’s partnership model, leading the development of a new digital investor relations platform which was named “The Most Important Shareholder Initiative in a Decade” by Motley Fool, and working on a variety of M&A and partnership transactions.

Prior to Microsoft, Lisa worked in financial services in the UK and in public accounting in the US and Australia.

Throughout her career, Lisa has been an active champion of diversity and inclusion. While at Microsoft, Lisa founded the Annual Female Founders Competition which has provided over $10 million in venture funding and tech resources. Lisa is a frequent speaker on this topic to academic institutions and industry organizations around the world.

Lisa’s professional experience and personal passions have taken her to over 90 countries. She has lived and worked in Australia, Europe, the Middle East, North America and SE Asia. These experiences, combined with her Asian Pacific heritage, have given her a truly global perspective. She currently resides in Seattle, Washington.

Lisa’s keen to support the New Zealand ecosystem which she is very passionate about. In addition to serving as an advisor to Movac, Lisa is also an advisor to New Zealand Rugby and is a member of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship.

Lisa earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington in Business Administration. Lisa is an accomplished triathlete and is an avid runner. She has completed over 100 races, including Ironman.