Aussie road safety analytics startup brings on first CMO

Road safety analytics startup, Advanced Mobility Analytics Group (AMAG), has recruited HP’s marketing leader, Darren Needham-Walker, as its first chief marketing officer.

The Brisbane-based company has its sights set on becoming a world-leading provider of proactive road safety analytics and management solutions based on advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning, video analytics and econometrics. Although the business was only founded in 2019, it has been working to test and validate research and its solutions across 23 cities in eight countries for the last 10 years.

Needham-Walker officially joins AMAG this week as CMO, reporting directly to CEO and founder, Dr Simon Washington. He brings with him more than 20 years of experience in local and global technology business including marketing, channel and business division leadership positions across HP, Lenovo and IBM.

For the past two-and-a-half years, Needham-Walker has been group marketing and communications director for Brisbane-based SaaS company, TechnologyOne.

At AMAG, Needham-Walker has responsibility for marketing and communications including brand, product marketing and partnership as well as demand generation globally.  

“As we move into the next stage of our company’s evolution, I believe we needed to make a strategic appointment of a chief marketing officer,” Washington stated. “Darren’s passion, energy and reputation for excellence makes him a great fit for our company.

“He will also support myself and the team on defining strategies that will underpin growth opportunities.”

Needham-Walker said he was impressed by AMAG and its founders’ vision to bring predictive analytics to the transportation sector.

“From my first engagement with AMAG, and subsequent discussions with all three founders, I found they were bonded by a common vision. But most appealing to me was how it was based on a clear and unwavering purpose, to do good for humanity through the application of AI/ML to the transportation sector,” he said.

“I am excited to work with Simon and the AMAG team to deliver the SaaS SMART Platform to the global marketplace, where we will have a substantial impact on communities and society, as we transform the transportation sector, to build smarter and safer cities.”

According to OCED figures quoted by AMAG, $192 billion was spent globally on road infrastructure projects in 2019, while the cost of road incidents can impact country GDPs by as much as 3 per cent.

“Through the application of AMAG’s SMART solutions, we can save lives and improve operational infrastructure efficiencies in partnership with engineering partners and transport departments globally,” Needham-Walker continued. “Our road networks are changing in both volume and usage to more than passenger vehicles, such as buses, trucks, vans not to mention pedestrians, bicycles and motorcycles, all of which our platform individually identifies and takes into consideration.”

Don’t miss out on the wealth of insight and content provided by CMO A/NZ and sign up to our weekly CMO Digest newsletters and information services here.  

You can also follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn: CMO ANZ, follow our regular updates via CMO Australia's Linkedin company page