Meet our team

Paul Bray

Director & Chief Investment Officer

Paul has spent more than 40 years building what didn't yet exist. A strategic architect of Australia's first Separately Managed Account structures, he grew Explorer Group into the country's first SMA provider, scaling it to $1 billion in funds under management before its sale to Ascalon and OneVue. Across senior roles at ABN AMRO, Westpac Investment Management and vanEyk Research, he has overseen more than $5 billion in domestic and international assets, and he co-founded Millinium and Gibraltar Capital. That instinct for building differently is the foundation Tacking Point stands on: rigorous, research-led, and focused on where the market is heading next, with the conviction to act early.

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Jay Mertens

Director & Portfolio Manager

Jay was chosen for the way he reads markets. More than two decades across private credit, alternative investments, corporate advisory and capital markets have given him an eye for opportunity that more conventional managers tend to miss. As a Director at Tacking Point, he leads investment management on the Investment Committee, alongside compliance and risk oversight. He was previously a Partner and Shareholder at Yorkway Private, an alternative asset management firm spanning private equity and debt, an Investment Director at M.H. Carnegie & Co, and spent more than ten years at Commonwealth Bank in institutional banking. His approach pairs a forward-looking read of markets with the discipline to act on it with conviction.

CA, BBus (UTS)

Monique Reynolds

Chief Operating Officer

Monique has spent more than 20 years leading complex organisations at the executive and board level, including a decade supporting Boards and Committees. She has led transformational change and built the teams behind it, delivering growth and sound governance across a broad range of highly regulated industries, from aged care, banking and financial services to healthcare, education and beyond. At Tacking Point, she owns operations, compliance, enterprise risk, service-provider oversight, and Board and regulator reporting, holding the remit end to end and building the institutional-grade infrastructure a modern fund manager depends on, ensuring the firm moves with both ambition and control.

M AppFin, Grad Dip FP, BEc, MAICD

Mitch Dallimore

Investment Manager

Mitchell brings the discipline of institutional private equity and the instincts of an operator. A Chartered Accountant with 15 years across the full investment lifecycle, he has worked every stage, from fund structuring and strategy through deal origination, due diligence and execution to post-acquisition value creation. His experience spans international markets, including Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada and the USA, and sectors from healthcare and manufacturing to insurance, hospitality and property. Having served as both deal-side Principal and portfolio-company CFO, he pairs the rigour to assess an opportunity with the hands-on judgement to realise its potential.

CA, BCom, DipGrad (Otago)

Stephanie Petkovski

Head of Marketing & Digital

Stephanie leads brand, marketing and digital across Tacking Point. Over more than 15 years in regulated and customer-driven sectors, spanning financial services, aged care and hospitality, she has built brands, led marketing and communications teams, and delivered large-scale digital transformation at enterprise level. Her work connects strategy with execution, from brand, campaign and communications through to data, customer experience and the digital platforms that underpin them. A strategist grounded in analytics and a people-centred leader who builds high-performing teams, she turns insight into measurable growth, and brings the considered, forward-looking presence a modern fund manager depends on.

MAnalytics (Marketing), BComm & Media Studies

Nick Burmester 

Independent Investment Committee Member

Nicholas brings more than 20 years in capital markets and financial services to the committee, specialising in institutional equities, large-scale deal origination, emerging companies and hedge funds. Across senior roles in Australia, the UK and Europe, he has built institutional businesses from the ground up and led cross-border transactions and institutional equity structuring at scale. A trusted corporate adviser, he has served on the Board of the Stockbrokers and Financial Advisers Association, bringing board-level governance and regulatory oversight to the table. His networks span hedge funds, institutional investors and corporate boards, adding market depth and global reach to the committee.

LLB, BCom, GradDipAppFin

Mark Elzayed

Independent Investment Committee Member

Mark brings more than a decade in investment research and funds management to the committee. He is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Investor Pulse, a securities, derivatives and managed account portfolio manager built on independent fundamental research and a long-term, valuation-led approach. Before founding the firm, he held senior investment roles as Chief Investment Officer of ACE Capital Solutions and as a wealth manager at Fat Prophets. On the committee, he brings a disciplined research lens and an external perspective, testing the firm's assumptions against independent analysis and the fundamentals that sit well beneath short-term market sentiment and the noise of the cycle.

BAppFin, BCom (Macquarie)

Simon Burge

Independent Investment Committee Member

Simon brings more than 30 years in the Australian funds management industry to the committee. He is Chief Executive Officer of Australis Investment Management, and was previously Chief Investment Officer of Above the Index Asset Management, where he held the AFSL, served as responsible officer and executive director, and chaired the portfolio construction committee overseeing wholesale and retail equity mandates. He has also built and led a boutique funds management business of his own, understanding first-hand what running one well requires. A value investor of long standing, he brings a benchmark-agnostic perspective, an independent counterweight to conventional index-driven thinking.

MBus (Accounting & Finance), BCom (Finance)

Paul Bray

Director, Chief Investment Officer

Jay Mertens

Director & Portfolio Manager

Nick Burmester 

Independent Investment Committee Member

Mark Elzayed

Independent Investment Committee Member

Simon Burge

Independent Investment Committee Member