Philippe Rae

People who've worked with Philippe describe him as kind and perceptive. He reads a room quickly, picks up on what's not being said and creates the conditions for people to do their best work. That's not softness. It's a deliberate skill built over two decades of leading teams across four continents, and it's why the teams he leads tend to punch above their weight.

Philippe's career has a clear pattern: walk into something complicated, figure out how it should work, build or finesse it. He founded ORINUX in Mauritius and grew it from a small consultancy to a multi-million-euro IT services business with offices across the region. He didn't inherit that. He incorporated the company, secured the capital, hired the people, won the clients, and ran it for a decade.

That founder experience shaped everything that followed. At enableHR (part of Citation Group), he went from Senior Product Manager to Executive Manager with full P&L responsibility across Australia and New Zealand. Along the way he reported to Martin, then managed him, and now works alongside him. That kind of relationship only survives when both people are honest with each other, and it says a lot about how they operate together. He managed product, development, QA, and support. He redesigned the commercial model and built the management reporting the business needed to make better decisions. The kind of work where you must understand the business as well as the product.

At hps.gd, Philippe works with clients on executive leadership, product strategy, and the operational decisions that determine whether a product organisation can scale. He brings the perspective of someone who's built companies, run P&Ls and shipped products in markets where nothing was handed to him.