Board of Directors
The establishment of a Board of Directors at Whitesmiths in November 1998 has brought beneficial effects to the Company - both in its internal operations and in the manner of its presentation to the external marketplace.
John O'Brien
John O'Brien is Managing Director of Whitesmiths and an Executive Director on the Board. He founded the company in 1986 and has guided the company from its initial specialisation in developing and marketing integrated embedded system software development tools in the mid-to-late 1980s, to establishing a software services division in 1989. It was through John's extensive IT industry connections that Whitesmiths first become involved in the telecommunications industry and the Optus start-up in 1991. Today, Whitesmiths focuses on mission critical applications for the telecommunications industry and has implemented key solutions with telecoms carriers in Australia, Asia and Europe.
John was a founding member of AAPDA, the Australian Apple Programmers and Developers Association where he was President for five years. He is President of the Penrith Rugby Union Club, a life member, and their longest active player. He has also held many senior administration positions in the Sydney Rugby Union, New South Wales Rugby Union and the Australian Rugby Union.
Carol Stammeijer
Carol was appointed as a Non-Executive Director of Whitesmiths in November 1998 and joined Whitesmiths as Commercial Director and Executive Director on the Board in July 1999. Carol is an experienced IT&T executive and has held senior management positions with a number of major companies in these sectors.
Most recently, Carol was Regional Sales Director for Openwave Systems Inc. with responsibility for growing their business within Australasia. Prior to this, Carol worked for Hewlett-Packard, Singapore for 3 years, as a Regional Management Consultant in Customer Relationship Management.
Carol was part of the Cable & Wireless plc management team responsible for the start-up and launch of Optus in 1991. Carol was responsible for Optus Mobile customer service policy, standards and the management of the associated business systems solutions. This was later expanded to cover Sales and Marketing solutions for both mobile and wireline businesses. Prior to joining Cable & Wireless, Carol worked for Nokia OY and Hutchison Telecommunications in the UK.
Carol has a BA Honours in English and Economics from Sussex University.
