Experience

Brett is an experienced lawyer and business executive who focuses on commercial outcomes. He has worked across three sectors in England & Australia advising and leading initiatives in digital, media and technology law for some of the world’s leading brands.

His experience is diverse and is held together by common threads of strategic thinking, innovation, delivering creative legal solutions and communicating complex issues simply.

Brett holds fast to the idea that a lawyer’s role is to help the business grow faster, sustainably, with fewer mistakes.

Brett is dual qualified as a solicitor in England and New South Wales and holds the Certified International Privacy Professional European qualification (CIPP/E).

Brett has deep privacy and data expertise and is skilled at integrating compliance with design and UX. He handles new product contracts and regulatory, transactional matters and innovative projects. Primarily a data, privacy & technology lawyer, those skills have been used in the financial services context.

Brett founded a boutique digital, media & technology law firm called Westbright Law and held in-house legal roles at Commonwealth Bank of Australia & Qantas Loyalty and TotallyMoney, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities, Electronic Arts, SEGA & BMG Music Publishing in England.

He is a non-executive director on 2 community radio station boards around Australia, including Deputy Chair and Chair of the Risk Committee at Hope Media Limited.

He is a mentor at the Australian Institute of Music’s iHUB music tech incubator. Brett is also on the Penrith Visual & Performing Arts Board that looks after the legendary Q Theatre, The Joan, Penrith Conservatorium of Music and the Penrith Regional Gallery. He also chairs its Audit, Risk & Compliance Committee and Performing Arts Committee.

Brett hosted podcasts including the Westbright LawCAST, The Lock In and Fatherhood.

Brett supports the arts and was a founding trustee of the National Youth Arts Trust in England that provides bursaries for under-privileged youth to participate in the arts. Brett once also tried to open a restaurant, worked in radio and in his spare time teaches himself guitar, so progress is slow.

His early career was spent with Baker & McKenzie (Sydney & London) and Deacons (Sydney – now Norton Rose Fulbright). Primarily a data, privacy & technology lawyer, those skills have been used mostly in the financial services context.

Joining CBA in February 2019 initially as a privacy lawyer he was asked to lead Governance for the Bank’s privacy enforceable undertaking holding the program to account for delivering what was promised to the regulator. He also led the GDPR compliance uplift planning across the Bank.

At Qantas, Brett was the legal lead for the Qantas Money credit card products, the AVRO Accelerator Program and the Red Planet data business. He negotiated Frequent Flyer Points contracts with the banks, supported the Qantas Cash launch and was counsel for Qantas’ minority acquisition of Data Republic. In a non-legal capacity, Brett was delivery lead for Qantas Group’s GDPR compliance and a member of the IATA GDPR committee for airlines.

In London, Brett negotiated deals to launch co-brand credit cards through alliances with Capital One and MBNA Europe and led TotallyMoney through its financial services licence renewal process with the FCA.

Brett also worked in the capital markets at Mitsubishi UFJ where he was legal counsel on initiatives such as establishing coal and emissions trading operations, technology deals for trading hardware, platforms and data contracts and worked on a project to acquire a commodities broker.

He once tried to open a restaurant, worked in radio and in his spare time teaches himself guitar, so progress is slow.