Seaford, Victoria, Australia
An 84-year-old in suburban Melbourne with grandchildren who speaks Italian. A daughter checking in from Brisbane. A community care worker on a tablet. A GP on the other end of a video call. This is what Ageing in Place actually looks like in 2026, and most of the technology our sector has built was designed for someone simpler. A single person, a single language, a single context. I'm co-founder, CEO and Director at Lumin (mylumin.org). Lumin is the AI-powered care platform for retirement villages, home care, and families across Australia and New Zealand. We bring five capability areas together on one platform: communication and entertainment, village co-ordination, active and passive monitoring, smart-home and building management, and health and wellbeing. One platform, one operational view for staff, a calmer experience for residents and families. The platform is built around the Lumin CareHub, a purpose-built voice-activated touchscreen designed for older people regardless of digital confidence, dexterity, vision, or cognitive stage. It won the 2024 Australian Good Design Award. Around it sits the Lumin Resident App, connected devices for safety and passive context, and Lumin Connect, our integration layer into the clinical, CRM, building management, asset, and payment systems operators already use. The "AI-powered" part of that isn't a banner. It's the platform holding context across all of it. Voice and multilingual understanding. Passive monitoring intelligence that learns what is normal for a specific person, rather than the population. AI's job, in our view, is to disappear into the background of daily life, not to surface every minor anomaly. Technology that protects human connection, rather than replacing it. We don't see Ageing in Place as a question of safety alone. We see it as a question of thriving in place. I lead Lumin as a profit-for-purpose business. The AI enthusiasm is real, but it sits behind the purpose, rather than in front of it. The category is forming quickly, post Royal Commission, post the new Aged Care Act, with state-level Retirement Villages reforms reshaping procurement in NSW and Victoria. We're in active deployments across retirement villages in Australia and New Zealand, and used by around 40 Australian home care operators. The window we're in now wasn't there 24 months ago. If you're an operator, a peak body, a clinician, or a fellow founder working on any of this, I'd happily compare notes. The category is bigger than any one of us, and "no one left behind" isn't a tagline. It's the test.
Founder representation on the Lumin board. The board's job is to hold the long-term thesis steady while the executive team runs the year. In a category that's still forming, that means being clear about what we will and won't pursue, where the commercial and clinical lines sit, and how capital decisions today shape Lumin's position in five years' time. Where I focus as a director: Strategic oversight: testing the company's strategy against the shape of the Australian and New Zealand aged care technology market and Lumin's position in it Governance and risk: fiduciary responsibility, regulatory posture, and the standards that have to hold in a sector serving older Australians Capital strategy at board level: partnering with the board on raise structure, investor selection, and the long-term cap table Founder voice in the room: keeping the original mission, the design principles, and the why front and centre in board decisions Lumin's why: a brighter future for Ageing in Place, where people stay well, connected, and supported at home, and no one is left behind.
Strategic relationship development Product evangelist Board member Product advisory Strategic consulting Capital Raising Investor Relations Contract Negotiations
Blocks Global is the Australian parent company of Lumin. I founded Blocks Global in 2012 as the operating platform for the next chapter of work after Square Circle Triangle. The early years centred on designing and developing websites and web apps for large companies globally, before pivoting into product. Our first SaaS product, Blocks, was an all-in-one marketing and enablement platform with a feature set genuinely unusual in its category. The work that mattered most for what came next was the operational experience of deploying and managing remote consumer-grade devices in commercial environments. The hardware, cloud, and remote-management IP from that era became the foundation Lumin's AI-powered platform is built on. Today Blocks Global's sole focus is Lumin.
Lumin is the AI-powered care platform for retirement villages, home care, and families across Australia and New Zealand. We bring five capability areas together on one platform: communication and entertainment, village co-ordination, active and passive monitoring, smart-home and building management, and health and wellbeing. The platform is built around the Lumin CareHub, a purpose-built voice-activated touchscreen and winner of the 2024 Australian Good Design Award. The ecosystem also includes the Lumin Resident App, connected devices (pendants, sensors, smart-home peripherals), the Community Management Portal for staff, and Lumin Connect, the integration layer into the clinical, CRM, building management, asset, and payment systems operators already use. Where I focus as CEO: Strategy: company direction, category positioning, and the long-game thesis on where Australian and New Zealand aged care technology is heading Product: product vision, prioritisation, and the design principles that hold across the ecosystem (Accessible by Design, Safe by Design, Human by Design) Capital raising: investor narrative, raise structure, and bringing the right partners onto the cap table for the next phase Investor relations: keeping existing investors close, informed, and useful, particularly in a category where most generalist investors are still forming their thesis on age-tech Go-to-market and partnerships: leadership across Australian retirement living and home care, with active expansion into the EU, and policy and sector work connecting Lumin into peak bodies, government departments, clinical networks, and international operators Today: active deployments across retirement villages in Australia and New Zealand, and Australian home care operators on the platform.
Founded and led Square Circle Triangle, one of Australia's first digital-first agencies. Built the firm from a standing start into a 20+ person team servicing national clients including Crown Casino, Mirvac, Endota, ACMI, and Grab Clothing. The early years focused on digital-first branding and website work, at a moment when most Australian agencies were still print-led and digital was an add-on. Through the 2000s the work expanded with the web itself: dynamic applications, e-commerce, and the early shift to cloud-delivered software. Square Circle Triangle pivoted into Blocks Global with the early rise of cloud, carrying the team, the client relationships, and the digital-first instinct into a new operating company.
The first chapter of my career, at an Australian design studio practising in the pre-digital era of brand and design craft. The work spanned branding and identity, fashion and product photography, brochures, and corporate communications. The discipline that shaped everything afterwards was set here. Design-first thinking, applied to whatever medium the brief called for.
Made the move from traditional design into digital as the web was reshaping what a creative agency could do. Led the digital creative function at Empire Ridge, applying brand and design craft to a medium most agencies were still treating as a side product. The instinct carried straight into Square Circle Triangle, which I founded in 1999 as one of Australia's first digital-first agencies.