Rapid Circle crowns Cassandra Ashworth as new A/NZ MD

Microsoft cloud specialist Rapid Circle has hired Cassandra Ashworth as its new managing director of its A/NZ business.

The appointment comes after the recent departure of Stewart Bairstow, who helped to successfully built Rapid Circle.

Rapid Circle founder and global CEO, Harold Punter welcomed Ashworth to lead the A/NZ business into its next phase of growth, in alignment with Microsoft’s market innovation and growing customer needs. 

“Rapid Circle’s expansion is booming, with recent acquisitions like vNEXT and the demands we are seeing from customers to deliver Microsoft based AI and cloud solutions to advance productivity and improve business outcomes, we needed to bring in experienced leadership who excel at customer solutions delivering business transformation and critical outcomes in today’s current economic climate.” Punter said. 

Ashworth will be based in Melbourne and brings a strong track record of more than 25 years of IT enterprise and Microsoft experience, holding senior executive roles and was most recently Wipro.

With a reputation for building high performance teams, driving innovation amongst new and existing customers and providing customer centric solutions, Ashworth’s appointment will accelerate Rapid Circle A/NZ into its next phase of growth.

Ashworth is a champion for equality, and passionate about elevating women of all ages. Serving on the board for Business in Heels for the past five years and leading many industry initiatives, like the Gender Equity Awards, with Ashworth’s appointment, this bolsters Rapid Circle’s global leadership team to 50 per cent women.

“The CIOs I talk to all share the same challenges, meeting growing expectations of the business, addressing the risk that comes with legacy technology, tech debt, delivering with tight budgets and navigating the potential of AI, whilst looking for more specialised partners with strong local capabilities to deliver material results,” she said. 

“What I love about Rapid Circle is that we are set up to solve our clients’ most wicked challenges.

“I am really excited about the Microsoft innovation and how this is accelerating our customers’ transformations. I look forward to leading and growing our team in A/NZ, working closely with Microsoft and our joint clients to unlock business value.”

In January, Rapid Circle made its fourth acquisition, snapping up Melbourne’s vNext, building the business up to more than 140 in Australia and New Zealand.