Beau Hodge new CEO of Indigenous-owned IT consultancy Baidam
Indigenous-owned IT and cybersecurity consultancy Baidam has appointed Beau Hodge as its new chief executive officer out of Brisbane, with co-founder Jack Reis to take on the chairperson role.
Hodge officially steps up after being in the acting CEO role since the middle of last year, before which he served as chief operating officer after having originally joined Baidam as CFO in 2021 following close to a decade at Indigenous Business Australia.
Last year ranked 27th on the AFR’s Fast 100 list, Baidam was established by Reis and fellow co-founder Pip Jenkinson in Brisbane in 2018, and today has a team of approximately 40 professionals providing IT services and cybersecurity coverage across the country.
“Baidam is one of the fastest growing businesses in Australia,” Jenkinson said. “Managing this degree of accelerated growth takes a certain skill level, and due to his unwavering commitment, level head, consistency, and knowledge, Beau is very much a safe pair of hands for the business. His strong financial background means he can also maintain our continued trajectory.”
Hodge started his career with five years between various banks, before then joining Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander economic support and development agency Indigenous Business Australia in 2011 while gaining a business degree with Griffith University. His nine years at IAB included a variety of roles, the most recent as direct investments manager prior to joining Baidam.
Noting his shift into the unfamiliar world of cybersecurity and rise to CEO, Hodge said; “The level of support from those around me has been generous and valuable. Now I’m excited to be able to lead the business’s growth, drive even stronger cyber postures for our customers, add more innovative capabilities to the business, and grow and diversify our social impacts.”
A profit-with-purpose business
Hodge’s reference to social impact isn’t just a throwaway comment, with the Supply Nations consultancy originally established as a ‘profit-with-purpose’ business. That includes a particular focus on providing career pathways for people from remote and regional First Nations communities through specialised IT training courses and meaningful employment opportunities.
“It was obvious to us from the outset that Beau could not only go far in Baidam, but that he was also completely aligned to our desire to do good,” Reis commented. “He was excited that we were doing what we’d promised, actively contributing to closing the ICT career gap for Indigenous people. Our social goals were – and remain – incredibly important to him."
Reis, as chairperson, together with Jenkinson as a director, said that they could also now focus more closely on social initiatives, as well as company growth and direction at the executive level by handing over day-to-day duties at Baidam – which, as a reference to hunting down cyber threats, is the word for ‘shark’ in the Kala Lagaw Ya language of Badu Island in the Torres Strait.
