RSM appoints six partners and principals across Australia
Accounting and advisory network RSM has made six senior appointments in Australia spanning its offices from Albury to the Margaret River.
The Australian branch of professional services firm RSM has admitted three new partners in its regional and metropolitan offices – Aimee Whittingham, Simon Brown and Linda Romanovska – while Ross Dixon, Bryan Soepardi, and Kaustubh Vazalwar have been promoted to principal.
Having surpassed an overall headcount of 1,800 professionals last year, RSM’s partnership numbers are now pushing toward the 150-mark.
Linda Romanovska
Romanovska is a senior expert on sustainable finance, natural capital and ESG reporting. A PhD-holder from UNSW, she recently joined RSM from PwC where she spent the past two years.
Earlier, Romanovska worked for more than a decade as a researcher, advisor and member of numerous government and non-profit climate-related agencies in Europe and Australia.
Aimee Whittingham
Whittingham has been with RSM in Melbourne coming up on a decade, before which she spent five years as an auditor with Baker Tilly in the UK.
A member of the Assurance & Advisory team, she provides advice and a wide range of financial services to both private and public sector clients.
Simon Brown
Brown meanwhile joins RSM’s business advisory partnership out of Busselton and Margaret River, described by the firm as one of its leading tourism & hospitality specialists in WA. Brown also brings an agricultural background, having worked as a farmer, mechanic and truck driver prior to completing a business and accounting degree and joining the firm in 2008, where he now advises clients on taxation strategy and cloud accounting.
Ross Dixon
Back on the other side of the country, RSM’s regional business advisory leadership has also been boosted by the elevation of Ross Dixon to principal in Albury – the latest step in an unlikely journey which saw the international tax consultant arrive directly to the firm in 2019 from Deloitte in the UK, where he previously spent eight years in the Big Four’s Manchester and Liverpool offices while obtaining an arts degree in human geography.
Bryan Soepardi
A member of the firm’s tax division and specialist in R&D government incentives, Soepardi also steps up to principal in Sydney. Prior to joining in 2017, Soepardi spent a year and a half as a trainee in PwC’s innovation & incentives team – while working tirelessly on his music career. According to his bio, Soepardi has written and recorded over 100 songs for a swag of international electronic dance artists his older colleagues have likely never heard of.
Kaustubh Vazalwar
The last of the promotions is Kaustubh Vazalwar, who becomes a principal in RSM’s risk advisory practice in Melbourne after joining the firm less than twelve months ago from a senior technology leadership role at Tabcorp (which at the time was cutting staff). An expert in cyber resilience and risk management, Vazalwar previously spent a decade between IBM and Hewlett Packard, having started out at Wipro in the UK.
Noting that its partnership count now sits at 139 and its total staff number had exceeded targets to rise by almost 15 percent since 2022, RSM stated of its latest promotions; “These appointments recognise and reward RSM’s internal talent. The growth is a testament to our commitment to nurturing and supporting internal talent to ensure they develop their professional skills within the firm to help service a growing mix of mid-market client needs.”
