Built on intentional wealth

Director · Senior Financial Adviser · Sydney

How I got here

I grew up in Zimbabwe, watching my parents work relentless 8am to 5pm jobs while running businesses on the side. My mother was at the country's central bank, and our household was defined by hard work. Every few years we moved house, and every move was a calculated upgrade. That was my first masterclass in what deliberate money can do over time.

I came to Australia on my own, funding my accounting and corporate governance degrees by working night shifts at a service station in Launceston.

One of those nights, a man pulled up in a BMW Z3 convertible and asked what I was studying. When I told him accounting, he smiled and said I had too much personality for it. He was a financial adviser who managed the complex affairs of a select few families, and he had just driven three hours each way to sit down with one of them.

I have wanted his job ever since.

I started my career in tax and audit at Deloitte. By my final months, I was auditing the self-managed super funds of some of Melbourne's oldest wealthy families. I kept asking why their wealth had been structured the way it was. I was told I wasn't paid to know the strategy; I was paid to audit it.

I resigned.

I landed in Sydney in November 2006 with no job and slept on a friend's floor. I volunteered unpaid at a financial planning practice for four months to get my foot in the door. By Valentine's Day, I had two offers. I took the one that paid less because it was the one that would teach me how to write world-class advice.

Everything after that was deliberate. I spent years writing plans for specialist medical practitioners to master strategy and tax structuring. I moved into stockbroking to master investments. Knowing that technical expertise is useless without human connection, I stepped away from finance entirely to learn the art of rapport. I sold fine wine and cold-called to raise money for Epilepsy Action Australia, disarming people with an unexpected African accent until I could connect with absolutely anyone.

Then came the heavy lifting: advising senior executives, legal and accounting partners, and expatriates across Singapore, the UK, and the US, where the portfolios were as complicated as the people attached to them.

It took more than two decades, assembling the puzzle one missing piece at a time.

Here is what that journey taught me: structure, tax, investments, and the human conversation are one job, not four. Most people in my chair only do one of them, leaving the client stranded in the gaps between.

I founded Henwood Advisory so I could do all of it. I built this firm to manage the complete financial picture for a small, select number of households, allowing both my clients and myself to be fully present at home.

Outside the office, you will find me on the road bike, cooking for friends and family, swimming laps at a seaside pool, or out for a run.