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New coworking and incubator leadership blooms

Charlie Gunningham
Charlie Gunningham

After the departure of Darren Lomman from Bloom, four young leaders have been appointed to run the co-working space and incubator…

The student incubator and co-working space down at Bloom within St Catherine’s College, UWA in Crawley has new leadership team.

Launched in mid-2015 by then UWA Chancellor Michael Chaney AO, Bloom has become the place for budding uni students and recent graduates to pursue their own startup dreams.

Previous Bloom executive officer Darren Lomman recently stepped down after a successful crowdfunding program for his own social enterprise Greenbatch, raising $70K on StartSomeGood.

“I really enjoyed supporting our young entrepreneurs at Bloom throughout 2017,” said Darren, “and I feel lots of the plans and activities I have been working on behind the scenes at Bloom are just starting to line up and come to fruition. There are lots of exciting things in the pipeline for 2018.”

Head of St Catherine’s College Fiona Crowe has now employed four emerging leaders in the Perth startup community to help run the place.

“Youth startups are at the cutting edge of technology and innovation and require a supportive network with an energetic and positive outlook to drive the program forward.” said
Fiona.

Ella Ganfield, current CEO of Bloom startup Teach Learn Grow (TLG), will take charge of the Bloom program along with three other leaders from the Bloom community: Elizabeth Knight,  Jack Hallam and Brady Flockart.

New coworking and incubator leadership blooms
Blooming good leadership: Elizabeth Knight, Jack Hallam, Ella Ganfield & Brady Flockhart

Each of the four has been involved with Bloom already, and they all have experience in student run organisations, as well as careers in marketing, accounting, consulting and education programs.

Bloom plans to increase the number of startups working in the space to 100 by 2020 as the college goes through a redevelopment with plans to expand the co-working space to handle more students and people under 30 to work on their own projects as an alternative to a typical graduate job.

Bloom at St Catherine’s College is supported by student volunteers as well as ongoing support from UWA, Squire Patton Boggs, RAC & Woodside.

Bloom will hold its first pitch night this Friday (9th March) at 5.30pm, so do head on down there to see some of the members in action.

“Only 3% of founders are under the age of 25,” said Bloom Development Leader Jack Hallam, quoting a recent Startup Muster report.

You get a sense this team of young startup leaders want to change that.

~~

BLOOM, 2 Park Road, Crawley

MAIN PHOTO, from left to right

  • Elizabeth Knight: 2nd year at UWA BPhil (Political Sciences and Industrial Relations), Fogarty Scholar.
  • Jack Hallam: Development, also works at Ammo Marketing
  • Ella Ganfield: CEO, also works at Teach Learn Grow
  • Brady Flockart: Director of Future Entrepreneurs, also works at Idle Australia

New coworking and incubator leadership blooms

New coworking and incubator leadership blooms
The entire Bloom team 2018

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Charlie Gunningham

Charlie Gunningham

Former co-founder aussiehome.com, GM reiwa.com, CEO Business News and Accelerating Commercialisation adviser. Charlie has spent 20+ years in Perth's startup scene, as founder, mentor, adviser, writer and investor. There's nothing he likes more than helping early stage tech startups ... and drinking coffee, shiraz or playing in a blues band. Email Charlie here.
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