Melissa Anastasiou is Chief Legal Officer of Sharon AI, bringing nearly 30 years of legal and executive leadership experience across telecommunications, technology and digital infrastructure. Throughout her career, she has experience advising boards and executive teams on corporate governance, complex commercial transactions, regulatory engagement, mergers and acquisitions, privacy, cyber matters and AI governance.
As Chief Legal Officer, Melissa leads Sharon AI‘s legal, governance and compliance functions, drawing on decades of experience supporting large-scale technology businesses through growth and transformation. Her commercial approach and deep understanding of emerging technologies help ensure Sharon AI is well positioned to scale responsibly in the rapidly evolving AI infrastructure market.
Melissa began her legal career as a commercial solicitor with Minter Ellison Rudd Watts in New Zealand before joining Linklaters in London, where she advised on corporate and commercial matters. She then moved in-house to Telefonica O2 UK, gaining extensive experience supporting one of Europe’s leading telecommunications businesses across infrastructure procurement, partnering, enterprise customers and commercial contracting.
In 2009, Melissa joined Telecom New Zealand, later Spark, where she spent more than 16 years helping shape the legal strategy of New Zealand’s largest telecommunications and digital services company. Appointed Group General Counsel in 2013 and later joining Spark’s Executive Leadership Team, she advised the Board and executive across corporate governance, M&A, major commercial transactions, strategic partnering, regulatory engagement, privacy, cyber matters and digital transformation.
Melissa also led the evolution of Spark’s legal function, reducing legal operating costs by more than 50 per cent while building a highly commercial legal team capable of supporting a rapidly changing business. More recently, she chaired Spark’s AI & Data Ethics Committee, overseeing the development of AI governance, privacy and data ethics frameworks, including enterprise-wide policies for generative AI and responsible data use.
Known for combining legal expertise with commercial judgement, Melissa has extensive experience advising boards through periods of strategic transformation and helping organisations navigate complex regulatory, governance and technology challenges.
Executive Group General Counsel & Commercial Director at Spark New Zealand
Melissa spent more than 16 years at Spark, New Zealand’s largest telecommunications and digital services provider, ultimately serving as Executive Group General Counsel and Commercial Director. She advised the Board and executive leadership on corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, strategic commercial transactions and partnerships, privacy, cyber security matters, regulatory engagement and digital transformation. She also led the modernisation of Spark’s legal function and chaired the company’s AI & Data Ethics Committee, overseeing the introduction of enterprise AI governance and privacy frameworks.
Senior Legal Counsel at Telefonica O2 UK
Supported one of the United Kingdom’s leading mobile telecommunications companies across infrastructure procurement, enterprise sales and complex commercial contracting, developing extensive experience in telecommunications, technology, infrastructure procurement and large-scale customer agreements.
Solicitor – Linklaters, London
Advised on corporate and commercial matters within one of the world’s leading international law firms, building expertise in mergers and acquisitions, corporate transactions and commercial advisory.
Solicitor – Minter Ellison Rudd Watts, New Zealand
Began her legal career advising corporate and commercial clients across a broad range of business and transactional matters.
As Chief Legal Officer at Sharon AI, Melissa leads the company’s legal strategy, corporate governance and compliance framework, ensuring the business is well positioned to support long-term growth while managing legal and regulatory risk. Drawing on nearly three decades of experience advising technology companies and executive leadership teams, she helps guide strategic decision-making, commercial partnerships and responsible AI governance as Sharon AI continues to scale as a global AI infrastructure platform.
James is the CEO of Sharon AI.
His career has spanned over 22 years across technology, finance, property development and funds management.
James has built and monetized over 300MW of energy infrastructure across Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas and Australia.
James has completed a Master of Business (Finance) and a Master’s in Property Development from the University of Technology Sydney, as well as a Bachelor of Accounting from ACU.
He is a Fellow of the Institute of Company Directors (FAICD), and a Fellow of Institute of Public Accountants (IPA).
Andrew began his career with Macquarie Bank (ASX:MQG) in 2007 where he served for 8 years in the Corporate and Asset Finance division.
He then embarked on several entrepreneurial endeavors developing aviation leasing technology whilst serving on the board of ISI Australia, a provider of mainframe and cloud platform solutions.
Andrew co-founded Sharon AI and served as Chief Operating Officer, playing a central role in building the company’s operating capability and advancing its AI Factory deployments. He now leads Strategic Partnerships, providing founder-level sponsorship across Sharon AI’s most important customer, data centre and strategic relationships.
Nick has over 18 years’ experience across financial markets, technology and energy infrastructure.
Starting his career at multi-billion-dollar asset manager Bell Financial Group (ASX:BFG) where he served for 12 years before building and managing 100 modular data centres across 200MW of energy infrastructure in the USA and Australia while working in a senior leadership role at a NASDAQ-listed digital infrastructure company.
David Burns is Chief Operating Officer of Sharon AI, bringing more than 35 years of experience leading and transforming technology, telecommunications and services businesses across Australia, the United States, Europe and Asia. Throughout his career, he has built and scaled businesses, led complex operational transformations and delivered sustained financial and customer outcomes across rapidly evolving technology markets.
As COO, David leads Sharon AI’s operational strategy and execution, drawing on decades of experience across technology services, managed services, infrastructure, customer delivery and large-scale transformation. His combination of commercial discipline, operational leadership and customer focus helps ensure Sharon AI can execute at pace and scale as a global AI infrastructure platform.
Anuj Goel brings more than 20 years of experience across technology investment banking, capital markets and corporate finance. Throughout his career, he has advised companies, founders and investors on growth, capital raisings and strategic transformation, with deep expertise spanning technology, telecommunications, media and digital infrastructure.
Before joining Sharon AI as CFO, Anuj was Head of Technology, APAC at Macquarie Capital, where he advised on many of Australia’s most significant technology and digital infrastructure transactions.
Dan Mons brings over two decades of leadership experience in the technology sector across 10 countries.
He has led the technical design, security planning, and training teams for government, AI/ML, media, HPC, research, finance, and software development in Australia, the US, the UK, Asia, and Europe. Dan is committed to driving effective change while maintaining security objectives and ensuring team members deliver business success and meet customer needs.
Wolf Schubert is the Country Manager – USA of Sharon AI. His career has spanned over 25 years across technology, capital markets and risk management (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch).
Most recently he ran part of the institutional business at BlockFi, a fintech startup. Before that he held senior roles at Vista Equity Partners and Strategic Value Partners, where he was Chief Risk Officer.
Ross has over 25 years of capital markets experience in both the US and Australia, where he was most recently Head of Technology Equity Research at Wilsons Advisory. Prior to his 5 years at Wilsons, he was at Citigroup for 14 years, where he was Head of Small Caps Research.
Ross is best known for his combined knowledge of both financial markets and digital infrastructure, the result of 19 years of equity research and 13 years of continuous coverage of NextDC, one of SharonAI’s key partners.
Kathleen Manning brings more than a decade of management and people-leadership experience across hospitality, health, and professional services. With formal qualifications in Business and Psychology, she blends commercial strength with a deep understanding of human behaviour to create engaged, high-performing teams and sustainable organisational culture.
Kathleen has held senior leadership roles including Director at Defender Asset Management and Head of HR for the Defender Tourism Fund, where she oversaw large, multi-site teams, modernised HR systems, strengthened compliance frameworks, and supported rapid business expansion. She has also completed the AICD Company Secretary Course, enhancing her governance and executive-level capability.
Kathleen now leads the HR function at Sharon AI, bringing her strategic mindset, operational excellence, and people-first approach to support the organisation’s growth and culture as it scales.
Linton is a recognized growth leader in the Australian and APAC tech landscape with over 25 years of leadership at global technology icons including IBM, Microsoft, and Rackspace. Most recently serving as CRO at Vault Cloud, he brings specialized expertise in scaling high-security, critical infrastructure. At Sharon AI, Linton spearheads global commercial operations and revenue strategy, ensuring sovereign AI infrastructure scales to meet the mission-critical needs of enterprise and government partners.
Kieran Habojan is an empathetic thought leader at Sharon AI who puts people first while delivering cutting-edge AI and HPC solutions. With a distinguished career at Equinix powering digital infrastructure for some of the world’s largest enterprise clients, Kieran brings unparalleled expertise to his role.
As a relationship-focused sales leader, he drives exceptional business outcomes for clients by truly understanding their unique challenges. Kieran’s rare combination of technical insight and genuine human connection enables organisations to confidently navigate complex digital ecosystems with precisely tailored solutions.
