Senior Management

Chris Mackay - Chief Executive Officer

Chris Mackay has an impressive track record of success with 23 years experience in the IT industry.

Previously Chris was CEO of Computerland New Zealand. Including its Franchise network Computerland’s revenue was $150m with 600 staff. Chris enjoyed a 20 year tenure and spent his early career in sales and sales management before accepting General Management responsibilities within the business .

He has been a director for a number of IT related companies and a member of the Hewlett Packard Asia Pacific Partner Advisory board (New Zealand’s only representative)

His time at Computerland demonstrated his ability to strategically plan, effectively execute key objectives and successfully lead large teams of people.

He is experienced with business acquisitions and divestments.

To further his education he participated in International Executive Management Programs run by the European Business School INSEAD.

Chris enjoys the outdoor lifestyle focusing on his passions; snow skiing, water skiing and golf.

Tim Lynskey - Vice President Business Development

Tim Lynskey has spent the last twenty years working in a diverse range of sales and sales management roles in New Zealand.

His career began in the commercial sector, where he spent his formative years selling services to a wide range of industries and customers. At 26 Tim was appointed to the role of Wellington Sales Manager for New Zealand Document Exchange, a subsidiary of the Freightways Group. His success in this role led to his promotion to Auckland Sales Manager, and then to the position of National Sales Manager.

Tim’s next role as Northern Regional Manager for Blue Star involved the restructuring of the regions offices while also managing a $37m budget and 52 staff across the region.

After a successful tenure with Blue Star, Tim switched focus to the information technology sector and was quick to deliver in his role as GM Sales for Speech Recognition Systems before spending three years with UK based Rebus Software selling HR/Payroll solutions.

More recently, Tim was employed by SAS where, for a period of three years, he sold complex business intelligence solutions to the finance and commercial sectors.

Tim maintains a keen interest in most sports and recently completed the annual bike ride around Lake Taupo.

Dr. Paul Day - Vice President Research and Development

In 1995 Paul received his PhD in Operations Research for outstanding work in the development and implementation of optimized rostering systems for Air New Zealand’s national airline. He has more than ten years experience in airline and transportation industries, and in general staff scheduling and rostering problems. He has successfully developed and implemented several optimization systems for industrial scheduling problems. This includes the pilot and flight attendant pairings optimization software for Air New Zealand, Freedom Air and Ansett Australia.

Paul is a founding member of Optima. Since this time he has worked in a variety of roles including developer, business analyst, implementation manager and client management/support roles; as well as working on general aspects of the business. Paul has worked with various clients in both product implementation/support and consultancy roles. He was involved in the successful implementation of SIREN at the Victoria Metropolitan Ambulance Service in Melbourne, Australia and continues to drive the development of that product as well as research into new ones.

Amanda Day - Operations Manager

Amanda was employed by Air New Zealand for 10 years, first as a member and then as leader of their operations research team. During this time she was responsible for all of Air New Zealand’s rostering optimisers, including proposing, negotiating and implementing significant changes to the handling of pilot requests. Amanda graduated with Bachelor’s degrees in Commerce and Science, followed by a Masters in Operations Research with first-class honours. Amanda’s current role includes running Optima’s airline team, being heavily involved in project management and being responsible for much of the day-to-day running of Optima.

Chris Callsen - Chief Operating Officer North American Operations

Chris Callsen is an EMS and Homeland Security executive with almost 30 years of diverse experience. He has served as a senior operations and clinical executive in nationally recognized EMS organizations as well as providing local, state and national leadership though participation on formal advisory panels and boards.

He is a published author with his most recent contribution being the text book National Incident Management System / Principles and Practice as well as being regular speaker at national EMS conferences on a variety of subjects including EMS system design, preparedness/homeland security, operations management, and EMS special operations.

He was educated at Georgetown University is Washington, DC and recently completed the Senior Executives in State and Local Government program at the Harvard University, John F Kennedy School of Government.

Dr. Geoff Goodhew - UK Manager

Geoff Goodhew completed his PhD in Management in 1998 with in-depth studies of change management and managerial cognition. He has worked as a business and financial systems analyst for five years in the UK, Europe and New Zealand working on both implementation and upgrades of enterprise systems. Geoff is an expert in organisational analysis and process design and has redesigned and streamlined several processes in his capacity as a business analyst.

Geoff joined Optima in 2006 and is responsible for planning and managing SIREN implementations. He has worked with EMS services in Australia, Canada and The United Kingdom. Geoff is currently heading Optima’s UK Office.

Bill Hollins - Project Director

Bill Hollins joined Optima in December 2007. He enjoys over 25 year’s management experience both of people and projects in the following roles: Service Delivery Manager, IT Manager, Project Management, Design and Development Manager, Operations Manager and Support Manager. Bill is a Prince2 Practitioner Certified Project Manager and has been involved in managing multiple overseas projects including Hong Kong, Malaysia, UK, USA, Australia and Canada.