RV welcomes two new board members

Rowing Victoria is pleased to welcome two new appointed board members.

Christopher Ohlrich

Chris Ohlrich has more than 25 years’ commercial, finance and corporate transaction experience during an investment banking career in Australia and the UK and more recently, senior finance and commercial leadership roles with start-up, early stage and listed companies in the energy and clean technology sectors. 

Most recently he was Executive Director and CFO of Graphene Manufacturing Group Ltd (GMG) and was one of the founding management team at inception in early 2017.  GMG became a public company in 2021 and is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange in Canada. 

He began his career with Ernst & Young in Brisbane, Australia, and was later a Vice President in Deutsche Bank’s M&A and Corporate Advisory Groups in London, and then with Investec Bank in Sydney, Australia. Since then, he has held senior management roles with several ASX listed energy companies.

He has dual degrees in Commerce and Law from the University of Queensland, Australia.  He is a Chartered Accountant, winner of the Queensland Professional Year Medal in 1998, and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia and graduate and member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Chris represented Australia in 1993 and 1994 at the Rowing World Championships, in 1994 at the U23 Rowing World Championships (Nations Cup) winning a bronze medal, and won 10 Queensland State Championships in various events, including Lightweight Single Scull, Double Scull, Pair, Four and Heavyweight Men’s Eight. 

He was born in London, grew up in Brisbane and now lives in Melbourne with his wife and daughter.

Lawrence Robertson

With over 25 years’ experience in sports administration and marketing spanning Europe, Asia-Pacific and Australia, Lawrence is currently the Director of Pathways & Game Development for Tennis Australia with responsibility for overseeing the development and delivery of the sport’s competitive pathways from junior to professional across Australia. He stepped into the national role in 2021 following almost 5 years as CEO of Tennis NSW where he oversaw the $50m development of Ken Rosewall Arena and was the Tournament Director of the Sydney International before leading Sydney’s delivery of the inaugural ATP Cup in 2020.

Prior to arriving in Australia, Lawrence led a number of significant commercial projects both with Federations and through sports marketing agencies in the UK and Asia. Whilst at the Lawn Tennis Association, the UK tennis federation, he oversaw the reformation of the commercial programme introducing the sport’s first ever Lead Partner, AEGON, the global financial services firm with a ground-breaking AUD$80m, 9 year partnership. Moving to Asia, he was instrumental in the growth of Infront Sports Asia Pacific business and helped secured a 10-year, US$500m partnership with the Badminton World Federation (BWF). Building on this partnership, he oversaw the re-structure of the BWF’s World Tour and in doing so secured HSBC as the BWF’s first Global Principle Partner in a 5 year, US$25m partnership.

He lives in Black Rock, Melbourne with his wife Sarah and daughter Anna whilst his son Fraser studies at ANU. Being raised in Scotland, his sporting passions are golf and football (soccer) whilst he stays fit by running regularly. He has adopted the Geelong Cats as his AFL team.