Board of Directors
Small board, big thinking
David Whelan
CEO
David is a tech entrepreneur and founder of ENGAGE XR Holdings. He is a former Editor-in-chief of Virtual Reality Reviewer a popular immersive technology site in the early days of VR. David is also a multi-awarding winning Immersive technology director and producer winning a Time Warner Award and nominated for a Venice Film festival award for immersive storytelling.
David has over 10+ years web development experience and a background in app creation and programming for large CRM systems. David has brought ENGAGE XR from an initial $1k starting loan to going public on the London AIM stock exchange listing withing a 3 year period and raised a total of $20m in funding to date.
Richard Cooper
Chairman
Richard has over 25 years experience as a Finance Director, in both publicly traded and privately-owned companies in a variety of service industries including gaming, insurance, and financial services. Richard has significant operations and M&A skills, is highly commercial, possesses AIM, TSX and LSE official list technical experience and has extensive contacts in London City and in the Gaming sector.
Sandra Whelan
COO
Sandra is an entrepreneur and co-founder of ENGAGE XR Holdings. She was the Senior Editor and Content Creator for a top ranked virtual reality website where she developed a strong rapport with key software developers in the industry.
Sandra has significant experience working with large corporations’ contract management and accounts management. Her experience ensures she brings managerial procedures, reporting structures and operational controls to the company. Sandra was a finalist for the Irish Women’s Awards which recognises female professionals in all industries, the recipient of the Irish Times Business People of the Month Award and a finalist for the Entrepreneur of the Year Awards under the Emerging Category.
Sandra is a mentor on the New Frontiers National Entrepreneur Development Programme where she assesses and offers guidance to start-up companies and holds a Diploma in Project Management from the University College Dublin Professional Academy.
Kenny Jacobs
Non-Executive Director
Kenny Jacobs is the former Chief Marketing Officer of Ryanair PLC where he oversaw digital, sales & marketing and customer service as the airline doubled in size from 2014-2020. Ryanair is Europe’s biggest airline and the worlds most visited airline website. Previously was the Chief Marketing Officer of Moneysupermarket PLC and Tesco. He is currently the founder at H&H Consulting and advising clients in retail, aviation and technology sectors.
Séamus Larrissey
CFO
Séamus is an experienced Financial Accountant with experience within start-up companies all the way through to publicly listed entities. He was part of the executive board who oversaw the heavily oversubscribed listing in March 2018 which saw ENGAGE raise €6.75m. He subsequently was part of the executive team that concluded a secondary raise of €3m from HTC during 2020 and a further raise of €9m in 2021 on the public markets. He has full responsibility for the finance function within ENGAGE and liaises closely with a variety of advisors including brokers, NOMAD, corporate company secretary and auditors.
Prior to his appointment in VRE he worked from 2013 to 2017 as a Senior Project & Management Accountant at Telecommunications Software and Systems Group (“TSSG”). At TSSG he worked across projects to support the commercialisation process by developing business and financial models for new product/spinout launches.
Prior to joining TSSG, Séamus trained and then worked at a management level at EY where he gained significant auditing and accounting experience across a broad spectrum of industries. Séamus holds a Bachelor of Business Studies in Accountancy from Waterford Institute of Technology and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.
Praveen Gupta
Non-Executive Director
Current VP of HTC Investments and Partnerships. Praveen has a wealth of experience in corporate business development and M&A with previous roles such as VP corporate and business development at SK Telecom, Director at Lucent/Nokia and executive director and partner at CDIB Ventures and management positions at Fujitsu-ICL Systems.
