Ali Linz

Ali Linz has over 20 years experience across the gamut of marketing - as Strategy Planning Director of DDB, Sydney as well as her own brand and research consultancies. In 2015 she launched GroupTogether.com to join the Start Up world. GroupTogether is a group payment platform that takes the hassle out of collecting money from friends - particularly group gifts. It was used by one million Australians in 2022.

Ali's motivation, apart from taking the challenge of a start up, was to reduce the waste associated with gifting and encourage people to donate a portion of their group gift monies to charity. So far, GroupTogether has facilitated around $350k in donations, mostly to Australian causes.

Ali gained a classical marketing training at the global packaged goods company, Unilever. She moved into Strategy Planning at DDB and become a Director by the age of 29. She was responsible for McDonald’s brand strategy.

Ali then established her own research and brand strategy company, Submarine with clients such as Lotto, VW and Austar. She developed a toolbox of Brand strategy tools to generate ideas and gain consensus.

Throughout that time, her interest was always in using creativity and innovation for effectiveness and hence she co-foundered The Clinic, a consultancy to improve and measure the effectiveness of marketing.

She has been involved in all aspects of award winning advertising. She wrote her own TV commercial which was nominated for a London Advertising Award and has won several AFA Effectiveness Awards for campaigns including McDonald’s.

She has judged these AFA awards and lectured at the AFA’s Adschool.
Since 2017, she has been on the judging panel at UTS MBAe Venture Day.
In 2019 she joined the Hakoah board to redevelop White City.