The Zeald Directors

David Kelly


David Kelly is CEO of Zeald.com





To be the chief executive of a highly successful and fast growing company at the age of 28, is no mean feat.

To be the chief executive of a highly successful and fast growing company at the age of 28, is no mean feat. But for those who are familiar with David’s talents and abilities, this achievement comes as no surprise.

David is a dynamic, inspirational leader and a powerful speaker and a passionate advocate of the Internet and the results it can bring. David has a humble attitude and doesn’t like biographies like this because he strongly believes that the true strength of a company is in its team, not in its leader.

“The leaders who work most effectively never say 'I'. And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say 'I'. They don't think 'I'. They think 'we'; they think 'team'. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but 'we' gets the credit. – Peter F Drucker

David has been a high achiever from an early age – gifted academically, athletically and musically. He has been blessed with a huge amount of energy, as well as perseverance and determination. His family moved around New Zealand a number of times during his childhood including stints in Auckland, Ngaruawahia (near Hamilton), Auckland again and Wellsford before settling at the beach in Mangawhai Heads. David completed his college education from home via correspondence (New Zealand Correspondence School) where he obtained bursary (7th Form) and promptly set off to the ‘big smoke’ to attend university.

David completed a Bachelor of Information Sciences at Massey University in Albany receiving the prestigious top Massey scholar award at his graduation. He then attended Excel School of Performing Arts to pursue one of his other passions – performance music – completing a Certificate in Performance Music in bass guitar and vocals.

During his time at university David was fascinated by the emergence of the Internet and the way that it was changing the world in many different areas – especially sales and marketing.

It was this fascination, combined with a strong interest in commerce, which resulted in David founding Zeald.com in the year 2000 with two business partners – his cousin, Hamish Braddick and his brother, Brent.

David leads the team at Zeald.com, playing a major part in setting the company’s strategy and planning the execution of those strategies by the Zeald.com team. He is hands on, taking an active part in developing the capabilities of the business and its people. David is passionate about running, growing and maintaining a business that is truly ‘world-class’ and all the facets that come with that endeavour.

David is happily married to Lisa and they are expecting their first child. He has a love affair with the sea and enjoys all water activities including surfing, fishing, boating and scuba diving. He also enjoys many land-based sports including rugby, rugby league and cricket (like all good Kiwis).

David has been very active in music over the years playing in many different bands including the popular NZ rock band Mozelee and the Sarah Brown Band. Regretfully, this activity has had to take a back seat to Zeald.com business in recent times.

David is also very active in the martial arts holding rankings in Ninjutsu and Brazillian Jiu Jitsu. He is desperately trying to learn how to play golf so he can keep up with those many other Zeald.com golfers like Brendan, Ron, Brent, and Peter, to name just a few!


Brent is Research & Development Director





Brent is David Kelly’s younger brother and founded Zeald.com with David and Hamish Braddick back in the Year 2000. Brent has an extremely sharp intellect and a quick wit and can often be heard giving someone a hard time (in jest) around the office.

Similarly to David, Brent is also very gifted academically, athletically and musically (and according to Brent, much better looking). When Brent was 10, his parents were called to a school meeting to be informed that Brent had an IQ that was in the top 1% of the world!

Brent attended Rodney College in Wellsford but left school when he was 16, against the advice of his teachers, having completed the majority of his college schooling and wanting to “get on with it”. He attended Massey University in Albany, topping the university in many different subjects including accounting, finance, management, marketing, economics, computer science and information systems. Despite many invitations from different university departments, he decided to pursue computer science and upon his graduation he received the prestigious Massey Scholar award a year after his brother David had received the same award for the same degree.

Brent then joined Hamish and David in founding Zeald.com. Brent is the Research and Development Director at Zeald.com and is in charge of product research and development. He has played a critical part in the development of Zeald.com and has been directly responsible for planning and developing most of their products and some of the most critical systems utilised by the Zeald.com team. Brent is passionate about the Internet and how it can be successfully utilised by a business to make steady, ongoing incremental improvements to business results.

Brent has had music in his veins from a young age. He could be found playing in shows in different venues from the age of 14 onwards. He is a gifted drummer and a talented singer and also plays the guitar and the piano. He has played in many bands over the years including the popular NZ rock band Mozelee with his brother David.

Brent grew up near the beach at Mangawhai Heads and loves the water. He is a keen surfer, scuba diver and fisherman with many good catches to his name (20Ib snappers and 35lb kingi’s). He went through school representing the school in just about every sport offered including rugby, cricket, volleyball, basketball, hockey, and athletics and so on. Working life however has curbed his sporting activities somewhat although he still actively plays volleyball, squash and golf.

Brent has a very energetic son, Regan, who is five years old and has just started school proving unstoppable. Regan (like his Dad) loves computer games (especially the shooting ones) and can often be heard earnestly telling someone how awesome he is at certain games or telling his Dad what he needs to do to stop dying!

Hamish Braddick - Design Director







Hamish completed his college schooling to bursary (7th Form) level. At college he excelled in two subjects that were at the opposite ends of the spectrum – art & engineering. Accordingly, Hamish faced a very difficult decision deciding on a career but finally settled on art/design – although his engineering interests were to have a substantial impact later in his career.

After his high school studies, Hamish completed a degree in graphic design from the Auckland University of Technology. He then moved to Christchurch to locate himself closer to many of New Zealand’s great ski-fields and pursue his recreational passion for snowboarding. On arriving in Christchurch he quickly landed a role working as a T-shirt illustrator for a souvenir t-shirt company called Goose's T-Shirts. During his time with that company, he was recognised as one of the countries leading souvenir T-shirt illustrators, winning a number of New Zealand ‘Pride in Print’ awards.

In the nineties Hamish was captivated by the emergence of the Internet and started to broaden his skills by teaching himself web design. He worked full-time in New Zealand as a freelance website designer before departing for the far shores of England.

Soon after arriving in England, Hamish landed a role as the Website Design Director for a high-profile design agency - Yoyo Creative, now know as Rok Advertising. Yoyo specialised in beautiful designs with lots of animation and much ‘razzle dazzle’. During his time with Yoyo, Hamish worked on some highly recognised and respected international projects such as the UK Drum & Bass Awards, Norcor, Hostmark, Bateman & Chapman and Motorsport UK. His designs were highly regarded and were featured in the UK Create Online magazine being also awarded the worldwide Flashkit Website of Month award.

Towards the end of his time with Yoyo, Hamish began to realise the futility of website design without a practical business purpose. Apart from winning design awards, the websites were hard to use, provided minimal results for the client, little return on investment and there was no method for measuring the effectiveness or the result achieved.

At this time Hamish became deeply interested in the field of website usability (developing user-friendly websites) and started learning as much as he possibly could about this area – building a substantial library on the topic and attending many seminars. Over this time his engineering bent came to the fore as he focused intensely on website design that not only looked good but was highly functional and achieved results – something that very few website designers place any emphasis on.

It was about this time that Hamish received a phone call from David Kelly in New Zealand. David explained that he was setting up a new website design company and wanted Hamish to be a key part of it. Hamish was missing home and especially the NZ surf and the snow and so after a tour of Europe, he headed for home.

Hamish became one of the founders of Zeald.com and is the creative director of the company. He has personally designed the majority of the website templates and the functional flow that is a feature of all Zeald.com websites. He has also played a substantial part in the development of many of Zeald.com’s products and services.

Hamish lives with his partner Christine and their small son Leon in Torbay, Auckland. Hamish loves his surfing (longboards) and has surfed most of New Zealand’s best breaks. He is in the process of teaching Leon to swim so he can introduce him to the waves as soon as possible. Hamish is also a keen snowboarder having boarded all the popular NZ ski-fields and many of the lesser known club fields. He fancies himself as a bit of a home handyman and can often be found on the weekends working on some new home renovation.