Nextgen Group hires Mick Lehmann to lead Canberra business

Nextgen Group has bolstered its investment in the public sector space hiring Mick Lehmann as its new general manager for government, based in Canberra. 

According to Nextgen, its public sector business contributed about 40 per cent of its total revenues in FY22, providing a substantial platform to increase investment and focus with an experienced and respected Canberra-based leader. 

Lehmann joins Nextgen from Splunk, where he was responsible for facilitating major business in the government sector. He also previously worked at multi-national military system integrators Northrop Grumman and Elbit Systems. 

Lehmann comes with a distinguished 32-year military career, retiring as a Colonel, during which he had many senior command and operational appointments including NATO, Afghanistan, the Australian Signals Directorate, and Commanding Officer of the Defence Intelligence Training Centre. 

Lehmann was awarded the Conspicuous Service Cross in 2013 for his outstanding achievements and leadership in Afghanistan.

“Nextgen’s involvement in the public sector has always been large but now we have decided to invest further with a strong, experienced, and influential leader in Mick,” Nextgen Group CEO John Walters said. 

“Our increased focus on influencing and supporting how all tiers of government and higher education move workloads into the cloud and protect their environments requires a differentiated and highly capable ecosystem of vendors, partners, and platforms. 

“We have worked hard to engage and develop all these three and now is the time to provide additional dedicated leadership to facilitate and accelerate the opportunity in front of us all.”

Lehmann added his reasons for joining Nextgen included “the satisfaction of working for an Australian company, particularly one that’s so inclusive of veterans. 

“There’s the calibre, inventiveness, and  richness of the vendors that Nextgen represents – many of them exclusively,” he said. “There’s the deep trust that our partners have earned solving the complex challenges of their global customers. 

“Mostly, however, it’s to help bring all these elements together to offer cloud, data, and cyber security futures for the government and, through them, Australia.”

Recently, Nextgen added cybersecurity automation vendor Forescout Technologies to its portfolio for Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ).