Meet our People

Mark is the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Partner of Gadens. A qualified lawyer, Mark has a wealth of experience in building and managing high-performance law firms and teams.

Mark joined Gadens from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), where he was a practising lawyer and sat on PwC’s legal leadership team. Mark was a managing (and founding) partner of Clifford Chance in Australia and its predecessor firm Chang, Pistilli & Simmons. He was the managing partner Sydney of Clifford Chance, a member of the Clifford Chance Asian Leadership Group, a member of the global corporate strategy team, and a joint global head of the mining group.

Prior to founding Chang, Pistilli & Simmons in 2006, Mark was with the Allens Arthur Robinson group and then Atanaskovic Hartnell, where he was a partner and managing partner for 7 years.

Mark has been building and leading legal teams, and giving legal advice in the Boardroom and to deal and legal teams, for almost 30 years. He has worked across legal practice (including in mergers and acquisitions, major projects, strategic advisory and litigation), across industries (including energy and infrastructure, agriculture and health) and across geographies.

Outside of legal practice, Mark also managed the Central Pastoral Group and “Central Farm” (an agricultural venture involved in the breeding of thoroughbred horses (with some 150 broodmares) and cattle, and managing significant landholdings) for seven years. He has also been heavily involved in not for profit initiatives, and has been a director of the Abbeyfield Society (an organisation which provides non-hostel housing for elderly people) and Factory 49 (an organisation providing galleries and artist residences in Sydney, Paris and New York for modern movement artists).

Mark is a Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia, and was – until recently – a national director of the Australian Mining and Petroleum Law Association (AMPLA), and its President in New South Wales. Mark was also part of the Port Adelaide Football Club business advisory group. In 2023, Mark was named Law Firm Leader of the Year at the Australasian Law Awards.