Stuart Barton is the General Manager of Corporate Marketing and Communications at wealth manager Challenger Limited.

Originally trained as a corporate and financial markets lawyer, Stuart deferred his interest in the creative professions and chose instead to commence his career with a six-year stint in technology investment banking and venture capital with Macquarie Bank in Sydney, San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

The dot com boom and bust saw Stuart return home to become Chief Executive Officer of software start-up and Macquarie investee company, Intermine Limited.

After one-too-many sleepless nights on a cold Canberra garage floor, Stuart decided to embark on the career he always dreamed of and transition smoothly into strategic communications, going agency-side for four years to specialise in corporate finance communications when the markets were booming.

Several months before the credit crisis of 2007, he was asked by investment bank, private bank and asset manager UBS Australia to act as the Head of Marketing and Communications.

In late 2008 during the depths of the GFC, Stuart was appointed to the role of Head of Marketing and Communications for the then-diversified, ASX-listed financial group Challenger Financial Services Limited, where he has since led the group's brand, advertising, PR, media relations and corporate issues management activities during its streamlining and refocus on the retirement product space.

His first consumer advertising campaign, 2011's "Real Stories", was instrumental in driving Challenger's record annuity sales growth and won six awards including a 2012 Australian Effie Award, 2012 Australian Marketing Institute Marketing Program of the Year and 2011 Rainmaker Sales and Marketing Excellence Award.

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