Business graduate, Dr James Fielding, has been recognised for his entrepreneurial leadership and service to UQ Ventures in the 2021 UQ Alumni Awards.
Meet Dr James Fielding
Distinguished Young Alumni Award for entrepreneurial leadership and service to UQ Ventures
Dr James Fielding is the Founder and CEO of Audeara, Founder and Director of Robotics Engineering Research Laboratories, Founder and Director of Yumm! Confectionary and Founder and former Director of Field Orthopaedics. He worked in a range of fields before pursuing medicine. Dr Fielding was based at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital before leaving full time clinical medicine to focus on the founding and development of his start-up, Audeara. Audeara headphones are the world’s first full-fidelity headphones with a built-in hearing test. The company has grown from a small, crowdfunded project in 2017 to a publicly listed company valued at $21M in 2021.
About UQ Ventures
UQ Ventures is the UQ community hub for entrepreneurship. Students and young alumni (graduated in last 10 years) connect, share learnings, practice pitches, get mentored, create, seek funding and find courses through UQ Ventures. UQ Ventures also runs programs for high school students and provides a vehicle for industry wanting to pursue innovation and entrepreneurship in partnership with us.
Favourite place on campus
Wordies Café – it’s where I met my wife.
Hearing the difference
We originally set out to make a medical device to perform hearing tests on people in a simple and effective way that would increase the availability and utilisation of hearing tests. Realising the capability of the platform we’d built, we became passionate about giving people an incredible sound experience regardless of their hearing health. Hearing aids focus on the spoken word but don’t offer a truly rich sound experience. By offering this enhanced and personalised hearing profile we can use entertainment as the hook to inform people about the importance of their hearing.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A concierge, I thought it would be cool to be the person that can get anything and have your finger on the pulse, Michael J Fox style.
Did you have a lightbulb moment during your degree that guided you on your career path?
My career path is slightly curvy and I was at UQ for 10 years, but during that time I was working in a hedge fund in New York choosing what I was going to nibble on for afternoon tea from the extensive office menu while my wife was working at the Brooklyn District Attorney Special Victims Unit bringing her own pencils and trying to stop cruelty and injustice. I realised I wasn’t in the right place and I came home to study Medicine.
Related links
- Dr Fielding recently joined a panel of UQ business alumni to share insiders' advice on pitching ideas to a boardroom.
- Meet UQ Alumni Awards winners for 2021 across all faculties
- Discover more about UQ Ventures for yourself or high school programs for your teenage children
- The Graduate Certificate in Executive Leadership completed by Dr Fielding is now offered as a Graduate Certificate in Business Administration and guarantees entry to the Diploma and Master of Business Administration. The Bachelor of Business Management continues.
