Where work is real.
National programmes across 600+ KFC restaurants, then Qantas fleet presentation — service standards, cost control, and a lead role in the A380 entry. The lesson that runs under everything since: systems and change land at the frontline or they don’t land at all.
From running the work to building the people.
The pivot: National Manager, Organisational Development across 7,000+ employees, designing a national frontline leadership programme for 400+ leaders through major operational and technology change. Leadership stopped being a quality of individuals and became an operational system.
OD, by project.
The specialist proving ground — engaged after the Commonwealth Bank acquisition to align leadership expectations, organisation design and capability for a 2,200-person retail workforce. A bounded engagement with an unbounded lesson: structure follows clarity, and a designer’s job is to leave the design owned by the line.
The generalist decade.
The first generalist chair at Gate Gourmet — Head of HR & Learning across ANZ, carrying the enterprise agreement agenda. Then NSW Treasury, generalist and OD in one seat: engagement to the 75th percentile, retention from 60% to 80%, culture moved from consultant-led to leader-owned. Then Transport for NSW — partnering at 13,000+ in a safety-critical system.
Moving a workforce without breaking it.
Home to South Australia. Operating-model and strategic workforce planning on Ventia’s all-of-government facilities contract; then the Integration Management Office for the new Adelaide University — end-to-end workforce transition for ~2,000 staff inside an 8,000-employee merger, and Day 1 live, with no disputes. This was also where augmentation entered my own practice.
The practice, in the open.
An HR turnaround: senior People & Culture leadership for a ~2,000-person scientific and clinical workforce in the SA public sector — full business-as-usual carried from day one while realigning the partnering model, AI-enabled from the inside. Twenty years of learning, now activated as open, de-identified cases anyone can read before they engage.