Susan Barrera
Susan Barrera worked for over 30 years in a number of senior management and policy positions in the Western Australian public sector. Her last position was Director General, Department for Communities. Prior to that she was Executive Director, Labour Relations. She also held senior policy and management positions in the Department of Premier and Cabinet and Corrective Services. She currently works as a consultant specialising in training, human resource, organisational development and evaluation. She also lectures part time at Murdoch University and the University of WA in industrial relations and management.
David Bartlett
The Hon. David Bartlett is the former Premier of Tasmania. Before entering politics, David had a successful career in the information technology, telecommunications and innovation sectors. During his time as Tasmania’s 43rd Premier, David championed his home state for its natural strengths in water, renewable energy, high value food and primary industries, tourism and high-speed telecommunications.
Greg Bayne
Greg has a passion for leadership and maximising the potential of both individuals and groups. He has worked in the corporate arena as a psychologist, a management consultant and a coach. He holds a Masters in Counselling Psychology (Cum Laude), in addition to an undergraduate degree in education and an honours degree in Psychology and has been assisting people to achieve their personal capability for over 13 years. Greg has combined his training in psychology with his unique experience as an elite athlete and coach, to achieve incredible results with individuals and groups from the corporate sector.
Alistair Box
Alistair is a registered psychologist, experienced facilitator and coach. Commencing his career within the public sector as a rehabilitation consultant for WorkCover WA, Alistair has also worked as an employee assistance counsellor with PrimePsych where he has over 11 years’ experience including 5 years as Operations Manager and General Manager. Alistair is an engaging facilitator who draws on his past experiences and formal education in leadership and management to provide both colour and theoretical relevance in his workshops.
Glenys Collard
Kim Cullen
Kim is an exceptionally skilled facilitator and coach with over 10 years professional coaching and consulting with individual and groups. She possesses significant experience coaching and facilitating at multiple levels from frontline to senior executives in both the public and private sector.
An exceptionally talented facilitator, Kim enjoys working with teams and large groups where she knows she can have a broad impact on people’s lives. More recently, her expertise has been sought after in the media to comment on psychological matters in her realm of expertise.
Kim has an extraordinary ability to relate to a broad range of individuals whether it be one-on-one in a coaching capacity, in facilitated workshops or through the media lens.
As a psychologist Kim is particularly concerned with mental health in the workplace and regularly facilitates workshops throughout Western Australia in this area. She has a firm belief that those who are physically, mentally and emotionally well perform at their best and support others to do the same.
Rick Cummings
Rick Cummings is an Emeritus Professor in the Sir Walter Murdoch Graduate School of Public Policy and International Affairs at Murdoch University. Rick has over 30 years experience leading program and policy evaluations, conducting workshops in evaluation theory and practice, and currently teaches public policy research and evaluation at the Sir Walter Murdoch Graduate School. Rick is a past President of the Australian Evaluation Society and was made a Fellow of the Society in 2013.
Rhys Edwards
Rhys was the Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet in Tasmania for six years (2008-2014) and has held numerous senior public sector positions as well as roles as a Ministerial adviser. Rhys is an experienced organisational leader and has worked at the highest levels of the public service for over 16 years. Rhys is passionate about great leadership in organisations and has driven reform agendas across many areas of government. He has a strong background in governance, central agency leadership, energy policy, industry development and major project facilitation.
Tanya Finnie
Tanya Finnie is a global cultural strategist with expertise in building meaningful relationships and instilling confidence within individuals. As multi award winner, who worked on every continent, Tanya brings global experience pertaining to culture and diversity. Tanya assists organisations to increase their cultural intelligence and grow their human capital, to be more collaborative and leverage their diversity. She is a TEDx speaker (2020), certified Global Goodwill Ambassador and voted as one of Perth’s Top 100 Small Business Influencers (2016). As a long-standing mentor for UWA postgraduate students and mentor to CALD communities on boards via the Office of Multicultural Interests (OMI), she loves giving back. She is also the founder of the two-day Diversity and Inclusion Summit. Tanya creates custom executive development programs, specifically focused on high-performance culture, to provide individuals and organisations with creative solutions and a competitive advantage.
John Harman
John Harman has written for living all his working life. An ex-Fleet Street journalist, John is also a script writer, having written scripts for many popular UK television series. He is also a novelist, with a series of crime thrillers to his name, and is the author of more than 30 non-fiction books. John has lectured extensively at UWA, at The University of Cambridge UK, at UCLA Davis in the United States, and as an adjunct senior lecturer in the School of Communications and Contemporary Arts at ECU. John specialises is conducting workshops for companies and for Federal, State and Local Government on: simple and effective writing skills; presenting skills, basic grammar and punctuation; speed reading, and effective workplace communications.
Nicole Heffernan
Nicole is an internationally accredited executive coach and human performance improvement specialist with over 10 years’ experience working across a range of organisational settings as a consultant, coach, therapist and facilitator/trainer.
Driven by her passion for helping people to achieve the highest version of themselves, she is known for her ability to work with the most challenging and difficult to engage individuals.
Nicole has worked in a diverse range of industries during her career, including retail, hospitality, construction, mining, oil and gas, finance, agriculture, foster care services and charities. She also has significant experience working cross-culturally having facilitated programs in South Africa, Namibia, Belgium and Singapore. Nicole has a particular interest in the area of safety leadership and building a strong safety culture. She has provided consulting to numerous organisations in this area and has facilitated transformational safety leadership programs and coaching.
Nicole specialises in applying recent research in Psychology and Neuroscience to address everyday challenges for organisations and their people.
Claire Kennedy
Claire has worked in the field of health and safety for nearly 20 years. She has assisted many organisations to upgrade or develop their safety systems in practical ways that ensure worker safety and compliance with relevant legislation. Claire has worked across all tiers of government including in a regulatory role and as a consultant developing and improving safety systems and delivering training initiatives.
Patricia Konigsberg
Darja Kragt
Dr Darja Kragt is a Lecturer in Work Psychology at the University of Western Australia. She is also a leadership consultant, program facilitator, speaker and author. Darja’s research focuses on developing leadership skills and competencies, particularly how identity and implicit beliefs shape leadership behaviour and effectiveness. She regularly conducts unconscious bias training for public and private organisations.
Susan Kurtjak
Susan has over 30 years’ experience in Commonwealth Government. Before starting her own consultancy in 2012, Susan held the senior position of Regional Director of the Australian Public Service Commission in WA/SA/NT. She brings a good balance of ‘operational and ‘senior management’ experience to her workshops and has managed large scale change management projects and handled downsizing, skill retention projects and positive transition exercises. Susan is a skilled HR strategist, trainer and course designer and has expertise in turning theory into practical solutions in the workplace. She has a Executive Masters in Public Administration and a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment.
Melissa Langdon
Dr Melissa Langdon is an accredited executive coach and award-winning training facilitator who specialises in leadership, communications, and engagement. She works with emerging leaders through to executives from Australia’s leading companies and organisations. Dr Langdon has held management roles in state and federal government and is an experienced Senior Lecturer in Communications and Media. She is the Chair and Director of several boards and is an Adjunct Professor at Curtin University. In addition to over 20 years of professional experience, Dr Langdon has a PhD in Communications and Cultural Studies, Masters of Philosophy, and Certificate IV in Workplace and Business Coaching. She has been an emcee and keynote speaker at many national and international conferences including TEDxPerth, The Cyber West Summit, The Agents of Change Ministerial Conference, EduTech, and The Social Impact Festival. Dr Langdon is committed to helping people thrive at work and in their personal lives.
Amberley Laverick
Amberley has 10 years experience teaching literacy in the UK, Kenya and Australia to young adults and professionals. She has also worked in the mental health sector, coordinating and delivering prevention programs throughout Australia. Through this work Amberley recognises the barriers people may face developing their writing skills and this combination of teaching and industry experience gives Amberley the insight and ability to engage with professionals from a range of backgrounds, with her facilitation style focused on group learning and interaction.
Michael Mancinone
Michael is an Executive Coach and Facilitator with a Masters of Psychology and is accredited in Mental Health First Aid and iEQ9 Assessments
Michael’s ultimate vision is for his client organisations to achieve the very best in performance, engagement, and motivation. He leans into the challenge of asking the hard questions, constructively encouraging individuals and teams to overcome development areas, to utilise strengths, and to enhance teamwork.
He is experienced across one-on-one, leadership, and team coaching, and on a more macro level, has implemented culture and engagement initiatives, onboarding and development programs, implemented skills and behavioural testing, structured and conducted recruitment processes, and led succession and career planning initiatives.
Michael has experience across companies from all sectors, of all sizes. This has provided him with unparalleled insight to the unique challenges faced by SME, Enterprise, Government, and Not-for-Profit organisations, and an understanding of the best way to approach each.
We spend a large proportion of our lives at work; Michael’s goal is to ensure this is an enjoyable, fulfilling, and successful experience for all.
Faye Martin
Faye is an energetic, powerful coach and facilitator who uses the science and application of positive psychology to challenge mindsets, habits and beliefs that prevent leaders, teams and organisations from being their best more often.
Using a strengths and values-based approach Faye’s passion is to work with leaders and teams to increase performance and team effectiveness.
Whether it’s leadership development, team alignment or coaching, Faye will use her strengths of ‘mission’ and ‘growth’ to inspire and motivate clients to develop goals, pathways and actions that will create positive and sustainable change.
Faye believes that at the core, individuals need to be thriving for teams and organisations to be high performing. Faye helps identify where this is not happening and supports individuals and teams to work through challenges and setbacks to establish what thriving looks like and create a development pathway forward.
Heather McGregor-Bayne
Leadership and Facilitation Experience: Heather McGregor-Bayne is an experienced Sport Psychologist, Facilitator and Executive Coach with over 20 years professional experience. Having worked at the West Australian Institute of Sport for two Olympic cycles, Perth Women’s Scorchers and Tennis Australia she has an appreciation and comprehensive understanding on how to get people to be their best selves.
Heather has also worked with a broad range of private, public, and not for profit organisations and senior leaders to facilitate the shift in personal performance and importantly, culture. She fundamentally believes that leadership and culture are the foundation of well-being, plus both individual and organisational performance.
Heather is passionate about helping individuals and teams reach high performance and has significant experience working with a vast array of leaders, teams, and employees to build environments which bring out the best in each individual.
Theo Nabben
Theo has been an evaluator in the Western Australian public service and private practice for 20 years. He led an evaluation that won the IPAA Australian Evaluation Society Best Practice in Public Service Evaluation award in 2021. In September 2024 he was recognised as a Fellow of the Australian Evaluation Society for his long term contribution to evaluation in Australia and internationally. His international experience includes extensive work across diverse sectors in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Middle East. Theo has delivered at least 60 training courses related to evaluation.
Since 2006 Theo has delivered numerous Introduction to Evaluation and Program Logic/Theory of Change courses for government departments and Not for Profits in Australia and internationally. A recent example is his facilitation of two Theory of Change workshops in Jordan for a national social protection program.
Theo is interested in novel and participatory Monitoring and Evaluation approaches and is a passionate trainer and advocate of the Most Significant Change (MSC) technique nationally and internationally. Since 2011 he has delivered MSC training via IPAA and the WA Council of Social Services. Theo has extensive experience in MSC, having used it in over 20 assignments and is one of the most experienced Western Australians in the use of the MSC technique. He was a member of an International Resource Panel project piloting complexity-aware monitoring and evaluation approaches, including MSC, for USAID.
Seth Nicholls
Dr. Seth Nicholls is a policy and decision strategist and the Director of Nicholls Consulting Services. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Nicholls has worked extensively in academia (as a lecturer in international relations, political science and public policy); as well as in state and federal government (as a principal policy and project officer) and as a consultant to the South Australian, Victorian, New South Wales, Tasmanian and Northern Territory public sectors. Dr. Nicholls’ work has been published in high quality, peer reviewed journals and he holds a PhD in public policy from the University of Adelaide. He is also a graduate of Stanford University’s internationally-renowned Strategic Decision and Risk Management program.
Paul O’Connor
Paul spent six years in private practice as a lawyer before joining a Commonwealth agency to provide advice on administrative law matters. He has over 20 years’ experience as an SES officer in Commonwealth and State agencies and his roles have involved the management of workplace investigations. Paul has held senior positions within the WA Department of Education, the Corruption and Crime Commission, WA (Director of Legal Services) and the Office of the Public Sector Commissioner, WA (Head of Legal Services working directly to current and past Public sector Commissioners).
Kath Polglase
Kath Polglase is an executive coach and consulting psychologist. Kath’s focus is on maximising performance and enhancing the well-being of individuals and teams. With a master’s degree in counselling psychology, post graduate qualifications in education and strong managerial experience, Kath offers a professional and positive outlook to motivating staff, developing leaders and inspiring untapped potential in individuals and groups. Kath is an experienced and skilled trainer and facilitator who believes learning should be interactive and fun.
Teresa Riccio-Goodwin
Jamie Robertson
Jamie is a business systems transformation facilitator with 20 years’ experience leading strategy and engagement design across government, industry and community sectors. This is supplemented by senior executive experience and global influence as Australasia’s representative on the Global Standards Advisory Council for B Corporations. He has successfully managed three innovative start-ups to deliver technology solutions in regional Western Australia, capacity building in remote Aboriginal Communities and transformation through engagement. Since 2006, he has been the Principal Consultant at 361 Degrees Strategic Engagement Services. He has nationally recognised training credentials and extensive experience designing and delivering training in tertiary and professional development environments.
Jan Saggers
While in government, Jan worked for seven agencies in research and policy roles and spent one year as Executive Officer to the Ministerial Taskforce on the Condition and Status of Teaching. Since leaving government in 1995, Jan has consulted back to government on a variety of projects involving strategic people management, policy development, organisational design, systems review and executive selection and remuneration.
Catherine Sambell
Karen Schwenke
Karen has over twenty years experience in public and private sector companies, providing services in project support, organisational and managerial development, quality and risk management, training and human resources. She has worked with Team Leaders and Middle Managers in designing and implementing change programs in many industries.
Sexual Health Quarters (SHQ)
Sexual Health Quarters (SHQ) is a leading provider of specialist services in sexual and reproductive health in WA since its inception in 1972. SHQ is an independent, non-for-profit organisation which aims to promote sexual health and wellbeing to all Western Australians. SHQ has provided LGBTIQA+ diversity and inclusion training as component for all its training courses for professionals such as doctors, nurses, police officers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Educational Officers, teachers, youth workers, counsellors, and allied health professionals. In response to emerging market need, SHQ created our stand-alone LGBTIQA+ diversity training for professionals and workplaces to be more inclusive of diverse staff and clients. LGBTIQA+ Diversity Training is delivered by experienced facilitators with over 50 years’ experience in education and training.
Lesley Smith
Lesley has enjoyed a successful career as a member of the public sector in Victoria and Western Australia. She has over thirty years of executive and senior management experience. She has worked as an executive director, business strategist, policy manager, and professional writer. Further information is available at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-smith-b4890b50/. Lesley has extensive experience developing and reviewing a range of public-sector business documents. She has prepared strategic plans, environmental scans, policy documents, budget submissions, business cases and tenders, ministerial briefings and correspondence. She has also prepared material for and led the development of annual reporting activities for government departments, statutory authorities, and universities. Lesley has completed research and investigations, developed policies and programs, and prepared associated documentation. She has completed training in the Australian Business Excellence Framework and implemented the approach in government agencies. She is experienced in a soft systems approach to addressing complex problems. Lesley is also a qualified and experienced workplace trainer and assessor who has delivered government writing programs for IPAAWA for over six years and received excellent feedback. She believes lifelong learning is essential for people to realise their potential and enjoy satisfying careers in turbulent times.
Amelia Twiss
Amelia is an experienced psychologist, leadership coach and team development consultant who works with CEOs and senior leaders who want to guide their teams well and make a meaningful impact through their work. Her experience spans the private and public sectors including mining, oil and gas, professional services, tertiary education, health, logistics and government. Her expertise is in organisational psychology, team development, coaching psychology, lifestyle medicine and psychometrics.
Amelia is a Non-Executive Director and Fellow of the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine. She is an MBA Leadership Consultant for Deakin University and a Subject Matter Expert for the Psychology of motivation and work for RMIT Online. She also acts as Psychologist Onboard offshore oil and gas installations, facilitates workshops on Wellbeing and Fitness for Work at mining camps across the Pilbara and conducts psychological adaptability assessments for the Australian Antarctic Division.
Hannah van Didden
Hannah has over 18 years experience in business, communications, planning and program/project management in government and private consultancy, with formal qualifications in business (BCom, MBus) and project management (PRINCE2 Practitioner). Known for her personable approach, energy, and ability to get results, she has realised high value projects as a Project Manager, Program Manager and PMO Manager across diverse areas including: ICT development and reform, procurement, construction, policy and legislation, human resources, ethics, community engagement, and business strategy. Hannah’s engaging style and varied expertise make for a memorable and highly applicable learning experience.
Doug Watson
Doug has specialised in developing and delivering contract management training for the last 10 years. He has worked extensively at both a state and local government level with contracts covering goods, service, works and ICT. With over 25 years of vocational experience in finance, insurance, recruitment and hospitality, Doug can draw on a wide range of practical experiences in contract management to make concepts relevant for participants.
George Wilkinson
George is a management consultant and project manager with over fifteen years’ experience working in strategy execution, change management, facilitation and business analysis. He is passionate about partnering with clients to implement their strategy and vision. George’s career spans a variety of international settings and industries including healthcare, the public sector, agriculture, higher education and finance. As relates to this course, George has particular experience working within, as well as implementing, organisational cultures that enable the productivity of remote teams (aka: virtual productivity).