Twenty years working through complexity.
My career has run through government consulting and higher education leadership, with an earlier stretch in financial services, and the common thread has always been the same: translating intent into practical, sustainable outcomes.
What I do now
I’m a Senior Manager at Parbery Consulting in the Change and Communications team, where I support clients across the Commonwealth with advice on complex reform and on realising the benefits a program was funded for. My work typically involves helping senior leaders clarify direction and move from policy intent to operational reality.
I’ve led enterprise-wide change and readiness programs across Defence and other Commonwealth environments, including work connected to the 2023 Strategic Review and the National Defence Strategy, and I have written the words that carried them.
Recent work
- Defence Commercial Framework refresh. Change and communications lead for the rewrite of the rules that guide around half of Defence procurement. I ran the delivery workstream and took every milestone through to acceptance and handover.
- Defence Preparedness Management System. Led the enterprise change for the new platform across Defence, from readiness assessment through to end-user training and the transition off legacy tools.
- ADF National Resilience Agenda. Wrote the communications strategy and the narrative for national mobilisation, with artefacts for Defence and for every level of government the effort reaches.
- Executive coaching. Strategic communication for Senior Executive Service officers and for one- and two-star ADF commanders.
- University systems transformation. As a General Manager at the Australian National University, led enterprise platform implementations from HR to finance, a student systems overhaul that lifted on-time scholarship disbursement from 18 to 96 per cent, and a $100 million social sciences precinct.
Where I’ve been
Before consulting, I held executive leadership roles in higher education, where I led major business and ICT systems transformation, from enterprise platform implementation to significant capital projects. Earlier in my career I worked in legal and compliance management in financial services.
This breadth of experience gives me a perspective that most consultants in a single lane don’t have. I understand governance and delivery, and the people around a project, as parts of the same challenge rather than as separate disciplines.
Beyond the boardroom
I’m also a Captain in the NSW Rural Fire Service, serving on Yuin Country. The fireground has shaped how I lead in ways that no boardroom ever could. When lives and property are on the line, you learn to think clearly under pressure and to say exactly what you mean.
I bring that same approach to my consulting work: a bias toward action, and a focus on outcomes that are credible and grounded in operational reality.
The other thing I do at Braidwood is write. My poems circle the same country the brigade covers, and in 2026 they started to travel. ‘Bogong’ won the Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Prize, ‘Hecuba’ came second in the Winchester Poetry Prize, and others were shortlisted for the Bridport, Robert Gray, ACU and Wells prizes. The consulting and the poems ask the same thing of me: precision, and an ear for how words sound to the people who have to hear them. There is more on the Poetry page.
How I think, in writing
