I’m an independent strategist, writer, and advisor with two decades of experience spanning publishing, health, national standards, and the for-purpose sector. My career has taken me from network infrastructure to the boardroom, and from dancing metaphors to delivery metrics. Along the way, I’ve led transformation programs that actually transform—from enterprise delivery and cybersecurity uplift to cultural realignment and strategic governance reform.

I work with organisations that are stuck—not in effort, but in effectiveness. Sometimes that means untangling OKRs from organisational theatre. Sometimes it’s chairing a board through a legitimacy crisis. Sometimes it’s building a capability framework that doesn’t collapse under the weight of buzzwords.

I bring academic rigour (PhD in leadership, MBA in organisational behaviour), practical fluency (former Program Manager at Standards Australia and HarperCollins), and governance depth (Chair of tekFoundation and AICD-qualified). But more than that, I bring judgment: knowing when to push, when to pause, and when to quietly reframe the whole conversation.

As a writer and podcaster, I explore the forces shaping modern leadership—with a preference for clarity over cant, and the occasional classical reference to remind us we’ve been here before. Whether I’m working with a CEO, a delivery team, or a governing board, I bring structure, wit, and a bias toward action.

If your organisation needs fewer performances and more performance management—let’s talk.

Education

PhD (Leadership)
Macquarie University, 2022
Thesis Title: The Delegation of Power: Edmund Burke on Authority and Implications for Leadership

MBA
Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM), 2017
Focus: Philosophy and Psychology of Management, Strategic Management, Organisational Behaviour
Awards: Dean’s Certificate of Merit for Leadership and Motivation

GAICD
Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD), 2024

Reading That Inspires Me

Fiction

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Any of the Sherlock Holmes Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, though the novels The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Sign of Four are masterful

• The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes is a highly recommended edition for anyone wanting to know more about the historical setting of the stories

J. R. R. Tolkien

• The Hobbit
• The Lord of the Rings
• Beowulf

P. G. Wodehouse

• The Code of the Woosters
• Right Ho, Jeeves
• Leave It to Psmith

Oscar Wilde

• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• The Importance of Being Earnest

Stephen Fry

• The Hippopotamus

Non-Fiction

Niall Ferguson

• The War of the World
• The Square and the Tower
• Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe

Andrew Roberts

• Masters and Commanders
• Churchill
• George III

Steven Pinker

• The Language Instinct
• The Better Angels of Our Nature

Yuval Noah Harari

• Sapiens

Daniel Kahneman

• Thinking Fast and Slow

Tom Holland

• Dominion

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• Incerto

Hannah Arendt

• Between Past and Future
• The Origins of Totalitarianism
• The Life of the Mind

Michael Burleigh

• Sacred Causes

How I Do Computing

Environment

I work exclusivly on Apple hardware — my computer of choice is a MacBook Air (M2 chip) with a Studio Display, paired with an iWatch Ultra and iPhone Pro. I use Obsidian for my long form writing and note taking as it pairs wonderfully with Zotero for research projects and uses mark down files to future proof my work. Pandoc is my swiss-army knife to convert files from one markup format into another.

Privacy

Perhaps it is a creeping presbyopia, in which life seemed to afford a greater privacy in the past. Perhaps it is an increasing awareness of the intrusive nature of advertising and data mining. Whatever the cause, I have become a strong privacy advocate and try, difficult though it is at times, to Restore Privacy. But with Privacy Guides it can be done.

Safari for browsing—profiles keep browsing separate for topics like personal, banking, or research. Each profile has separate history, cookies, website data, extensions, Tab Groups, and favourites. And it all syncs beautifully across my devices.

• Vivaldi and Tor get honourable mentions

Brave for Search

• DuckDuckGo and Startpage get honourable mentions

Signal for messaging

• Element and Threema get honourable mentions

ProtonMail for email

• Infomaniak Email gets an honourable mention for those who don't need E2EE

ProtonVPN for VPN

Proton Drive for file storage

• kDrive gets an honourable mention for those who don't need E2EE
• NextCloud also gets an honourable mention for those willing to manage their own service

Mastodon for social posting

• While I understand the pull of the world's biggest social network, Stop Using Facebook has some compelling arguments if you haven't seen them...

PixelFed for social imaging

PeerTube for video

Ghost for blogging

• Write.as gets an honourable mention

For those looking for a Google Docs / Office.com replacement and don't want to manage a NextCloud instance: Infomaniak's kSuite and CryptPad offer a great suite of tools.