LEARN FROM EXECUTIVES WHO HAVE BEEN THERE
Our Executive Mentors are award-winning educators, senior leaders in major corporates, and on the boards of Australia’s largest companies. They have been hand-picked for their ability to help leaders, just like you, accelerate their leadership.
Executive Mentors are instrumental in the Executive Experience Day, providing advice, guidance and feedback on your performance in real time as an executive. They leverage their experience as top leaders and share these insights with you.
OUR EXECUTIVE MENTORS
MUSHFIQ RAHMAN
Executive General Manager, Valmec Limited
Mushfiq has had a range of roles in his career from owning his own computer services business to working in the energy and resource sectors in senior executive roles.
Mushfiq is a champion of Women in Engineering and aspiring leaders. He is the Deputy Chair of the University of Queensland Women in Engineering Alumni Council, serves on the Advisory Committee Board for Power of Engineering and mentors MBA and Engineering graduates.
BELINDA GIBSON
Business Adviser and Non Executive Director, Brisbane Airport, Ausgrid and Citi Group Australia
Belinda is a non-executive company director and a corporate consultant. She has extensive experience in business strategy, financial transactions, risk oversight, corporate governance and cultural change management.
One of her specialties is regulatory policy strategies for the financial industry and for infrastructure operators. Belinda has a mergers and acquisitions background as a corporate and securities lawyer with a global law firm for 25 years, before serving as the lead securities and markets regulator at ASIC through the 2008 global financial crisis.
TODD BATTLEY
Chief Strategy Officer, AECOM
Todd was the Chief Executive of AECOM Australia New Zealand for over 3 years prior to becoming Chief Strategy Officer at AECOM. He oversaw a sustained period of revenue and margin growth, while embracing workplace flexibility and the latest digital engineering practices.
Currently, Todd drives AECOM’s growth strategy by bringing the best of the company’s enterprise capability to key clients.
Todd has led the way in improving gender diversity across the infrastructure sector through his participation in Consult Australia’s Male Champions of Change.
JENINE BEEKHUYZEN
Founder and CEO, Tech Girls Movement Foundation
Dr. Jenine is a futurist and a diversity expert with many accolades for her work, most notably the 2019 Women in Digital UQ Business School Community Change Award, the 2017 Qld Pearcey Award for Entrepreneur of the Year, the 2016 Westpac/AFT Women of Influence and the 2016 Griffith University Sciences Alumnus of the Year. As one of Advance Queensland's Digital Champions two years in a row, she was named by the Sydney Morning Herald as a female rising star in ICT, and the 2014 AIIA iAward Winner Queensland ICT Woman of the Year.
She is an awardee of the Claudio Ciborra Award for Innovative Research, the University Award for Outstanding Teaching and Learning and the Medal of the Order of Australia for her contributions to Information Technology, and to women.
GAVIN BLAKEY
Chair of Board. Engineers Without Boarders Australia
Gavin spent over 29 years ensuring the city's assets were managed to provide the best possible services to the people of Brisbane prior to becoming Chair of Board at Engineers Without Borders Australia. Gavin is passionate about people - connecting, educating and empowering people through humanitarian engineering to improve community health, wellbeing and opportunity.
He is an awardee of the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for worldwide services to the community in communication and leadership development and National Emergency Medal for significant contributions to managing the response to the devastating floods in Brisbane in 2011.
WARWICK ABSOLON
Consumer Growth Market Client Executive, EY
Warwick spent 7 years as AECOM’s Innovation and Technology Manager in Brisbane before he became an executive in EY. He has managed and succeeded in running multi-faceted projects within large and diverse organisations, resolving multi-year tax audits in Canada, removing dormant legal entities in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, and driving a higher use of a contingent workforce.
He is passionate about helping people reach their full potential and has spoken at a number of industry conferences and events on topics such as increasing personal influence, developing an innovative culture, and how to think differently in a commercial setting.
SHAE MCDONALD
Owner, Wineglass Media
Shae is a skilled storyteller with more than 14 years' experience in media and communications. She has an extensive network of journalism contacts across both Queensland and Australia. She is also in the unique position in that she continues to work in the industry as a journalist for News Corp Australia, meaning she has an excellent understanding of news trends and topical issues.
Shae has worked in communications and marketing in both the private sector and government. She is a skilled writer who can produce content for a variety of different materials and audiences.
DAN SMITH
Managing Director, DS Consulting Services
Dan is passionate about leadership and helping organisations identify, attract and develop great leaders. With over 13 years of experience as a specialist in executive recruitment, Dan has helped organisations all over Australia and Internationally. He partners with leading organisations across Australia and Internationally to conduct retained executive search assignments to attract top leaders into key executive and Board roles.
BERNADETTE PAGE
Head of Human Resources (Interim), Ord Minnett
Bernadette is an accomplished commercial People leader with an extensive background in Generalist Human Resources, Talent and Team leadership. Currently, she has National Senior Leadership role leading a deeply professional, customer focused HR team at Ords. She is known as a trusted senior people leader who builds effective relationships at the Executive leadership level and across teams to deliver creative and pragmatic solutions in environments committed to enabling their people to achieve success.
Bernadette has a natural curiosity to be part of business change which has seen her gain much of her experience in diverse and innovative sectors undergoing significant disruption: Technology, Engineering, Financial Services & Health up to an international level.
NARAYAN SWAMY
Director, True Energy Pty Ltd
Narayan Swamy has 26 years of combined experience in manufacturing plant maintenance, process automation and design of renewable energy systems. He has developed control systems for various manufacturing applications and is experienced in the quality assurance of manufacturing process in cutting edge technologies as well as product development and testing. Under Narayan’s leadership, True Energy has designed and installed over five megawatts of solar PV capacity through their distributed rooftop systems connected to the grid. Narayan has worked as a subject matter expert with various organisations from SMB to multinational organisations.
JAMES WIJEMANNE
Partner, PWC Australia
James passion for the community is shown best in his current work where he and his team provides practical, fit for purpose solutions that are suited to the context in which their clients are operating.
His professional experience in the last 20 years includes Project Leadership, Project and Program Management, Transaction and Commercial Management, Engineering Design Management, and Construction Supervision of public transport and infrastructure projects across the private and public sector in Australia and New Zealand.
James has led major infrastructure projects and programs across all stages of the project lifecycle and successfully led large multidisciplinary project teams.
MELISSA DAVID
Head of Growth and Engagement, Clyne Partners Chartered Accountants
Melissa is the Head of Growth & Engagement at Clyne Partners, Co-Artistic Director at Brooklyn Runaways, former Vice Chair of Democrats Abroad in Victoria, a founder at Expat Women at Work, and on the board of Antipodes Theatre Company.
She is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Tennessee, which is currently in the top 10 programs of the world.
Now, she is founding a women's publication company with another incredible woman. She hopes to bring as many women into leadership as possible, and put resources back into the arts sector.
ROWAN KUNZ
CEO, Arts of Smarts Education
Rowan is currently leading the award-winning team at Art of Smart Education. In an increasingly fast-changing world of work, Art of Smart Education is on a mission to help 1,000,000 students answer the difficult question, “What do I do with my life when I finish school, and how do I get there?” Along the way, Rowan has launched with some incredible teams a number of Australian firsts in education, including Australia’s first education hackathon and the first student-generated ranking system of Australian universities.
Rowan has also won some cool awards, including being named Australia's Small Business Entrepreneur of the Year in 2019, one of Australia's ‘Young Gun Entrepreneurs’ by Dynamic Business, one of Australia’s Top ‘30 Under 30 Entrepreneurs’ by Anthill Magazine and an AMP Tomorrow Maker in 2017!
MANDY DANTE
Founder, Flourish Girl
Mandy Dante is the CEO & Founder of Flourish Girl. Mandy is an ex-speech pathologist, TEDx Speaker and an Australian Accredited Facilitator. Mandy is the first-senior female facilitator at The Rites of Passage Institute and is paving the way for their school programs for teenage girls across Queensland, Victoria and South Australia. To date, Mandy has worked with over 4000 teenage girls across Australia. Mandy's passion originated from being a speech pathologist, where she empowered children with a range of communication disorders to find their voice.
Towards the end of 2016, Mandy found that the rate of depression, anxiety and eating disorders amongst teenage girls were on a rise and it was at that moment that she found herself shifting her passion and focus towards giving teenage girls a voice. Mandy was voted Young Social Pioneer in 2018 for her work with Flourish Girl.
MARK GELL
Director and Co-Founder, Reputation Edge
Mark has provided senior counsel to boards and senior management for over 30 years. He is experienced in working with both the private and public sectors, for large corporates as well as owning and running advisory businesses. He specialises in developing the right strategy and managing the execution of projects to successful outcomes. He is an experienced director having participated on both private, publicly listed, industry representative and not for profit boards, a number of which he has chaired.
Some of the companies Mark has been on the leadership team of include ANI, TNT, Boral, Telstra, OneSteel, Lend Lease and Jemena. Over the last ten years Mark has advised CEOs and Chairs from Leightons, Wesfarmers, Boral, Worley, Atlas Arteria, Caltex and Marsh International. Mark has also been a senior advisor to a Head of State.