Testimonials (cont.)
"Julie was recommended to me by a well respected professional board member who knows the industry well. Having completed the search, when our Chairman Alan Cameron asked for a Board review, Julie was included on the list and won in a competitive process.
We have a high calibre Board with a wide range of expertise and governance experience, so it's an important exercise to conduct we call an 'annual health check'. I think her work added enormous value... She had a clear understanding of public sector governance, and was able to separate the role of a Board from a Government Committee managing a project. This included understanding how to manage government when they occasionally may not understand that difference."
Angus Dawson CEO, Growth Centres Commission
"We were doing an AICD course, and as a lecturer we were impressed with we asked Julie if she would facilitate a one day strategic workshop for the business involving some of our board members and all of our senior management. She's very good - we've been through some strategic planning processes in the last 18 months, so we needed to touch on those, update this agenda based on recent thinking, and develop some action plans on moving forward.
It was a well structured day. Her style is very comfortable, she's easy to listen to, is efficient in her delivery, polite - just a very good presenter. During these sessions, it's important to get the right balance between talking and listening. Julie was good at extracting important information from the group. There was sometimes heated discussion and debate that happened because of Julie's management of the day and each participant.
We wouldn't have been able to get the outcomes we wanted without her. The session gave the whole group tremendous clarity, we developed action plans, established accountability, and each senior manager had a thorough understanding of the roles each needed to play to achieve the company's goals over the next 18 months."
Jannine Jackson General Manager, Sir David Martin Foundation
Jannine is a Non-Executive Director of an Australian NGO
"Julie presented towards the end of a very long Board meeting. I have to say her presentation was fabulous. It provided a good insight into our role as Directors that at the time made us sit up and take notice. As Directors, she told us what we should know, and while we all knew about governance at a surface level, she added an extra depth of understanding. After her session, the tone of the meeting changed, and as Directors it assisted our thinking and questioning. Her advice and information changed our focus from what we thought we should be focusing on to the issues that we realised we had to focus on. "
"The presentation helped me personally in terms of my own role as a Director. She made me more aware of what I should be doing as a Director and what I need to be taking responsibility for in that role. I'm now doing a lot more reading on issues related to my Board role and being far more proactive in finding out information I should be aware of. "
She was entertaining and very engaging. We asked her a lot of questions and she used a number of case studies to make her advice more digestible. Julie is a highly credible authority on governance. You see that not just in her CV, but as presentation went on how she answered the questions we had, some of which were from left field! The examples she used of good governance and poor governance were highly relevant to our own governance situation. "