A life-long fascination for cars and machines, and a realisation that I could use my Teachers College diploma as a basis for graduate entry into International Harvester, resulted in me entering the industry in 1978.

From there I joined Ford Motor Company, then worked for some time at BMW, always in dealer or customer facing roles during this period.

In 1990, with a great sense of adventure, I joined the tiny team relaunching Audi and VW into Australia. This opened the door to international assignments in Germany, China and Singapore, with Audi and VW for the next 12 years. Family reasons and an exciting opportunity bought us home to a role in Hyundai in 2007.

In recent years I have also worked extensively consulting for OEMs (e.g. Hyundai, TATA, Nissan, Infiniti, in the Asia, AGCC and Russia regions). A 3-year stint as Managing Director of Volvo Car Australia was the final step of my OEM career. 

I now enjoy leveraging my experience and seniority as a board member, consultant to private companies, plus being a Special Advisor and industry subject matter expert at Deloitte.

Absolutely up front is the people I have met and worked with.

I have learned to relate to, and collaborate with, all types of characters and cultures. Most of whom have been an absolute joy to engage with, but I have also enjoyed resolving challenges with the more difficult types.

I have had the good fortune to have often been involved in the strategic planning phase of new markets, business start-ups and new product lines. To see and be involved with growing something from an idea through to execution and performance measurement is an opportunity that would probably not have been available in other industries.

Personally, I think that the automotive sector has gone down a lot of rabbit holes in rush to embrace the digital transformation. In some ways they have followed the technology and tried to adapt legacy business practices to it.

The big challenge is now to really understand and define what customers want and use, and drive the technology to deliver exactly that.

What I think Deloitte are really good at is using our core team to listen, explore and clearly understand what our clients’ challenges are. We are then adept at pulling together core and adjacent expertise to work with the client on real and executable solutions.

Outside of work I am very focussed on my family and my home. We have renovated 9 houses over a 31 year marriage, and we are now building our first new house. We have travelled to over 70 countries and have lived in six. We have always loved driving nice cars and over the next few years we are planning to indulge our passion for road trips to see as much of Australia as we can fit in - this means driving a great car from one hotel to another and studiously avoiding caravan parks!