46 Essential People and Culture Leaders in Australia and New Zealand to Follow on LinkedIn

Last updated: June 2026

The 46 people and culture leaders on this list are the most important voices to follow if you want a LinkedIn feed that reflects the real ANZ people and culture conversation in 2026. As of June 2026, each person listed is posting original content on LinkedIn, holds a substantive documented role or credential in the P&C discipline in Australia or New Zealand, and is contributing to the profession's most pressing challenges: psychosocial safety compliance, AI in people functions, pay transparency, culture transformation, and what it actually takes to lead a people team inside a complex ANZ organisation.

This directory was built specifically for the ANZ context. Rather than recycling the global household names that appear on every list, it surfaces the practitioners and leaders shaping the profession inside Australian and New Zealand workplaces right now, in this regulatory environment, with this labour market, at this particular inflection point in the history of the profession. Organisations looking to bring in a facilitator or keynote speaker who can translate the leadership frameworks that underpin great people culture into visible team behaviour can engage Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), at jonno@consultclarity.org.

For the full global list of P&C thought leaders, see the post '50 Best Thought Leaders in People and Culture (2026)' at https://www.consultclarity.org/post/50-best-thought-leaders-in-people-and-culture-2026.

Why Do People and Culture Leaders in ANZ Deserve Your LinkedIn Feed?

The people and culture profession in Australia and New Zealand operates inside a set of regulatory, cultural, and economic conditions that make the ANZ context genuinely distinct from the global P&C conversation. A LinkedIn feed dominated by US or UK voices, however brilliant, misses the conditions that ANZ P&C leaders actually navigate.

The model Work Health and Safety laws, adopted progressively across Australian jurisdictions, now legally require organisations to proactively manage psychosocial hazards including job demands, role conflict, poor support, and workplace trauma. This is a compliance transformation that sits directly in P&C's lap. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency began publishing gender pay gap data for large private-sector employers in February 2024, creating a new layer of public accountability for P&C functions on remuneration equity. Fair Work's Right to Disconnect provisions added another dimension to the after-hours expectations conversation from August 2024. And in New Zealand, HRNZ's members voice survey for 2025 identified AI, psychosocial risk, and frontline wellbeing as the three most pressing issues facing the profession.

Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace report documented that global employee engagement fell to 20 percent in 2025, its lowest level since 2020. ANZ organisations contribute to that statistic and their P&C leaders are on the front line of addressing it. A Hays Australia and New Zealand report surveying more than 180 HR leaders in ANZ found that 85 percent of CPOs are seeking to upskill, with a particular focus on strategic leadership, influencing decision-making, and aligning HR strategy with overall business objectives. The voices on this list are the ones helping that upskilling happen, both through their formal roles and through the content they share publicly.

Following these 46 leaders gives you access to the most current, context-relevant, and practically useful P&C thinking available in the ANZ LinkedIn feed. The post '50 Essential Thought Leaders in Human Resources in Australia and New Zealand' covers the adjacent HR profession more broadly, including employment law, workforce economics, and talent acquisition.

For more on the broader HR profession in Australia and New Zealand, see 50 Essential Thought Leaders in Human Resources in Australia and New Zealand.

Hire Jonno White, author of Step Up or Step Out and host of The Leadership Conversations Podcast (230+ episodes, listeners in 150+ countries), to facilitate a leadership workshop or executive offsite that builds the team communication and decision-making culture your P&C strategy requires. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to start the conversation.

How This List Was Compiled

Every person on this list was selected on three criteria. First, a substantive documented contribution to the P&C profession in Australia or New Zealand, through executive leadership of a significant people function, published work specifically in the P&C discipline, professional body leadership, or practitioner expertise with a documented public record. Second, active engagement in the P&C conversation in 2025 or 2026 through LinkedIn original content, media commentary, conference contributions, or published writing. Third, a deliberate effort to surface voices from across the full geographic scope of both countries, from different sectors and organisation types, and from the full range of disciplines that now sit inside the modern P&C function. The list is built to move past the most prominent global names in favour of the practitioners genuinely shaping the ANZ conversation.

Category 1: Culture Transformation and Organisational Change

Culture transformation is the hardest and most consequential work P&C leaders are asked to do. The six practitioners and executives in this category have led real culture change programmes inside complex ANZ organisations, and their LinkedIn content reflects that lived experience.

1. Siobhan McHale

EGM People, Culture and Change at DuluxGroup in Melbourne, Siobhan McHale is the most globally credentialled culture transformation practitioner currently working inside an Australian corporate. She holds a Thinkers50 Radar designation and was ranked in the Global Gurus Top 30 for organisational culture in 2022. Her LinkedIn content on the Culture MAPP model and on the structural reasons most culture initiatives fail reaches P&C practitioners across the ANZ region consistently.

McHale published The Insider's Guide to Culture Change with HarperCollins in 2020, drawing on her experience leading a seven-year culture transformation at ANZ Banking Group that Harvard Business School professor John Kotter used as a case study in MBA teaching on managing change. Her posts on DuluxGroup's culture practice, and on the systemic reasons that cultural intentions do not translate into behavioural reality, are the most substantive executive-level contributions to the ANZ P&C LinkedIn conversation on the culture transformation subject.

2. Meaghan Davis

Chief People Officer at Ampol, Australia's leading transport energy provider, Meaghan Davis has over 25 years of senior P&C experience across Woolworths Limited, Lendlease, and now Ampol, where she was appointed to the executive leadership team in November 2021. She is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and AHRI. At the 2026 Australia CHRO Community Executive Summit, she presented on using data to identify cultural shifts and embedding culture through values, performance systems, and targeted communication.

Davis brings a commercial discipline to culture work that is rare at the executive level. Her LinkedIn commentary on how P&C functions earn their seat at the strategy table, and on the specific cultural levers that move performance outcomes in capital-intensive industries, speaks to a practitioner audience that often struggles to translate culture language into board-level terms. For P&C leaders in infrastructure, energy, or retail environments, her content is directly applicable.

3. Shelley Johnson

Founder of Boldside Consulting in Melbourne, Shelley Johnson is one of Australia's most consistently active P&C content creators on LinkedIn. She works with Australian organisations on leadership development and culture programmes, and co-authored Sort Your Career Out and Make More Money with Glen James. Her podcast 'this is work' (formerly 'my millennial career') was a finalist in the Australian Podcast Awards and publishes weekly episodes on workplace culture, leadership capability, and career navigation for the modern workforce.

Johnson's value for the ANZ P&C community is her directness about the gap between stated culture values and actual leadership behaviour. She writes with practitioner frankness about what happens inside organisations, not from a theoretical distance. Her regular articles in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age extend her reach beyond LinkedIn into the mainstream business conversation on culture and leadership. P&C leaders working on manager capability programmes find her content particularly applicable.

4. Didier Elzinga

Executive Chairman of Culture Amp, the Melbourne-founded employee experience platform serving over 25 million employees globally, Didier Elzinga transitioned from CEO to Executive Chairman in January 2026 and now focuses on AI's structural impact on culture, the CHRO role, and what it means to build psychologically safe high-performing teams in the age of autonomous agents. Culture Amp's 2026 State of Teams report documented that 87 percent of knowledge workers use AI at work but only 29 percent have embedded it into actual workflows, a fragmentation that costs organisations significantly.

Elzinga's LinkedIn content is among the most data-grounded thinking available in the ANZ P&C feed on the intersection of AI, culture, and team performance. His willingness to share specific platform data, his candour about where culture measurement tools have real limits, and his broad strategic frame make his posts essential reading for CPOs and Heads of People navigating what the AI era means for their function.

5. Jess Lantieri

Chief People and Culture Officer at Judo Bank, Australia's SME challenger bank listed on the ASX, Jess Lantieri has built Judo's P&C function inside a high-growth, high-scrutiny listed environment since joining in 2022. Prior to Judo, she held director-level P&C roles at Treasury Wine Estates across both Australian and global portfolios. Under her leadership, Judo became Great Place to Work Australia certified, a recognition entirely based on employee survey data.

Lantieri's public commentary on culture as 'a collection of the little things we do, every day' positions her as a practitioner-first voice for scale-up and fintech P&C leaders. Her LinkedIn content connects micro culture initiatives, recognition practices, and open communication disciplines to measurable engagement outcomes, making it directly applicable for P&C leaders in challenger bank, fintech, or fast-growth corporate environments where culture competes with speed for leadership attention.

6. Gareth Russell

Interim Chief People Officer at WiseTech Global, Sydney's logistics software company serving 16,500 logistics companies across 195 countries, Gareth Russell brings over 20 years of P&C executive leadership spanning technology, financial services, professional services, and media. He was previously CPO at Hudson and held senior HR roles at Commonwealth Bank, News Corp Australia, Perpetual, Ernst and Young, and Clayton Utz. He completed executive education in strategy, culture, and organisational leadership and holds a Bachelor of Business in HRM from Queensland University of Technology.

Russell's LinkedIn commentary on P&C leadership inside complex, globally dispersed technology companies reflects a practitioner who has navigated the full spectrum of HR challenges from M&A integration to digital enablement to compliance transformation. His perspective on talent, performance culture, and organisational effectiveness within technology-driven enterprises is particularly relevant for P&C leaders in the fast-growing ANZ tech sector.

Category 2: Employee Experience and Distributed Work

Employee experience became a strategic priority for ANZ organisations after 2020, and the shift to hybrid and distributed work permanently changed the design challenge. The leaders in this category are building the frameworks, platforms, and practices that define what good employee experience looks like in a distributed-first environment.

7. Avani Solanki Prabhakar

Chief People and AI Enablement Officer at Atlassian, Sydney-headquartered among the world's most influential distributed-first technology companies, Avani Solanki Prabhakar holds what may be the highest-profile P&C executive role in the Australian-founded technology sector. Her title was expanded in April 2026 from Chief People Officer to include AI Enablement, reflecting Atlassian's stated approach to AI as a cultural transformation first and a technology shift second.

Her TED talk on distributed work and the structural advantages of asynchronous models for introverted high performers drew significant attention to the argument that office-centric models suppress talent they do not recognise. The 2026 State of Teams research she co-championed found that only 14 percent of organisations have fully modernised their teamwork with AI across context, workflows, and culture. Her LinkedIn content on the 'Team Anywhere' philosophy and what distributed-first people strategy actually requires in practice is required reading for any ANZ P&C leader navigating hybrid work design.

8. Caroline Rawlinson

CEO of Culture Amp since January 2026, previously the company's CFO and COO, Caroline Rawlinson is a New Zealand-born executive who led MYOB through digital transformation and held executive roles at Trade Me before joining Culture Amp. While her title is CEO rather than a P&C leadership role, she now leads the world's most influential employee experience and people science platform, and her LinkedIn commentary on culture measurement, AI coach deployment, and what the next generation of people analytics looks like is directly relevant for ANZ P&C practitioners building their technology and data capability.

Rawlinson's perspective combines finance and commercial strategy with a deep understanding of culture. Her posts on what it means to build a platform that connects people science and AI to produce actionable culture intelligence, rather than just another dashboard, speak to the growing sophistication of P&C leaders who want data that changes decisions, not just data that reports history. For P&C leaders building the business case for culture technology investment, her content is unusually useful.

9. Matt McFarlane

Compensation and people operations specialist with extensive experience scaling Australian and US technology companies, Matt McFarlane has become one of the most widely followed ANZ P&C voices on LinkedIn specifically in the compensation transparency and pay equity space. His content focuses on job levelling architecture, salary benchmarking methodology, and the practical implementation of pay equity reviews inside growing organisations.

McFarlane's value is specificity. While most P&C commentary on compensation operates at a strategic level, his posts go into the actual mechanics of building compensation frameworks, with worked examples and direct assessments of what works and what fails. His audience of compensation and people operations professionals in Australia makes him among the most practically useful voices in the ANZ LinkedIn P&C feed on the remuneration dimension.

10. Karly George

Creative recruitment and employer branding specialist at BHP with nearly a decade of experience, Karly George focuses her LinkedIn content on candidate experience, employer branding strategy, and the emotional dimensions of the hiring process. She is an advocate for treating candidates as customers and brings an unusually practical lens to recruitment marketing from inside one of Australia's largest organisations.

George's content on ADHD in the workplace and the intersection of personal wellbeing with professional performance has expanded her audience beyond recruitment professionals to P&C leaders thinking about neurodiverse inclusion in candidate and employee experience design. Her BHP context gives her content a large-organisation specificity that is useful for P&C teams in complex, geographically dispersed enterprises.

Category 3: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

DEI leadership in ANZ in 2026 operates in a more legally and politically charged environment than any previous era. WGEA data transparency, the Respect@Work legislative framework, and rising expectations around cultural and racial diversity make this one of the most consequential dimensions of the P&C function. The leaders in this category are the most important voices in the ANZ DEI conversation.

11. Lisa Annese

CEO of Chief Executive Women (CEW), the organisation representing more than 700 women in significant leadership roles across Australia, Lisa Annese commenced in this role in January 2025 after a decade as CEO of Diversity Council Australia (DCA). At DCA, she grew membership to more than 1,400 organisations and led landmark research including Australia's first national index on workplace diversity and inclusion, seminal work on the economics of the gender pay gap, and pivotal research on breaking barriers for culturally and racially marginalised women in leadership.

Annese has been appointed to the 2026 Australian Institute of Company Directors program, reflecting her standing as one of Australia's most credentialled governance voices on diversity and inclusion. Her LinkedIn content covers gender pay gap transparency under the WGEA framework, inclusion policy, the Respect@Work agenda, and what effective DEI practice looks like inside Australian boards and executive teams. For P&C leaders working on DEI strategy, her content represents the most current and authoritative perspective in the Australian context.

12. Edan Haddock

Head of Talent at Movember and founder of Rubberband, a recruitment network, Edan Haddock is a prominent Melbourne-based P&C practitioner and community creator. His podcast 'Rubberband Live' brings together talent acquisition professionals and HR leaders for frank conversations on recruitment strategy, candidate experience, and the changing role of people professionals inside mission-driven organisations. He has a substantial LinkedIn following and generates consistent engagement from ANZ HR and P&C practitioners.

Haddock's intersection of mission-driven work at Movember with practical community building through Rubberband makes him one of the more distinctive voices in the ANZ people function space. His content on inclusion in recruitment practices, the candidate experience in not-for-profit and purpose-driven sectors, and the skills talent professionals need to remain relevant in the age of AI recruiter tools is directly applicable to P&C leaders across both corporate and community sector organisations.

13. India Morish-Randon

Talent Marketing and Employer Brand at Bupa Australia, India Morish-Randon focuses her professional practice and LinkedIn content on authentic employer branding and inclusive hiring. She has previously led employer brand initiatives at The Martec and Antler, and her content reflects deep experience in building talent marketing programmes that attract diverse candidates to roles where representation gaps exist.

Morish-Randon's content on the practical mechanics of authentic employer brand storytelling, including what makes diversity-focused content credible versus performative, is particularly useful for P&C leaders in healthcare, professional services, or large corporate environments trying to close gender or diversity gaps through their employer brand and talent attraction strategy.

14. Deepika Jindal

People and culture leader in New Zealand who received both the HR Person of the Year and the Leadership Award at the HRNZ NZ HR Awards 2025, making her one of the most recognised HR professionals in New Zealand in that year. Her dual recognition in the same year at the country's most significant HR awards ceremony reflects a combination of strategic leadership and practical delivery that is rarely recognised simultaneously at that level.

Jindal's LinkedIn content addresses the New Zealand P&C context with specific attention to workforce capability development, inclusive leadership, and the changing expectations of New Zealand employers and employees navigating demographic and economic shifts. For P&C leaders specifically in New Zealand organisations, her voice reflects the national context in a way that Australian-centric voices cannot fully replicate.

15. Susan Lowe

Head of People and Culture at Connetics, New Zealand's energy infrastructure company focused on electrification and decarbonisation, Susan Lowe is one of New Zealand's most active P&C LinkedIn voices on the intersection of people strategy and sector-specific workforce transformation. She is connected to the HRNZ community and posts regularly on long-term capability building, gender equity, and what it means to build a workforce for the energy transition.

Lowe's thinking on sustainability, electrification, and the workforce Connetics will need over the next decade makes her content unusually forward-looking. Her International Women's Day 2026 post on gender equity as a capability strategy rather than a values conversation, connecting female participation to organisational competitiveness in the energy sector, reflected the kind of commercially grounded DEI argument that P&C leaders increasingly need to make at board level.

Category 4: People Analytics and Future of Work

Data is transforming the P&C function faster than almost any other professional change in the last decade. The leaders in this category are at the front of that transformation, building the analytical capability, measurement frameworks, and strategic insight tools that allow P&C to operate as a genuine business intelligence function.

16. Kate Witenden

Chief People Officer at The Australian National University (ANU), Kate Witenden commenced in the role in October 2022 and brings over 25 years of professional experience across all aspects of the human resources lifecycle. She leads the People and Culture Division at ANU, focused on setting up staff for success, empowering managers to foster a positive staff experience, and driving excellence across all activities at one of Australia's most prestigious research universities.

Witenden's LinkedIn content reflects the specific complexity of leading a P&C function inside a large, highly educated, multi-layered academic institution, where the workforce spans internationally recruited researchers, professional staff, and casual academic labour with very different employment conditions and expectations. For P&C leaders in higher education, government, or other large, complex public-sector-adjacent environments, her perspective on building people strategy across diverse and sometimes competing workforce segments is directly applicable.

17. Ben Hamer

Director and People Advisory Practice Lead at PwC Australia and Chair of the AHRI Future of Work Advisory Panel, Ben Hamer is the most influential voice in the ANZ HR ecosystem on the future of work and demographic shifts. He posted actively on LinkedIn through 2025 and 2026 on demographic change, AI adoption, and workforce strategy, and his commentary in AHRI's 2026 research on the downstream risks of AI in HR captured the dual-lens thinking the profession needs.

Hamer is a LEGO Serious Play certified trainer and brings a facilitated thinking framework to workforce futures that complements the analytical perspective. He presented at the AHRI National Convention and Exhibition 2025. His content on the specific workforce implications of Australia's demographic trajectory is essential reading for any ANZ CPO doing three-to-five year workforce planning.

18. Kathleen Barnes

Founder of LiveRem, New Zealand's first real-time pay equity analytics platform, Kathleen Barnes is building the data infrastructure that allows New Zealand organisations to understand and address their gender pay gaps with live data rather than annual snapshots. She has presented at HRNZ virtual summits on people analytics and her platform has been described as the first of its kind in New Zealand that automatically calculates real-time gender pay gap indices.

Barnes sits at the intersection of people analytics and pay equity, two of the highest-priority issues for ANZ P&C leaders in 2026. Her LinkedIn content on what gender pay gap data actually reveals when you look at it in real time, versus the picture painted by annual reporting, is consistently among the most practically useful contributions to the New Zealand P&C conversation on remuneration equity. For New Zealand P&C leaders working on pay equity compliance or remuneration strategy, her content is essential.

19. Ashley Fell

Director of Advisory at McCrindle and co-author of Work Wellbeing and Generation Alpha (both co-authored with Mark McCrindle), Ashley Fell is a TEDx speaker and was a keynote speaker at the AHRI National Convention and Exhibition 2026 in Brisbane. McCrindle's ongoing national research on generational and social trends has directly informed how hundreds of Australian organisations think about multigenerational workforce strategy.

Fell's LinkedIn content spans generational dynamics, employee wellbeing, and the specific workforce challenges created by having four or five generations in the workplace simultaneously. For P&C leaders building workforce planning, engagement, or communication strategies that need to account for generational differences in motivation, expectations, and communication style, her content is directly applicable.

20. Ricky Pearl

Founder and CEO of Pointer Strategy, one of Australia's most respected sales and revenue operations consultancies, Ricky Pearl has become a significant voice in the ANZ P&C community specifically on the intersection of people strategy, team performance measurement, and the commercial outcomes of culture investment. He presented at PeopleHaus 2025 in Sydney on building capability that lasts.

Pearl's perspective is useful for P&C leaders precisely because it comes from a commercial rather than an HR lens. His content on how revenue teams think about capability development and how the measurement frameworks used in go-to-market teams can be applied to people and culture investment decisions offers a cross-functional perspective that P&C leaders working to build commercial credibility with finance and sales leadership will find directly applicable.

Category 5: Wellbeing and Psychological Safety

Psychological safety and employee wellbeing are no longer simply the right thing to care about. In Australia, psychosocial safety is now a legal compliance requirement. The leaders in this category are the most important ANZ voices on building workplaces where psychological safety is structural rather than aspirational.

21. Brock Bastian

Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Melbourne Business School, Brock Bastian has received more than $2 million in research funding across his career and is the author of The Other Side of Happiness: Embracing a More Fearless Approach to Living. He was a speaker at the AHRI VIC Conference 2026. His research demonstrates that building positive and protective factors into people's experience of work is the most effective approach to psychosocial risk management.

Bastian's work connects academic evidence to P&C practice in ways that are rarely available in the ANZ context from a local researcher. His LinkedIn content on psychological safety culture, wellbeing at work, and what the evidence actually says about how organisations build environments where people can take emotional risks without personal cost is among the most rigorous content in the ANZ P&C feed. For P&C leaders navigating the psychosocial safety compliance requirements, his research provides the evidential foundation for the structural interventions their organisations need.

22. Angela Martin

Professor and researcher at the University of Tasmania, Angela Martin is Australia's most recognised academic researcher on frontline worker wellbeing, workplace mental health, and what organisations can do structurally to protect the psychological health of people in customer-facing and high-demand roles. Her work is directly applicable to healthcare, retail, emergency services, and other front-line industries that face the highest psychosocial risk.

Martin's LinkedIn presence reflects her role as a bridge between research evidence and practitioner application. Her content on what the science says about building wellbeing into job design, rather than treating wellbeing as an employee benefit grafted onto an otherwise demanding role, speaks directly to the challenge that Australian P&C leaders face in meeting their new psychosocial safety obligations with structural rather than cosmetic interventions.

23. Joel Pilgrim

Mental fitness and leadership specialist whose work sits at the intersection of mental fitness, leadership psychology, and P&C strategy, Joel Pilgrim appeared on Shelley Johnson's 'this is work' podcast in 2026 discussing what staying well under workplace pressure actually requires. His content on the difference between mental health crisis response and the proactive mental fitness work that high-performing leaders need to sustain performance is consistently useful for P&C leaders trying to build genuinely preventative wellbeing programmes.

Pilgrim's approach to mental fitness, which draws on neuroscience and applied psychology rather than self-care framing, gives his LinkedIn content a practitioner credibility that resonates with ANZ people leaders who have become sceptical of wellness initiatives that do not connect to performance or culture. For P&C leaders in high-pressure corporate environments, his content on what sustainable high performance actually looks like at a biological and psychological level is directly applicable to leadership development design.

24. Gil Sewell

Chief People and Culture Officer at Ember Korowai Takitini in New Zealand, Gil Sewell was recognised in the HRD Australia and New Zealand Hot List 2026 for showcasing a blend of strategic foresight, cultural competence, and personal vitality. She recently completed and delivered the organisation's P&C Strategy 2023-25 and has since reworked the new P&C Strategy 2025-28, demonstrating the kind of long-range orientation that P&C leadership in complex organisations requires.

A major pillar of her strategy is focused on developing robust career pathways for employees, and over nine months she led the creation of a comprehensive competency framework that has reached final pilot stage. Her LinkedIn commentary on how P&C leaders build credibility by showing up well when decisions are difficult, communicating with honesty and empathy, and maintaining trust even when decisions are unpopular, reflects a practitioner philosophy that is consistently relevant for P&C leaders across both New Zealand and Australian organisations.

25. Evelyn Kwek

Managing Director of Great Place To Work ASEAN and ANZ, Evelyn Kwek leads the certification and research body that determines which organisations earn Great Place to Work recognition in Australia and New Zealand. Her 2026 resolution to 'go slow to go fast' and lead from values and principles in a data-guided way reflects the kind of reflective leadership thinking that distinguishes the best P&C voices from the most active ones.

Kwek's LinkedIn content on what the Great Place to Work certification data reveals about the employee experience trends in ANZ organisations provides a uniquely evidence-based perspective on what is actually changing in the cultures of Australian and New Zealand workplaces. For P&C leaders building their organisation's case for culture investment, her data-grounded insights on the relationship between culture, engagement, and commercial performance are among the most directly useful available.

Category 6: Leadership Development and Capability

Leadership development is often where P&C strategy either earns or loses its credibility with business leaders. The practitioners in this category are building leadership capability programmes, frameworks, and interventions that produce measurable change in how ANZ leaders actually lead.

26. Gabrielle Dolan

Global thought leader on authentic leadership and business storytelling based in Melbourne, Gabrielle Dolan has worked with thousands of high-profile leaders across some of Australia's top ASX companies. She is the author of multiple books on leadership communication including Stories for Work and Real Communication, and is a sought-after keynote speaker on the power of storytelling for leaders. Her LinkedIn content on what makes leadership communication genuinely connect, as distinct from technically correct, is consistently among the most widely shared in the ANZ leadership development space.

Dolan's approach to storytelling as a leadership skill grounds her content in practical application. For P&C leaders designing executive development programmes or trying to shift the communication capability of a leadership team that speaks fluently in strategy and finance but struggles to connect with people, her frameworks offer a directly applicable starting point. Her decade of work with Australian corporate leaders at the senior level gives her content the credibility of demonstrated real-world application.

27. Shelby Colgan

CEO of Wingman Group and people and culture specialist who presented on human energy and employee experience at PeopleHaus 2025 in Sydney, Shelby Colgan works with Australian organisations on the leadership and culture dimensions of employee experience. Her content focuses on the leader behaviours that determine whether employees feel genuinely seen and supported, and on what happens to team culture when leaders confuse compliance with engagement.

Colgan's LinkedIn content on the concept of 'human energy' as the engine of both individual performance and team culture reflects a practitioner who has worked across sectors and organisation types. For P&C leaders designing leadership programmes or building leadership brand frameworks, her thinking on the relational and energetic dimensions of leadership offers a dimension that competency framework approaches often miss.

28. Ally Nitschke

Award-winning keynote speaker and leadership communication expert based in South Australia, Ally Nitschke is the author of Made for More and hosts one of the top 25 leadership podcasts in Australia. She specialises in elevating leadership confidence, influence, and high-performance cultures through a combination of neurolinguistics and applied leadership strategy. Her LinkedIn content on the link between self-belief, communication clarity, and the ability to build high-performing cultures has a significant following across ANZ P&C and leadership development practitioners.

Nitschke's perspective on how organisations can build leadership cultures where people genuinely stretch beyond their default operating style speaks directly to the capability development challenge that P&C leaders face when building programmes that move beyond knowledge transfer to actual behavioural change. Her work with organisations across multiple sectors in Australia gives her content a specificity that generalist leadership thought leadership often lacks.

29. Nick McKissack

CEO of HRNZ, Human Resources Institute of New Zealand, and steward of the organisation through its 40th anniversary year in 2025, Nick McKissack has been building the professional infrastructure and the long-range capability of the New Zealand HR profession through his investment in university relationships, chartership programmes, and events that elevate the standing of P&C practice inside New Zealand organisations.

McKissack's LinkedIn content on the HRNZ community reflects his role as the most important institutional voice in the New Zealand HR and P&C profession. His posts on the evolving expectations of people professionals, the importance of chartered practice, and the specific workforce and cultural challenges facing New Zealand organisations in 2026 offer the most authoritative institutional perspective on the profession in Aotearoa. For New Zealand P&C leaders building their professional development strategy, following McKissack's feed is the single most direct connection to the national professional conversation.

30. Paul Bloxham

Chief Economist for Australia, New Zealand, and Global Commodities at HSBC Bank Australia Limited, Paul Bloxham is not a P&C practitioner but is one of the most important voices for CPOs and Heads of People who need to understand the macroeconomic context shaping their workforce decisions. He presented at the AHRI National Convention and Exhibition 2025 and the AHRI VIC Conference 2026. His macro-economic analysis of the ANZ labour market is essential context for any P&C leader doing long-range workforce planning.

Bloxham's LinkedIn content on the Australian and New Zealand economies is among the most authoritative and accessible macro analysis available from a practitioner-facing voice. For CPOs and strategic workforce planners whose credibility with the board depends on grounding their people strategy in economic reality, following his commentary is not optional. He gives P&C leaders the external economic data and interpretation they need to build a credible workforce strategy narrative.

Category 7: People Strategy in High-Growth and Technology Organisations

The most challenging P&C environments in ANZ are the technology companies growing at speed, navigating the specific cultural and capability challenges of fast-scaling organisations. The leaders in this category are building people functions inside the companies that are setting the benchmark for modern P&C practice.

31. Tony Ting

Seasoned HR and P&C professional with extensive experience across Asia, Europe, and Australia, Tony Ting is an active ANZ LinkedIn voice on building high-performing teams, community, and authentic connection in workplace culture. His content spans work-life balance, cultural celebrations, and the value of genuine human relationships as the foundation of organisational performance.

Ting's emphasis on community and authentic connection as the structural basis of culture, rather than programmes and policies, reflects a perspective shaped by cross-cultural experience that gives him an unusual vantage point on what makes Australian and New Zealand workplaces work for diverse populations. His posts on the psychological dimensions of belonging in professional environments have a following that spans both HR professionals and general leadership audiences.

32. Rebecca Crick

People and culture practitioner at Insentra Group and presenter on human energy and AI in the employee experience at PeopleHaus 2025 in Sydney, Rebecca Crick is a technology-sector P&C professional contributing to the ANZ conversation on what employee experience design requires inside organisations where both the product and the workforce are increasingly shaped by AI.

Crick's content on the human dimensions of employee experience inside technology organisations, and on what it means to preserve genuine human connection when AI is increasingly embedded in daily work, is particularly relevant for P&C leaders in the ANZ technology sector navigating the challenge of building culture in environments where the pace of change can make every people practice feel temporary by design.

33. Anu Mahajan

Senior people and culture leader at Imperial Brands PLC and presenter on human energy in the age of AI at PeopleHaus 2025 in Sydney, Anu Mahajan contributes to the ANZ P&C community with content on the strategic dimensions of employee experience and on what organisations need to do to maintain human energy and engagement when automation and efficiency pressures are driving toward leaner workforce models.

Mahajan's cross-sector experience and her willingness to engage publicly with the tension between operational efficiency and human experience makes her one of the more distinctive voices in the ANZ P&C LinkedIn feed on the employee experience dimension of AI transformation. For P&C leaders in large multinational corporate environments, her content offers perspective grounded in the specific operational and cultural pressures of those organisations.

34. Paul Scott

People and culture technology and learning strategy specialist at Zensai, Paul Scott presented at PeopleHaus 2025 on building capability that lasts. His LinkedIn content on the intersection of learning technology, leadership development, and culture building in technology-adjacent organisations reflects the specific challenge of building knowledge and capability at scale in environments where formal learning competes with on-the-job complexity.

Scott's content on what effective L&D design requires to actually change behaviour rather than just deliver content is directly applicable for P&C leaders in scale-up technology companies or large corporate environments where learning programmes are being asked to build the capability that the business needs faster than traditional approaches allow.

35. Joe Hindmarsh

People and culture strategy specialist at Highspot with MBA credentials and active presence in the ANZ P&C community, Joe Hindmarsh presented at PeopleHaus 2025 in Sydney on building leadership capability that lasts. His content on the intersection of enablement technology and people strategy, and on what sales and revenue teams need from their P&C function to develop the leadership capability that drives commercial performance, gives P&C leaders in commercial organisations a perspective that bridges people strategy and revenue strategy.

Hindmarsh's LinkedIn content on what makes leadership capability investment durable rather than episodic reflects a practitioner who has worked on this challenge inside high-growth commercial environments. For P&C leaders in technology sales or commercial organisations trying to build leadership programmes that business leaders actually use, his content on the commercial framing of capability development offers practical guidance.

36. Helen Lim-Yang

Principal Consultant at Great Place To Work ASEAN and ANZ, Helen Lim-Yang contributes deeply researched practitioner content on AI, workplace culture, and the specific challenge of protecting human dignity in organisations where AI is increasingly embedded in everyday decisions. Her 2026 prediction, that leaders have a critical role in creating space for employees to question and co-shape how AI is used, reflects the kind of human-centred thinking that the best P&C leaders are applying to their AI strategy.

Lim-Yang's LinkedIn content on the intersection of AI adoption and organisational culture, and specifically on what leaders need to do to preserve the human relational fabric of their workplaces as automation accelerates, is among the most practically grounded thinking available in the ANZ P&C community on this challenge. For P&C leaders navigating how to support their workforce through AI transformation without losing the culture that makes their organisations work, her perspective is directly applicable.

Category 8: Talent Acquisition and Employer Brand

Talent acquisition sits at the front end of the employee experience and directly reflects and shapes organisational culture. The leaders in this category are the most important ANZ voices on building talent attraction and acquisition capability that aligns with and reinforces the people culture organisations are trying to build.

37. Russell Ayles

Founder of Etisk, a recruitment consultancy focused on retail and e-commerce talent acquisition, Russell Ayles is an ethical recruitment advocate with nearly 20 years in the Australian recruitment industry. His LinkedIn content on candidate experience, transparent hiring practices, and the long-term brand damage caused by poor recruitment process reflects his commitment to raising ethical standards across the industry.

Ayles posts actionable advice for both job seekers and hiring organisations, and his content on the structural reasons recruitment processes fail candidates, including the systems and manager behaviours that create the gap between stated employer values and the actual candidate experience, is among the most practical in the ANZ talent acquisition space. For P&C leaders responsible for talent acquisition strategy, his frank assessment of where most organisations fall short provides a useful diagnostic frame.

38. Nicola Steel

Senior Executive of Advisory Talent at the Advisory Board Centre, with over 25 years of experience in tech recruitment and leadership development, Nicola Steel is a voice in the ANZ P&C community on the intersection of advisory board governance, senior talent strategy, and the capability development of executives moving toward board and advisory roles.

Steel's LinkedIn content on the importance of advisory boards in navigating complex business landscapes, and on what senior leaders need to develop to become effective board advisors, is particularly relevant for P&C leaders who are building executive succession pipelines and helping senior leaders understand their own governance and strategic capability. Her focus on empowering individuals and businesses through strategic advisory connections gives her content a distinct angle in the ANZ P&C feed.

39. Shane Morgan

Founder of Sapture and ANZSAP magazine, and a specialist in SAP recruitment and talent strategy across the ANZ region, Shane Morgan is a recruitment leader whose content on building niche talent pipelines, managing candidates with genuine care, and building employer brands within specific technology communities offers a template for P&C leaders in enterprise technology organisations trying to attract and retain highly sought-after specialist talent.

Morgan's Sapture consultancy has received multiple awards for recruitment practice in the ANZ region. His LinkedIn content on the relational aspects of specialist recruitment, and on why candidate care as an organisational philosophy produces better long-term talent outcomes than transactional hiring approaches, reflects two decades of evidence gathered inside the ANZ technology talent market.

40. James Keeler

Director at Maximus, the leadership and performance consultancy, James Keeler presented at the AHRI National Convention 2025 on value-making leadership and the vital role P&C leaders must play in building adaptive organisations capable of embedding AI thoughtfully and driving genuine productivity growth. His perspective on the specific tensions facing ANZ leaders connects leadership development to economic necessity.

Keeler's LinkedIn content on what the future of leadership requires from P&C functions, and on why Australia's specific productivity challenges demand a different approach to leadership capability development, gives P&C leaders a strategic frame for the business case they need to make for leadership investment. His combination of commercial rigour and people-centred thinking reflects exactly the disposition that boards and CFOs increasingly want from their CPO.

Category 9: Learning, Development and Organisational Capability

Learning and development is the delivery mechanism for much of what P&C strategy promises. The leaders in this category are building the learning infrastructure, frameworks, and communities of practice that allow ANZ organisations to develop the capability their people and culture strategy requires.

41. Michelle Ockers

Chief Learning Strategist at Learning Uncut, Michelle Ockers is the most connected voice in Australian learning and development and one of the most important bridges between the L&D profession and the broader P&C community. Her podcast Learning Uncut, launched in 2018, has become the reference point for ANZ L&D practitioner knowledge sharing, with over 170 episodes covering real case studies from Australian and New Zealand organisations. She was awarded Learning Professional of the Year by the Australian Institute of Training and Development in 2019 and led the development of AITD's first-ever L&D Capability Framework as Project Lead.

Ockers' LinkedIn content reflects her deep connection to the specifics of the ANZ learning context, including the distinct challenges she identifies between Australian L&D professionals (focused on demonstrating internal value) and New Zealand practitioners (focused on securing leadership buy-in and navigating fiscal constraint). For P&C leaders with responsibility for L&D, her content provides the most current, evidence-grounded perspective available on learning strategy in the ANZ context.

42. Ben Campbell

CEO of the Australian Institute of Training and Development (AITD) and active voice in the national conversation on learning and development capability, Ben Campbell leads Australia's peak body for L&D professionals and was a guest on Michelle Ockers' Learning Uncut podcast discussing the development of AITD's first L&D Capability Framework. He is building the professional infrastructure that allows L&D professionals to establish a common language for capability and raise the bar for practice across the country.

Campbell's LinkedIn content reflects his role as one of Australia's most important institutional voices on how the L&D profession should develop its own capability. For P&C leaders responsible for the professional development of their L&D teams, his content on what the AITD Capability Framework requires from individuals and organisations at different stages of L&D maturity offers a directly applicable reference point.

43. Jane Franks

Chief People Officer at ASX Limited, Australia's primary securities exchange, Jane Franks was appointed in November 2023 and brings over 20 years of P&C experience in highly regulated industries. Prior to ASX, she held senior HR roles at Westpac, BT Financial Group, Blackmores, and Diageo. She is responsible for developing a people and culture strategy that enables ASX to achieve its vision across governance, compliance, capability, and talent.

Franks' LinkedIn content from the ASX context offers a perspective on P&C leadership in heavily regulated, publicly listed environments that is distinct from the scale-up and technology narratives that dominate the ANZ P&C conversation. Her experience bridging financial services, consumer products, and now exchange infrastructure governance gives her commentary on people strategy in regulated environments a breadth that few Australian CPOs can match.

44. Colleen Harris

Group Chief People Officer at Ramsay Health Care, one of Australia's largest private healthcare providers, Colleen Harris was a keynote speaker at the 2025 Australia CHRO Community Executive Summit, where she presented on how AI, automation, and changing employee expectations are reshaping talent strategies across industries, drawing specifically on lessons from large-scale workforce transformation in healthcare.

Harris's perspective on P&C leadership at the intersection of frontline healthcare workforce, clinical governance, and enterprise people strategy is unique in the ANZ landscape. Her insights on adaptive leadership and real-time employee listening in conditions of constant uncertainty reflect the specific demands of leading people in healthcare's perpetual pressure environment. For P&C leaders in health, aged care, disability, or large public sector environments, her content is directly relevant.

45. Stephanie Christopher

CEO of The Executive Connection (TEC), Australia and New Zealand's largest CEO and senior executive peer advisory organisation, Stephanie Christopher connects more than 1,000 senior executives in ANZ with a global network of over 23,000 through TEC's partnership with Vistage. Prior to TEC, she was ANZ Managing Director of CEB SHL Talent Measurement. Her LinkedIn content on what senior executives most need from their P&C leaders, and on how leadership teams make better decisions, speaks directly to the conversation that CPOs need to have at the executive and board level.

Christopher's perspective on leadership from the vantage point of someone who works with CEOs every day gives her content an unusual frame for P&C practitioners. Her thinking on the key success factors for business leadership, the talent and leadership capability questions that sit at the top of CEO agendas, and what it takes to prepare aspiring leaders for executive roles is directly applicable for P&C leaders designing senior leadership development programmes and succession pipelines.

46. Jenelle McMaster

EY Regional Deputy CEO and People and Culture Leader, Oceania, Jenelle McMaster is one of Australia's most senior and publicly visible P&C executives, leading the people, culture, and inclusion agenda for EY across Australia and New Zealand. She holds a BA in Economics from the University of Sydney with an Honours degree in Psychology, is a Director on the Board of the Champions of Change Coalition, a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and a member of Chief Executive Women.

McMaster is a public speaker on gender diversity and has co-hosted EY's 'Change Happens' podcast, where she speaks frankly about the human dimensions of business transformation. Her view that organisations which match their technology investment dollar for dollar with investment in their human systems, including leadership styles, communication, and culture, will consistently outperform those that prioritise speed and efficiency alone is one of the most practically grounded arguments available for the ROI of P&C investment. For P&C leaders trying to make the business case for culture and leadership work in large professional services or corporate environments, her voice is essential.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

This list deliberately moved past several globally prominent names who regularly appear on P&C lists and whose follower counts place them outside the amplification range where a LinkedIn follow generates genuine professional influence. Patrick Lencioni, the creator of Working Genius and Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Brene Brown, whose research on vulnerability and courage leadership is foundational to the psychological safety conversation, and Adam Grant, whose Wharton-based research on motivation and meaning at work is widely cited in ANZ organisations, are all voices whose books, talks, and research deserve your attention. They did not make this list because the goal was specifically to surface the ANZ practitioners whose content reflects the regional context and the regulatory and cultural specifics of the Australian and New Zealand workplaces you are actually navigating.

The best P&C LinkedIn strategy combines both: follow the global foundational thinkers for the theoretical frameworks and follow the ANZ practitioners on this list for the contextual application. The regional voices give you the 'what this means for us in Australia or New Zealand' translation that global content cannot provide.

What Mistakes Should People and Culture Leaders Avoid When Using LinkedIn?

Building a P&C LinkedIn following that actually shapes your practice requires discipline, not just volume. The most common mistake is following for credential rather than for content. A Chief People Officer at a major company is only worth following on LinkedIn if they actually post original, substantive content. Many CPOs at large organisations have impressive LinkedIn profiles but post infrequently, and when they do, the content is largely organisational promotion rather than practitioner thinking. The people on this list were specifically selected because they post original content regularly.

The second common mistake is building a global-only feed. If every voice you follow is based in the US or UK, your LinkedIn feed will consistently reflect employment laws, labour market conditions, and cultural norms that do not directly apply to your work. The psychosocial safety compliance requirements, the WGEA transparency obligations, the Fair Work regulatory environment, and the specific dynamics of the ANZ talent market all require ANZ-specific thinking. A feed dominated by global voices will consistently offer frameworks and data points that need significant translation before they are applicable.

The third common mistake is following for validation rather than for challenge. The most valuable voices on your P&C LinkedIn feed are the ones who occasionally make you uncomfortable, who surface evidence that questions a practice you have invested in, or who apply a commercial or regulatory lens you had not considered. If your entire feed confirms what you already believe about people and culture, it is not expanding your thinking. Deliberately include voices from adjacent disciplines, including the economists, technology leaders, and commercial executives on this list whose perspectives on people and culture come from outside the profession.

The fourth mistake is passive consumption without community contribution. LinkedIn's value for P&C practitioners is only partially the content you consume. The connections you build with practitioners who share your challenges, the conversations that start when you comment thoughtfully on someone's post, and the professional relationships that begin as a LinkedIn exchange and develop into substantive peer learning are often the most valuable outcomes of an active LinkedIn practice.

How Do You Get Real Value From Following People and Culture Leaders on LinkedIn?

The most effective approach to building a P&C LinkedIn following from this list is structured and intentional, not passive. Start by following all 46 people on the list and spending two weeks observing what each person actually posts. Identify the ten to fifteen whose content most directly addresses the challenges your organisation is facing right now, and prioritise deep engagement with that subset.

For culture transformation practitioners, Siobhan McHale, Meaghan Davis, and Shelley Johnson offer the most practically grounded ANZ content. For the regulatory and compliance dimensions of P&C in 2026, including psychosocial safety and pay equity, Lisa Annese, Brock Bastian, and Kathleen Barnes are the most directly relevant voices. For technology-driven employee experience and the implications of AI for people functions, Avani Solanki Prabhakar, Didier Elzinga, and Caroline Rawlinson provide the most current thinking.

Set aside fifteen minutes per week specifically for reading and engaging with P&C LinkedIn content rather than scrolling your general feed. The discipline of intentional consumption dramatically increases the value you extract from the content you encounter. Comment substantively when a post reflects a challenge you are navigating. Share posts that you think your own leadership team or P&C colleagues need to read. These actions both deepen your own learning and begin to build the relationships with ANZ P&C practitioners that become the most valuable part of a professional LinkedIn practice.

The AHRI community in Australia and the HRNZ community in New Zealand both have active LinkedIn presences that amplify the content of many practitioners on this list. Following both organisations' pages supplements your individual follows with the event announcements, research publications, and policy updates that shape the professional context in which ANZ P&C leaders operate.

For organisations that want to bring the practical frameworks of Working Genius facilitation, communication style assessment, and executive team effectiveness into their people and culture strategy, Jonno White's work as a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold) translates the kind of research and thinking shared by the leaders on this list into facilitated team experiences that produce visible behavioural change. For more on the wellbeing and mental health dimension of ANZ people and culture practice, see the post '50 Essential Thought Leaders on Mental Health and Wellbeing at Work in Australia and New Zealand' at https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-mental-health-wellbeing-work-australia-new-zealand.

Bring Jonno White to your next leadership offsite or team development day to build the practical culture frameworks your P&C strategy requires. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to start the conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a people and culture leader and an HR leader?

The distinction is more cultural than definitional, but it reflects a real shift in how the profession understands its own purpose. People and culture leadership, as the title is increasingly used in ANZ organisations, signals a move from administrative and compliance focus toward strategic investment in the human experience of work. P&C leaders typically own the full employee lifecycle with an experience-design lens, including culture shaping, capability development, and the connection between how people experience work and how well the organisation performs. HR leadership, in its traditional framing, has a broader technical remit including employment law compliance, industrial relations, and workforce administration. Many organisations now use the titles interchangeably, and the best practitioners in either role bring both the strategic and the technical dimensions together.

Why should I follow ANZ-specific people and culture leaders rather than global voices?

ANZ P&C leaders operate inside a specific regulatory environment that global voices do not reflect. The psychosocial safety compliance requirements now embedded in Australian WHS law, the WGEA gender pay gap transparency obligations, the Fair Work regulatory framework, and the New Zealand Employment Relations Act all create specific obligations and opportunities for P&C functions that global US or UK content does not address. Following ANZ practitioners gives you the regulatory and cultural translation you need to apply global frameworks to your actual context.

How do I find ANZ people and culture leaders beyond this list?

Search LinkedIn for relevant terms including 'people and culture' combined with 'Australia' or 'New Zealand,' filter for people rather than companies, and sort by relevance. The AHRI National Convention and Exhibition, HRNZ's annual conference, and HRNZ NZ HR Awards winners provide a consistent stream of newly prominent practitioners worth following. The Culture Amp community in Australia is another productive source, and following the companies where ANZ P&C leaders work, such as Atlassian, Culture Amp, Judo Bank, Ampol, and WiseTech Global, surfaces P&C voices you might not otherwise encounter.

What makes someone a people and culture thought leader worth following?

Three things distinguish the voices most worth following from those who are merely credentialled. First, they post original thinking rather than reshared articles or motivational content. Second, their content reflects actual experience inside real organisations rather than theoretical frameworks applied from the outside. Third, they are honest about what does not work and what is genuinely hard, not just what has succeeded. The people on this list share all three characteristics, which is why their content generates substantive professional engagement rather than passive consumption.

Final Thoughts

The 46 people and culture leaders on this list represent the breadth of a profession that has never been more consequential in ANZ organisations. From culture transformation practitioners who have rebuilt the cultural architecture of major banks and energy companies, to people analytics innovators building real-time pay equity tools, to employee experience designers shaping what distributed work looks like at a global technology scale, these voices collectively represent the most important thinking in the ANZ P&C conversation in 2026.

The profession they lead is being asked to do more than it has ever been asked to do at once: comply with new psychosocial safety obligations, deliver gender pay gap transparency, navigate AI's impact on every part of the employee lifecycle, sustain engagement in a global disengagement crisis, and do all of this while building the commercial credibility to earn a genuine strategy role at the executive table. The leaders on this list are the ones navigating all of that, and sharing what they learn as they go.

Following them is not a passive act. The most valuable P&C LinkedIn practice is an active one, built on intentional engagement, substantive comment, and the professional relationships that begin as a LinkedIn exchange and develop into the peer community every P&C leader needs. Start with the ten voices whose content most directly addresses your current challenges. Build from there.

For organisations that want to invest in the leadership culture, team dynamics, and communication capability that makes their P&C strategy real rather than aspirational, Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and author of Step Up or Step Out, works globally with corporates, nonprofits, and schools to build leadership teams that can actually execute. Email jonno@consultclarity.org or visit consultclarity.org.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.

To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Sources

Gallup: State of the Global Workplace 2026 Report (global employee engagement 20 percent figure, 2025 data).

Hays Australia and New Zealand: Chief People Officer survey of 180+ ANZ HR leaders (85 percent seeking to upskill figure, reported March 2025).

Safe Work Australia: Psychosocial hazards guidance and Work Health and Safety legislation (psychosocial safety compliance requirements).

Workplace Gender Equality Agency: Gender pay gap transparency framework (February 2024 commencement date).

Atlassian: State of Teams 2026 Report (AI adoption and teamwork coordination data).

Next Read

The P&C profession in Australia and New Zealand does not operate in isolation from the broader human resources, wellbeing, and leadership development ecosystem. For the most current thinking on the intersection of people practice and mental health at work in the ANZ context, including the regulatory, clinical, and organisational voices shaping how Australian and New Zealand organisations manage psychological wellbeing, the following post covers the complete landscape.

The wellbeing conversation in ANZ has shifted decisively from employee benefit framing toward psychosocial safety compliance and the structural design of work itself. The voices in that post apply their expertise to the same organisations and labour market conditions covered in this directory, and following both sets of practitioners gives you the most complete picture of where ANZ people and culture practice is heading.

Keep reading: 50 Essential Thought Leaders on Mental Health and Wellbeing at Work in Australia and New Zealand