About Steve
Senior Advisor · Board Director · Keynote Speaker
Some careers follow a straight line. Steve's has always preferred the scenic route.
He started as an accountant and auditor — a rigorous foundation he'd draw on for decades — before moving through investment banking, corporate lending and management consulting. He advised companies on strategy, led major transactions, coached executives through career-defining moments, and ultimately ran the Australian arm of Imagination, the world-renowned creative business. Along the way he has been client and consultant, banker and borrower, CEO and corporate coach. He has built companies, bought them, sold them, and on occasion had to bury them. Few advisors have stood on as many sides of the table.
Today Steve works as a Non-Executive Board director and senior advisor, bringing 25 years of multi-disciplinary experience across digital strategy, innovation, business transformation and culture to the organisations he works with. His keynote talks draw on this depth to help senior teams translate strategy into decisive, coordinated action — and to navigate the intersection of organisational culture and evolving technology that he describes as 'where the real work happens'.
He is the author of It's a Dog's Job: A Manifesto for Clients and Consultants (2014), a candid, often funny guide to the consulting relationship that has found readers in boardrooms and business schools. His first book, White Blue Wilderness (2013), chronicled his journey through Patagonia and Antarctica, supporting a re-enactment of Sir Ernest Shackleton's century-old survival journey.
The adventures were not a detour. Steve has climbed Mt Kilimanjaro, walked more than 3,500 kilometres on the Camino de Santiago, and spent extended time in some of the world's most remote terrain. He regards each adventure as a laboratory for the same qualities he brings to the boardroom: endurance, adaptability, clear-eyed navigation under uncertainty and the wisdom to know when to stop pushing and when to keep walking.
In recent years, Steve has added a new chapter as a motoring writer and serious Porsche enthusiast. In 2025 he and his wife, Kerry, spent four months and 14,000 kilometres touring Europe in a 911 Turbo Cabriolet — across Scotland's NC500, the French Alps, the Stelvio Pass, the Dolomites and Le Mans Classic.
Steve lives in Sydney with Kerry. He is listed with Saxton Speakers and Celebrity Speakers Australia and is available for keynote engagements, board & advisory roles and strategic consulting assignments.
