Testimonials

What Clients & Managers say about Stephanie Owen:

Adam Aldikacti, Services Partner Director, Temenos AG:

“I have known Stephanie for over 15 years. Initially, during my PM years at Deloitte, she was a key resource I would ‘fight’ for to get into my team. Focused driver with extremely polished people skills and a vast amount of subject matter expertise. She could effectively inject the IT enablement to business benefit whilst bringing disparate and conflicting parties together to the same objective. This was only at the start. As years passed by, this knowledge and experience base grew and she became a first class business woman I admire and have a lot of respect for. Now I can’t get her into my team but through the friendship we developed, I consult her for her professional wisdom and vision. I always benefit.”

Barry Melamed, General Manager, Internal Consulting, RailCorp NSW:

“Stephanie is an excellent consultant with a strong focus on delivering results. She brings strategic thinking, big picture perspective together with detailed analytical capability to solve complex problems, and she does this by engaging and building strong relationships with stakeholders at the senior executive level and employees at the lower levels. Her personable demeanour and pragmatism contribute to her success in driving large scale change. She is extremely organised and structured and is someone that can be relied upon. Stephanie is passionate about what she does and she does it well and with the highest level of integrity.”

Brad Burrows, Director, Clear Lead Pty Ltd.:

“Stephanie was engaged as a consultant to work on a product development initiative. Stephanie was responsible for developing the business and solution requirements as well as developing a marketing strategy and financial analysis in support of the initiative. Stephanie challenged our thinking and made a solid contribution to the functional requirements of the product. I enjoyed working with Stephanie and found her to be a very knowledgeable and professional consultant. Needless to say, I was pleased with her work, the deliverables and the end result. I would work with Stephanie again and have no hesitation in acting as a reference.”

Brett Young, Transformation Program Director, Commonwealth Bank:

“Stephanie has been a senior project manager on my team on a number of occasions. Her contribution in all instances has been outstanding, largely due to her highly professional approach, strong relationship building skills and rigorous focus on planning and delivery. Additionally she is very effective at problem solving, strategy formulation and stakeholder engagement and as a result is heavily respected by all her deal with her. I would strongly recommend Stephanie for any senior project management role and in particular those with a heavy strategic focus or of high complexity.”

Catherine Stace, Chief Executive Officer, Cure Brain Cancer Foundation:

“I had the absolute pleasure to work with Stephanie on a sensitive high level project of great complexity working across many different stakeholders. Stephanie managed all aspects of this project, navigating complexity, risk, relationships, issues and budget. She was selected for her skills which span a diverse range of areas from project management, stakeholder relations including the Board, academics and corporations, risk management, change management and negotiation; her technical writing skills are exemplary including Board memo’s and presentations. Stephanie executed the project with clarity of mind and attention to detail, on time and on budget with everyone engaged and transitioned with ease. You don’t get better than that. Her values-led approach to her work were also outstanding – upfront and transparent with a solutions focused mindset and a happy demeanor at all times. Stephanie is a stand out talent.”

Craig Wildermuth, Global Chief Financial Officer, Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM):

“When I first joined SKM as CFO, I needed to take what was a lean and very transaction focused finance function to the next level of effectiveness. I developed a new 5-year strategy with my team, but then business-as-usual “busyness” took over. Fortunately, I was referred to Stephanie Owen by a former boss of hers. Stephanie ended up working with my team for about a year. During this time she has shown herself to be a highly versatile consultant, helping with numerous projects from researching and developing business cases, to setting up a management process to plan and track initiatives to execute our strategy. Stephanie is a strategic thinker who is also pragmatic and hands-on. Her wisdom, integrity and strong interpersonal skills have positioned her to be a trusted advisor to not just myself, but several of my management team as well. I highly recommend Stephanie to other support function leaders and would be happy to act as a referee.”

Daniel King, General Manager Human Resources, ANZ Institutional:

“Stephanie was engaged to support the Institutional Bank’s HR leadership team in enabling our strategic business objectives. To achieve this, Stephanie worked with ANZ’s HR Shared Services function and the HR Business Partners in Institutional to oversee more than 40 initiatives to improve service delivery to our business. Additionally, she helped develop our divisional HR strategy and designed a governance framework to help my team stay on track while focussing on our “day jobs”. The outcome of Stephanie’s work is that the many of the fundamentals of HR delivery into the business are now well on track which has enabled myself and the team to focus on the longer term strategic agenda for the business. Stephanie’s tireless pursuit of commercial outcomes and her gentle refusal to never take ‘no’ for an answer would make her an asset to any HR or project team who face considerable challenges to overcome. ”

Dimity Smith, Chief Services Officer, Serco Asia-Pacific:

“I have entrusted Stephanie with several different critical assignments because she always delivers quality outcomes with a calm demeanour and is great to work with. Stephanie has superb stakeholder engagement skills, bringing executives and others into alignment on sometimes controversial issues, and can connect a wide range of information and viewpoints into structured communications.”

John Walker, Head of Corporate Consulting, AMP:

“Stephanie has an excellent capability to establish the real business issues both at a strategic as well as operational level.  She is very pragmatic and demonstrates excellent client focus through addressing the tough questions as well as providing well developed and evaluated solutions. She is a great team player with a terrific work ethic and a good sense of humour. I’d be very happy to recommend her for a role.”

Michael Prior, General Manager Operational Risk and Compliance, Commonwealth Bank:

“Stephanie has the ability to grasp intangible concepts apply them and deliver. She continually challenges people’s thinking and provides a first class service.”

Murray Hankinson, Director, Corporate and Market Development Office, Serco Asia Pacific:

“Stephanie supported me in a transition and I found the clear focus on demonstrable change and outcome orientation to be refreshing. A key ingredient to this is Stephanie’s great insight into the crucial people element in any change program.”

Rajeev Dewan, RAP Project Lead at MLC, and author of the book “Be.Do.Live”:

“I hired Stephanie as a consultant in 2004-5 to help me develop a strategy in response to a regulatory requirement. Her well-honed structured thinking skills and focus meant that we were able to deliver a quality product against a tight deadline, even though she worked part-time. She was also great value for money, as I was almost going to pay a “tier 1” consultancy to do the same work – luckily I was referred to Stephanie by another satisfied employer before that! I haven’t had another opportunity to work with Stephanie so far, but she proactively keeps in touch with me and I still value her ideas and perspectives.”

Russell Harte, Chief Executive, Standard Bank, Jersey:

“I have hired Stephanie Owen on several occasions to help with critical projects, in two different organisations. Stephanie’s superb stakeholder management skills, together with strong intellect and project management, have combined to deliver great outcomes within tight regulatory-driven timeframes. She is one of the few people that I trust to quickly understand what I want strategically, then join all the dots and achieve the required outcome, all without constant oversight on my part. Now that I am no longer based in Australia, we don’t have the opportunity to work together but I would be happy to recommend Stephanie to potential clients.”

Sarah Stubbings, Head of Strategy Execution, ANZ Institutional:

“Stephanie is a driven individual who is passionate about what she does.  She is incredibly organised, efficient and delivery focused.  She is professional in her dealings with others and always brings a strategic lens to the table.  I have been impressed with her knowledge base and her ability to grasp issues and come up with innovative solutions and approaches. ”

Sarah Thompson, Head of Finance Risk & Compliance, Westpac:

“ Stephanie is a highly capable individual across analysis, projects, frameworks, change integration in many different types of organisations. A great person to have around – mature, humorous, dedicated and customer oriented. She delivers quality and identifies risks to acheivement. A senior leader! ”

Thomas Dijohn, General Manager Asia Pacific Marketing, Fuji Xerox:

“Stephanie was my lecturer at Macquarie Graduate School of Management in the subject ‘Management Consulting’ under the MBA Program. She was an inspirational lecturer with broad knowledge of management practises. She was instrumental in developing creative yet structured thinking to identify, formulate and solve business problems. I would recommend her to anyone who requires business coaching or consulting.”

Vivian Ho, CEO, The Global Brain Cancer Alliance:

“Stephanie was retained to provide start up project management services as part of The Global Brain Cancer Alliance. She executed on back room start up initiatives with knowledge, resolve, and tenacity. She problem solved as issues arose, was thorough in her approach, and consistently reliable.”

What Colleagues & Direct Reports say:

Christopher Yardin, PMO Consultant:

“Having reported into Stephanie on my last assignment, I was fortunate enough to work with a professional who was able to add high value to a difficult engagement where client commitment for the initiative was low. Stephanie demonstrated professional acumen in dealing with the client, and demonstrated real value-add in the eyes of the client. She was able to leverage from her wealth of experience and guide the teams thinking and focus. I look forward to crossing professional paths with her again in the future.”

Marjolein Bot, Senior Manager, Deloitte Consulting:

“I’ve worked with Stephanie on a large and complex business transformation program where she was the overall program manager. She did an excellent job in delivering quality results within budget for a very demanding client. She developed great relationships with stakeholders of all levels in the organisation. I would strongly recommend Stephanie.”

Matthew Ayres, Global Head of Strategy and Innovation, Lend Lease:

“Stephanie is a experienced and practical consultant who is engaging and well considered in her views. Stephanie brings a strong discipline to her work and is results oriented. Stephanie has the ability to work with all levels of management.”

Michael Kennedy, Manager Planning & Change, AMP:

“Stephanie was integral in shaping the brand migration program. She took the lead and managed the sheer scale of the work well. Her skills in developing the program to Business Case stage were instrumental to the eventual success of the program. In working with Stephanie I found her to be open and approachable, and always looking to leverage the variety of skills at her disposable within the program team. This made for a great team environment.”

Petra Thompson, Associate AdviserOnePath:

“I had the pleasure of working with Stephanie at ANZ. Stephanie is the consummate professional consultant, demonstrating organisational and delegation skills, relationships development skills and a high level overarching view coupled with specialised knowledge of her particular subject matter on the project. Stephanie brings an air of enthusiastic energy with her, when she walks into a room, and this energy manifests itself in delivery.”

Robert Savellis, System Integrator – Technical BA – Scrum Master – Architect at Telstra:

“I worked with Stephanie on a project to redesign a critical, customer-facing business process to move it online. She was a true professional who did what was required extremely well, on-time, and always with a smile.
Stephanie was able to quickly grasp and document not only the complex business process, but also the people dimensions of the project. Her approach was very personable, dis-arming, confidence-instilling and detailed. Watching her work with the CEO, management and frontline staff, you know that you are working with someone with an acute intellect and an ability to sell a concept to every level of staff in the organisation, and this is a skill that is often sought but rarely done well.”

Stephanie Mohan,  Manager Corporate Consulting, AMP:

“I considered Stephanie as a colleague to be extremely valuable for her thoughtful contributions and positive challenges to people’s thinking, given both freely and constructively – she was also great fun to work with and we have maintained contact ever since working together. I had the pleasure of working with Stephanie directly on a consulting assignment for Corporate HR – her strategic thinking, her sharp intellect and her attention to detail contributed greatly to the quality of our report and the outcomes. I highly recommend Stephanie to potential employers as a true professional who prides herself on quality of input, effort and outcome.”