Our Australia & New Zealand Executive Team

James Mcilvena

Managing Director - ANZ + Singapore

James is a father to Zoe, a husband to Nicole and when he’s not spending time with the family he is an avid surfer and snowboarder who is also passionate about using his time to help build better careers, better leaders and better businesses.

 

James has significant experience as a strategic leader of large teams primarily through a career in Talent Acquisition with experience of in-house recruitment and RPO models across a wide range of industries and ASX100 companies.  His specific strength is in developing solutions to complex problems and addressing these through mobilising and managing talented people.  His experience covers the delivery of solutions through innovative talent development, career transitions, coaching, sourcing, redeployment, recruitment project management, supplier management and graduate initiatives.

 

James is degree qualified in Psychology/Psychophysiology with Post Graduate qualifications in Human Resources and Industrial Relations.

Helen Burton

Executive Director QLD

Helen is the Executive Director of Lee Hecht Harrison Queensland with over 30 years business experience, the last 20 in leadership roles in the corporate sector, international management consulting and with Lee Hecht Harrison. She has led many large scale workforce transformations incorporating change management; leadership development; workforce planning; redeployment and career transition for blue chip companies and public sector organisations. A trusted advisor in these areas to senior executives, she is an accomplished facilitator and well respected coach. Her qualifications include an MBA majoring in organizational development, a Bachelor of Business and Chartered Accountant. She has authored a book and written several well respected articles on career management as well as presenting at international conferences and via a regular segment on ABC radio.

Lyndsay Potts

General Manager WA

Lyndsay is an Organisational Psychologist who develops and coaches leaders to build a culture of engagement and commitment amongst their teams. He has coached hundreds of senior executives who have transitioned to greater effectiveness in their roles. He is culturally-sensitive coach for executives wanting to improve their strategic and global leadership, people skills and cultural understanding in a global multi-cultural environment.

His experience covers leadership effectiveness, team effectiveness, and organizational change.  His focus and expertise is on building mindset agility to ensure a foundation for an expanded range of effective behaviors and leadership competency mastery, this is based on his deep understanding of Neuroscience and Mind science.  He is an engaging and dynamic facilitator who believes executives learn most through guided on-job experiences supported with timely training interventions and transformational coaching.

Fiona Kreltszheim

Finance Director - APAC (Maternity Leave)

As Financial Director for LHH Australia and New Zealand, Fiona is responsible for financial reporting, leading compliance and driving operational efficiencies across the ANZ and APAC business.

Fiona joined LHH in 2015, moving from her role in the Adecco Group as Accountant for Ajilon Consulting.Fiona is originally from Ireland, is a Chartered Accountant and holds a Bachelor of Commerce from University College Dublin.

David Pearson

Head of Operations - APAC

As the Director of Operations, David manages the Operations and Engagement functions at Lee Hecht Harrison Australia. He has a proven track record in successfully developing and implementing strategic business plans, process improvement initiatives and driving optimal business performance across large scale business.

Before joining Lee Hecht Harrison, David worked for Insurance Australia Group (IAG) for 14 years where he held a number of senior leadership positions and was responsible for building a high-performance culture through driving customer-centric continuous improvement initiatives and workplace efficiencies.

David is a Graduate from Teesside University with an honours degree in Marketing and is also a qualified Freelance Journalist.

Linda Strauss

Customer Success Lead APAC

As Customer Success Lead APAC, Linda is responsible for leading the customer success team and ensuring successful delivery of large scale and complex projects throughout the APAC region. With over 15 years of experience partnering with organisations to ensure consistent delivery against contractual obligations, agreed KPIs and the expectation of excellence. Her expertise incorporates leadership, project management, coordination of complex reporting and excellent organizational abilities. She is able to liaise effectively at all levels of management, develop and maintain strong working relationships with both internal and external stakeholders which ensures the quality of the delivery as well as looing to continuously improve the team’s ability to exceed customer demands.

Laura Neal

Head of Marketing - Australia, New Zealand and Singapore

Laura is a strategic marketing professional with over 20 years’ international experience in creating and executing end-to-end customer centric B2B and B2C marketing campaigns designed to support sales and drive ROI in line with set business objectives.Passionate about delivering superior customer service, leading high performing teams through coaching and mentoring and ensuring successful collaboration with sales to drive new business development.Specialties include:- marketing strategy, digital marketing, team leadership, project and stakeholder management, creative communications and design solutions, customer experience.

 Nithya Ramaswamy

Solutions Director - Australia and New Zealand

Nithya Ramaswamy is Solutions Director within the LHH Leadership Development practice, for Australia and New Zealand. Nithya brings over twenty years of experience in providing insights, consultancy, client engagement, leadership development design and delivery to leaders across a range of client organisations globally. Having led complex projects that span multiple levels of leadership and across various markets and functional areas, Nithya has a proven track record in partnering with stakeholders to co-create learning architectures and bring to life robust leadership development experiences. Having a career background as both industry leader and consultant, Nithya is a credible and commercial learning professional who brings insightful, practical and innovative approaches in her work. Nithya has diverse global and industry experience spanning banking and financial services, insurance, infrastructure, agribusiness, professional services, telecommunications, public sector, education, and pharmaceuticals.

Sam Gharzeddine

Operations & Delivery Lead - Australia and New Zealand

Sam leads the Operations and Delivery team for Australia and New Zealand. He brings an acute understanding of business management and has a genuine ability to effectively collaborate with diverse stakeholders in order to achieve desired outcomes.Sam is extremely passionate about customer satisfaction. He is a firm advocate in driving excellence by streamlining business process and productivity to enhance both user and customer experience.Before joining Lee Hecht Harrison, Sam worked 13 years with Telstra where he was accountable for 2 international vendors, driving daily performance, improvement initiatives and efficiencies. Sam is a graduate from Deakin University and has a double degree in Arts/Commerce

Meet Our Global Leadership Executive Team