Taking on new challenges have always been inspiring for me, particularly taking on issues for which there had been no proven or existing solution. In that vein, I led the development of a Sponsorship Evaluation Methodology that can be configured to match an organisations Marketing Strategy, including a development of a learning programme and associated tools. This resulted in a portfolio rationalising and savings of $800K.
Creating opportunities to deliver efficiency is within my DNA and thus was excited by the prospect of a means to deliver actionable insights that inform the design and development of Group Learning Offers, through this process I was not only able to identify curriculum and course design changes but over 3 quarters was able to identify over $1.4M in course design spend that could be discontinued, alongside $18M reduction in supplier spend.
A similar intervention involved reviewing and creating a more flexible and effective 3rd Supplier Portfolio. This required a really strategic view of needs over a 2-3 year horizon, a documented and understood procurement process that matched global company guidelines including S&O compliance. Ultimately this resulted in a substantial re-sizing of the portfolio (including the addition of some new suppliers), as well as more expedient leveraging of single suppliers across different businesses with a $46M prize (savings).
Still my energy and joy is especially evident in music and dance. My son, Matthew has become a music and dance enthusiast through watching his mother dance and sing out of tune to her favourite songs. My dear husband, Andrew even after 26 years looks on in disbelief.
Kathleen Callender
I am an intentional and thoughtful leader who is culturally fluent, with a passion for developing people. Strong strategic capability with a natural flare for the big picture and committed to creating strong performance oriented teams that enjoy delivering superior results.
One of my proudest moments was an intervention I made when all the superficial data suggested that an employee’s service should be terminated and I spoke up to advocate that as obvious as these facts may seem it could not be the real reason why the individual is behaving in the manner that is evident and that further enquiry was needed. As a consequence, following a more detailed enquiry the real “Why” was uncovered and there was no humane basis or even a breach of employment guidelines that would have supported what seemed at first like an inevitable outcome.