My career has moved through university teaching, security analysis, professional training, business development and strategic communication. Across those fields, I have kept returning to a practical challenge: how do we help people understand the situation they are in and make better decisions within it?
The setting changes what we need to know. It also changes what is at stake. Working across different settings has taught me to pay attention to the assumptions, pressures and relationships that shape what people can actually do.
Teaching and developing capability
During 19 years at the University of Adelaide, I helped undergraduate and postgraduate students work through complex problems, understand Strategic Culture and examine decisions made under pressure. My teaching included Applied Thinking, Complex Problem Solving, International Security and the Politics of Leadership.
Strategic Culture is concerned with how shared history, beliefs and habits shape the choices people regard as possible or appropriate. It has remained useful to me well beyond the classroom, because an organisation’s response to a problem often begins with assumptions nobody has thought to question.
Alongside university teaching, I have trained people in Defence, government and private organisations. That work has included Applied Thinking and Complex Problem Solving training for the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Department of Defence. In 2018, I received a Student-Led Teaching Award at the University of Adelaide.
These experiences reinforced my interest in teaching people approaches they can adapt. A technique earns its place when someone understands when to use it, what it leaves out and how to learn from the result.
Analysis, communication and business
My security analysis work has included contributing to SAGE International Australia and co-authoring a report on the future of the Indo-Pacific for the Department of Defence. Researching consequential decisions strengthened my attention to evidence, competing interpretations and the cost of overlooking how other people understand a situation.
That attention also matters in business. My work has included business development with Speakeasy Marketing Inc. and marketing strategy with Talked About Marketing. I help organisations think about whom they can serve well, how to explain their value and how to build relationships that can last.
I completed a Master of Media in Strategic Communication at the University of Adelaide in 2022. Returning to study gave me further ways to connect analysis with the practical work of helping people communicate their ideas and intentions.
Continuing the conversation
Writing, podcasting, mentoring and facilitation let me bring these experiences into conversations beyond a single organisation or classroom. I co-host Talking About Marketing with Steve Davis, exploring the people, principles and practical problems involved in running and communicating a business.
Across all of this work, I want people to leave with something they can use: a clearer account of the situation, a question worth investigating, or a more thoughtful way to proceed.