Think
Examine where AI could change the value your organisation creates and how work gets done. Test the assumptions behind proposals, compare perspectives and identify what you still need to understand.
Strategic AI Advisory
Shape your organisation’s AI direction.
Lead the change with confidence.
Confidential one-to-one advisory for senior leaders making strategic choices about AI and leading the changes those choices require.
Get strategic advice, build your own firsthand AI experience and work through your leadership challenges. Together, we connect the strategic questions with the personal work of leadership.
The leadership challenge
“What are we doing about AI?”
And everyone looks at you.
Investment proposals are arriving. Executive peers have different expectations, and it is not yet clear who owns the wider change. People are starting to save time, without a clear view of what that means for team performance, customer value or the way work is organised.
You need to work out where AI deserves attention, what needs to change and what your organisation has the capacity to take on.
These choices are being made now, whether or not anyone has decided to make them. Making them deliberately can materially improve the value your organisation realises from AI and reduce its risk.
It’s hard to lead through something you don’t understand - and you need to lead yourself through this before you can lead others.
Bring the questions and ideas that are not yet ready for the executive room or boardroom.
Think out loud, test your assumptions and the answers you are being given, and develop an AI position you can explain and act on.
How we work
Think. Decide. Do.
We move between strategic advice, practical AI work and executive coaching, depending on what you need. Strategic advice gives you an independent perspective on the choices in front of you. Using AI on your own work helps you understand the difference between a proposal that sounds convincing and one that will hold up. Coaching gives you space to prepare for the conversations with your peers, your board and your people, and to reflect on how they went.
Decide
Work through the alternatives and consequences. Decide what to pursue, test, defer or keep human - and what ownership, capability and changes in work each choice would require.
Do
Use AI in your own work and examine its contribution. Prepare for the conversations with peers, your board and your people. Put your decisions into practice, reflect on what happens and adjust your approach.
What this gives you
Confidence, capability and clarity.
Make deliberate strategic choices you can act on, and build the leadership capability - yours and others’ - to deliver on them.
| What you are facing | What this gives you |
|---|---|
| AI activity and individual gains, without a clear view of organisational value. | A reasoned position: clarity about where to focus, the changes required and what the evidence tells you. |
| Proposals and advice you need to assess, while your own understanding is still developing. | Deeper firsthand experience, so you can ask sharper questions and see the assumptions, limits and responsibilities behind AI recommendations. |
| Different executive views, uncertain ownership and limited capacity for more change. | Priorities and choices you can explain, with the decisions, responsibilities and conversations needed to take the work forward with others. |
| The pressure to lead with confidence while you are still working it out yourself. | Becoming an AI-capable leader or director, with the ability to lead not just yourself but your team or organisation through the change. |
The value of the work
A modest investment against the decisions it shapes.
The choices you are carrying will shape how your organisation spends money, organises work and keeps the trust of its people for years to come.
Direct value
- Proposals and investment cases tested before they are approved
- Executive and board papers sharpened before they are tabled
- Priorities matched to what your organisation can take on
- A written record of the reasoning behind each choice
- Structured, supported learning that deepens your AI capability and gives you space to work through leadership demands
Wider value
- Better placed to lead yourself and your organisation through the AI transition
- Credibility with your board, grounded in firsthand understanding
- Confidence to lead your people through the change
- Greater influence with your executive peers
- A better understanding of AI-related risk
- AI judgement that stays with you after we finish
The cost of waiting
- Decisions made by default rather than by design
- Spending on tools and pilots that aren’t adding organisational value
- Misalignment across the executive team, and no clear owner of the AI agenda
- Ongoing uncertainty, with no clear way forward emerging
- Leadership burnout and frustration
- Poor habits and workarounds that increase risk and are harder to change later
Client experience
What it’s like to work with Sue
“It has sharpened our discussions by reframing AI not as a technology initiative, but as a question of strategic risk appetite and long-term positioning.”
Ruth KestermannChief Operating Officer, Plan International Australia · AI Strategic Discovery“By the end, we had developed a deeper shared understanding of AI, where it could add value and had become more thoughtful and deliberate in how we used it in our work.”
Trudi MitchellChief Executive Officer, Australia for UNHCR · AI Leadership Circle“The most valuable aspect of the course was that we learned from each other, became more confident in using AI, and developed a common language and genuine alignment on how to use AI with intent.”
Executive leaderExecutive AI Leadership Circle“The hands-on approach helped me understand the shifts in the way of working that we are imposing on our teams at scale when we introduce AI into the workplace.”
Sundeep SinghGroup Officer, BHP · Private AI AdvisoryThe engagement
A focused engagement.
Room to apply, reflect and build.
Who it is for
CEOs, executives and senior leaders shaping AI strategy, organisational change or their leadership team’s response.
How we meet
Private online sessions of 60 minutes, fortnightly over three or six months.
The focus
Where AI can add value. What needs to change. What stays human. How you lead yourself and others through it.
We begin with the organisational decision or leadership task you want to progress and agree what useful progress would look like. Between sessions, you put the thinking to work. We return to what happened, what you learned and what now needs attention.
After each session, you receive a tailored advisory note: a written record of the positions, alternatives and next steps we work through. Direct email access between sessions supports the agreed work. We agree scope, confidentiality and any sponsor arrangements before beginning.
Investment
Three months
Six fortnightly sessions.
Six months
Twelve fortnightly sessions.
Both include preparation on your organisation’s material before each session, a tailored advisory note after every session, access to each session’s recording, email access between sessions and discounted access to the AI Leadership Room.
Investment is discussed and agreed before we begin.
A researched organisational strategy, formal report or implementation program is a separate scope of work.
Working with Sue
Why work with Sue
I bring more than 25 years of executive leadership in $50 million to $3 billion organisations where people, trust and reputation matter, across health, aged care, community services, emergency management and international development. I’ve designed strategy, led transformation and carried responsibility through crisis - including securing $500 million for a statewide ambulance service redesign, and leading through Black Summer and COVID-19.
As a certified coach and experienced facilitator, I help leaders ask the questions they have held back, compare perspectives and work through what AI means for themselves and their people.
I’ve built my own AI capability and a human-led, AI-enabled advisory practice, supported by formal study in AI strategy and safety. I use AI across research, analysis, design, client work and operations, working through the same choices about value, risk and human judgement that we explore together.
GAICD · B.Eng (Hons) · Certified Master Coach · Certified AI TrainerAI study: MIT Sloan · Oxford Saïd · INSEAD (Distinction) · Bluedot Impact
Read my storyOrganisations I’ve worked with
More than 120 leaders from 43 organisations across 14 sectors.
Through organisational engagements, Circles and private advisory.
City of Melbourne
Choosing the right advisory
How is this different from Private AI Advisory?
Strategic AI Advisory is for senior leaders shaping their organisation’s AI response. We work on the organisation’s choices, the people who need to come with you and the changes those choices require. Private AI Advisory starts with you - your own AI practice, judgement and leadership position, including the strategic questions you bring as an executive or director. Both bring together strategic advice, firsthand AI experience and executive coaching. If you’re not sure which fits, we can work it out in a first conversation.
Let’s have a conversation
What do you need to understand, decide or do to lead differently?
Bring the organisational question or leadership challenge you want to work through. We will discuss what useful progress would look like and whether this is the right support.