Foundation for Australian Agricultural Women

Strategic Leadership Advisor

Sarah is one of Australia's most sought after strategic leadership advisors. She is also a mentor, facilitator, speaker, trainer and executive coach with a finely honed ability for spotting maximum leverage points in businesses, people and organisations.

Over the past 20 years Sarah has worked at executive and board levels in many multinational organisations, government departments and small businesses in the areas of:

• Strategic leadership advice and mentoring
• Organisational change and issue resolution
• Effective group dynamics
• Executive coaching.

She has been providing executive coaching services for over 20 years on both personal leadership effectiveness and business influence strategies to Board Directors, CEOs, MD, senior executives and high potential talent. Sarah is also a facilitator of the Mastering the Boardroom course for AICD.

Sarah has extensive experience across all areas of industry, commerce and government. Her client list includes Coca Cola Amatil, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Ernst & Young, Macquarie Bank, Network 10, Pearson Education, Phillips Fox Lawyers, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Vodafone, to name a few.

Dispute Resolution Consultant

Rhian Williams is a dispute resolution consultant with 19 years experience in the provision of mediation, facilitation and dispute management design services. She is an Approved Mediation Agency pursuant to the ACT Mediation Act 1997. She worked on the development of the first Australian Competency Standards for Mediators and advised the ACT Government during the development of the ACT Mediation Act 1997.

She has trained mediators for the Australian Taxation Office, Queensland Department of Mines and Energy, Australian Federal Police, the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force, Queensland Department of Aboriginal Policy and Development, South Australian Environment, Resources and Development Court and the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement. She currently provides mediation services to a range of organisations and government departments.

Rhian has been working with the Foundation since 2000 on a project aimed at developing the leadership skills of women in rural Australia in facilitating public discussion processes. This project has seen workshops delivered in every Australian state and the ACT. The workshop brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous women and assists them in identifying the critical principles and practices of effective dialogue processes. In 2009 she delivered a six part teleconference series called "Six Snapshots of effective Communication".

From 2003 to 2006 Rhian was engaged as a Consultant Research Fellow (Mediation Specialist) with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Islander Studies Indigenous Mediation and Facilitation Project.

She is an Honorary Associate with the Macquarie University Department of Human Geography. Since 2007 she has been appointed as a Principal Researcher to the Federal Court of Australia as part of their Indigenous Dispute Management Case Study Project.

Most recently Rhian has been appointed to teach on the Masters of Dispute Resolution at James Cook University in Queensland.