Digital is not just all about software.

With a lofty target to double the number of sales made online, Melissa coached the digital teams at Westpac to execute not only on technical deliverables but also on a series of programmes to change underlying customer behaviour. The result? A high performing team, doubled digital sales AND a lift in customer satisfaction.

“Melissa is an outstanding leader and thinker in business model innovation and transformation. She has deep expertise across digital, finance, commercial negotiations, governance and strategy.

She is highly commercially savvy, with experience ranging from running multi-national, multi-millions of dollars P&Ls to founding her own businesses. She is also a deeply caring and thoughtful leader, whose collaborative and thoughtful style brings people with her through significant transformations and critical strategic choices.”

Rhiannon White, ex-CDO Westpac

In a start-up world, leveraging the power of the ecosystem is crucial. Leveraging her business networks and a spot of good old fashioned cold-calling, Melissa helped the Aider team build out their ecosystem strategy and leverage the network effects of great partnership marketing. A happy by-product? A partner that loved the proposition so much they became a cornerstone investor.

“Melissa’s work with Aider was hugely important for us in the early stages of our growth. She brought structured strategic thinking, deep networks and a sharp customer lens as we built product-market fit.

She coached me personally as I built my wider leadership team, mentored some of our rising stars and leveraged her digital experience to advise us on our own product disciplines. She’s still now my informal ‘go to’ if I need to play out some new ideas.

Happy to highly recommend”

Brendan Roberts, Founder, Aider

With 6 years behind them Geoinsight was a solid (but complex) consulting business that was evolving in a bit of a squiggly fashion.

Closing a landmark deal gave them the confidence they needed to reach out for some strategic direction in search for a path to commercialisation and some product-market fit.

“After feeling like we were going in circles, we approached Melissa. It was a real challenge, aggressive timeframe and we had no real idea of where to start working on our building our strategy. She helped us distill the complexity of all the various offerings we provided down into a single product with laser focus on who we were aiming to market to. Melissa helped us navigate the journey of discovering our why, breaking down what set us apart from others on the market into a punchy elevator pitch and articulating our key messages behind how we communicate our product. She crafted a recipe for us to follow to validate our ideas before investing too much effort or capital into it and ensure our product was demand-driven. We now feel grounded and in control of our strategic direction and the objectives we need to address, which has translated into much clearer communication and guidance for our team with immediate benefits to efficiency and momentum and has greatly improved our ability to plan operationally. I'd not hesitate for a moment to recommend Melissa to any business owner, founder or leader struggling with knowing where to go next and how to get there.”

Rob Besaans and Mark Spencer, Geoinsight

The payments landscape is complex. So when a mutually-owned NZ bank needed to renegotiate a strategic payments contract with a large Australian-based financial institution, they were keen for someone with some teeth.

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When they moved from the big smoke to buy a Marlborough-based hazelnut and walnut orchard, they were told many times they were nuts. Instead, full of enthusiasm for nurturing the land and nailing the narrative, Uncle Joes quickly got to work with Melissa to architect the future of the business.

“Just a quick note to say a big thank you for your energy and enthusiasm in putting together and facilitating the very helpful management capability development sessions. While we were not always great on completing the homework you had tasked us with completing, we have genuinely come away from each of the sessions re-energized and focused. The sessions were well paced and very interactive with you intuitively allowing the sessions to drift in the direction where the conversation had naturally led and where we were likely to get the greatest benefit.

I hope others looking for similar encouragement and advice will be lucky enough to find some time in your busy schedule to assist them as you have us.”

Alan Crawford and Deb Whiteside

Uncle Joe's Walnuts and Hazelnuts, Marlborough

With early momentum under their belt, the economic development team of Marlborough District Council were ready to articulate their next phase.

[Testimonial pending]

Mark Unwin, Marlborough District Council

With some impressive growth and a solid team behind them, Orchestra were ready to double down. But with their founding shareholders always more than willing to extend the runway, the CEO had never had to truly articulate their value proposition to new capital. Together, we refined the story, amped up the ambition and quantified the upside to produce a cohesive strategy and a compelling pitch doc. $1.8m of capital later, they could get cracking on their revenue hockey stick.

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Its one of the most active regions in the country with a stand-out local holistic wellness facility and a cracking team of sports professionals. But like any good team, they were keen to keep pushing.

[Testimonial pending]

[Testimonial pending]

Mark Unwin, Marlborough District Council