Mel Thorpe

Melanie works at the intersection of strategy, leadership, culture and organisational performance. She supports Boards and executive teams to clarify strategic direction, strengthen collective leadership, improve decision quality and build the organisational conditions required for execution. Her work spans Top Team effectiveness, Board effectiveness, organisational strategy, executive coaching, leadership development and large-scale transformation across mining and resources, energy, government, financial services, higher education, health and the not-for-profit sector.

A distinctive element of Melanie’s work is her ability to facilitate complex and high-stakes conversations. Across more than 200 leadership and strategy workshops and 300 executive engagements, she has developed a reputation for quickly building trust, surfacing the issues that matter and helping groups move from competing perspectives to shared understanding, decisions and action. She also designs and leads large-scale leadership programs, including the mobilisation, alignment and coaching of facilitator teams to deliver a consistent and high-quality experience across multiple cohorts and locations.

Melanie brings significant first-hand leadership experience to her work, having held senior executive and Managing Director roles across professional services, education and consulting. Her advice is grounded not only in research and methodology, but in the practical realities of leading people, making difficult decisions, navigating competing priorities and being accountable for organisational performance.