SA - Current and Future Leaders 2021

Peta Brown has extensive leadership experience in Banking across Operations, Finance and Sales and Service business units. 

Moving to Adelaide in 2010, Peta joined Westpac Group to head Mortgage Originations and has since held a number of multi-brand national roles, Including Workforce Optimisation, Strategy and Change leadership for Customer Assist (Hardship) and Westpac, Broker Mortgages Operations.  Peta transitioned from back office management to the Chief of Staff to the BankSA CEO, and now leads BankSA and Westpac Home Lending Distribution in SA and the NT.

A strong values based leader, Peta always seeks to help find purpose for her leaders and teams.

Laurel is Specialist Adviser at Tax Transaction and Accounts at KPMG with over 15 years accounting and audit experience. Prior to this she spent over a decade in China’s burgeoning tourism industry.

Her expertise and passion lie in Audit, Business Consulting/Development with a strong focus on Asian markets. Laurel has worked on a number of IPO projects and advises immigrant investors, business owners and young entrepreneurs to add value in their business and grow thriving enterprises.

Laurel has held a range of company directorships of foreign owned and NFP entities including the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. She is a leader of Adelaide’s Chinese community and a committee member of several Asian Community NFP organisations. 

She’s an energetic networker who loves connecting people together to achieve business success. She also loves assisting new immigrants assimilate by exposing them to our arts and culture scene.

Enza is a passionate banking professional with experience across Retail Banking, Affluent Banking, Learning Services, Consumer Marketing, Communications and Corporate & Commercial Banking.

Throughout her career she has held senior roles that have had a key focus on people and customers. These experiences have provided a great opportunity to hold various sales and people leadership roles that have enabled her to be a well rounded, adaptable and commercial leader, with a key focus on people development, customer experience, leading cultural change and leadership development whilst role modelling values.

Award winning mortgage broker turned fintech entrepreneur to help brokers be the hero.

Founder and CEO of Fintech startup Sherlok, Australia’s first automated repricing and refinancing tool.

After over 12 years as a mortgage broker (and winner of awards like Broker of the Year and Top 30 Brokers Under 30 in Australia), Adam was sick and tired of banks offering better interest rates to new mortgage customers while existing customers were being charged a ‘loyalty tax’ (a higher interest rate the longer they’re with the bank). So he came up with a solution: Sherlok, an AI engine that helps mortgage brokers keep their clients for longer, protect their trail book income, and generate valuable refinancing leads.

With Sherlok, brokers can:

Reprice loans automatically - Sherlok predicts when a client will leave a broker, monitors interest rates, detects when homeowners could be on a lower rate with their current lender, and automatically reprices the home loan on the brokers behalf.

Generate refinancing leads - Sherlok compares clients’ rates against other lender rates, identifies valuable refinancing opportunities from the broker’s existing trail book, and sends these leads straight to the broker’s inbox.

Rachel Kidwell appreciates how built spaces affect our everyday lives. It was this love of the built form that encouraged Rachel to study Interior Architecture at UniSA. This then led her to project management and tenancy coordination of retail developments.

In 2009 Rachel founded Kidwell Coordination which provides tenancy coordination services to retail landlords and developers. Rachel has worked on projects the caliber of Rundle Place, Adelaide Central Plaza and Brickworks Marketplace.

Working with the likes of Woolworths, Precision Group and the Adelaide Airport, Rachel identified similar pains and problems experienced by her clients and the stakeholders involved in tenancy delivery which led to the founding of TCPinpoint.

TCPinpoint is a cloud based project management and collaboration tool for the retail construction industry. We help owners of Shopping Centres get tenants open painlessly. We do this by simplifying the complex tenancy delivery and governance process.

From Interior Architect to Project Manager, Tenancy Coordinator to Founder of a tech company, Rachel’s love of change and the thrill of a new challenge has lead her on a wild professional ride so far.

Joseph is the CEO and Co-founder of Lumary, where he leads the company in delivering a multi-purpose technology platform that services the disability and aged care sectors.

Since a young age, Joseph has been passionate about building businesses that are customer-centric, and that genuinely do right by the communities in which they serve. Its this passion that has led him in being a successful businessman over the last 15 years.

Loretta Reynolds has been a Partner of the firm since 1998 and was elected Chair in 2007.

While her main focus is on her funds management/mergers & acquisitions practice, she also has executive responsibility for client development and relationships in all markets.

Loretta is individually recognised in Chambers Asia Pacific (2013, 2014 – 2016) in the Private Equity category for her “extensive experience in fund formation, handling of buyouts, and work for superannuation funds“, and was “praised for the very well-honed process and consistently high standard of her work, her reliable meeting of deadlines, and her excellence in the fund set-up and management space“. Loretta is also recognised as a “thoroughly experienced M&A lawyer” in Legal 500 Asia Pacific (2012 and 2021), and is ranked as a preeminent lawyer in South Australia in Corporate law in Doyle’s Guide (2012, 2015 – 2021), as well as a leading lawyer in South Australia in Agribusiness (2016 & 2018) and Commercial law (2017 – 2021). Loretta has been recognised by her peers as ‘Lawyer of the Year’ by Best Lawyers in Australia in the areas of Mergers & Acquisitions (2016), Private Equity (2017), Corporate Law (2018) in Adelaide, Commercial Law (2019), Venture Capital Law (2020) and Private Equity (2022) in Melbourne. In this entirely peer-review based publication, she has also been recognised by her peers as one of the Best Lawyers in Australia (2014 – 2022) in the areas of Corporate Law, Corporate Governance Practice, Mergers & Acquisitions, Funds Management, Private Equity, and Venture Capital and Commercial Law.

Loretta has completed the FINSIA Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment, and the Advanced Insolvency Law and Practice I & II at The University of Queensland. She also has a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Adelaide. Loretta is a fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a Fellow Member of the Governance Institute and a Senior Fellow of FINSIA.

Brendan is a leader at an ANZ who was previously the State General Manager of Business Banking for SA/NT & WA, prior to his current role in leading ANZ Health for Corporate and Institutional Banking. He has a background in accounting, restructuring, banking & finance with previous employers including PwC & KordaMentha. Brendan has lead large national and state teams over the past 8 years, focusing on a high performing culture and a values based approach. He is experienced in diversified industries and has also specialised in areas such as agriculture and health.

Brendan is always keen to develop and expand on leadership skills and bringing the best out in others, particularly with a passion around wellbeing and performance. He has strong views on ensuring a sustainable approach to banking and doing the right thing by customers and the community. Brendan grew up on a family farm in the Riverina region of NSW which is still in operation and something he is passionate about.

Bruce Speirs joined Bendigo Bank in 2004 and has held a number of senior positions including Head of Products, General Manager Managed Funds, Head of Financial Management and Reporting.

Prior to joining Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, Bruce worked for Ernst & Young for 9 years in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Most recently, Bruce held the role of Executive, Partner Connection and prior to that Chief Financial Officer of Rural Bank.

Today, Bruce is Executive, Business Banking with responsibility for the end to end experience of business customers.

Robin Sands has a passion to help businesses gain benefits from the latest technology. He has over 20 years’ experience providing solutions to businesses of all sizes. He is from South Australia originally, but has spent many years working with organisations throughout Asia, Europe and North America. Robin moved back to Adelaide from Silicon Valley in 2012. In 2020 he was a finalist as Entrepreneur of the Year, and after more than 5 years in the industry, he is regarded globally as one of the e-Invoicing experts for Small Business.

Dr Nick Takos is a lecturer and researcher within UniSA Business. Nick is a specialist in the areas of leadership, organisational culture, management, and sponsorship, particularly in the sport and recreation context.

Nick holds a BEc, a MBA in sport management, and has completed his PhD in leadership and organisational culture. Nick's research has been published in the leading international sport journal - Journal of Sport Management. He is consistently rated as a high performing teacher within the University of South Australia and continues to be committed to contributing to many of the ongoing successes of the business school including increasing the volume of high quality publications within the school.

Nick has engaged with the local and national sport and recreation industry through his work with state and national sport organisations (in golf, triathlon, and table tennis), and AFL/SANFL club-based organisations. Nick brings a high quality of expertise in sport management, sport governance, and leadership to the UniSA Business School.  

Finally, Nick's backgound in the sport and recreation industry includes 14 years in various senior roles with AFL team the Adelaide Crows, and he has also held senior management positions within netball (Adelaide Thunderbirds) and cricket (Adelaide Strikers, South Australian Redbacks and Scorpians). Since 2021 he is a board member of the Adelaide Football Club, where he is the Chair of its member Enagagement Committee. With his strong industry and academic background Nick brings years of experience as a proven practitioner and teacher within UniSA Business.