Our team
Quadrant works in a community of practice approach with a number of highly talented, best practice associates
Annette Gray
Annette is an experienced and insightful coach, facilitator and speaker on solution focus coaching and mentoring. Her passion is in developing leaders and mentors in being more “coach like” and taking a Solution Focused approach that will help them achieve change fast. Annette has trained many leaders (over 7,500) and mentors to become “coach like” in how they have conversations. She is a connector and taps into a global network of Solution Focus practitioners to keep as current as possible in her practice.
Annette has held a variety of leadership and learning and development roles and has developed many leaders across Finance, Education, Construction, Pharmaceutical and Infrastructure sectors. Currently based in Sydney, Australia with extensive work throughout Australia, New Zealand, UK and Europe.
Along with her tertiary qualifications (Masters of Communication Management and Diploma of Teaching) Annette has completed a Solution Focused Business Professional Certificate at the University of Wisconsin (and recently was a fill in course instructor on this program). Recently she established the Solution Focus in Organisations (SFiO) Downunder practitioner group who’s charter is to do pro bono work to communities that need support. The current project is supporting a bush fire effected community in Southern NSW. She is also a Professional Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation, a Senior Practitioner Coach and Assessor with the European Mentoring and Coaching Council.
Annette’s work focus:
- Developing leaders and managers to use a solution focus coaching approach in all their conversations
- Creating coaching cultures to help organisations implement the change they are wanting
- Training mentors to use a coaching approach in developing others
- Helping leaders to develop through leadership coaching
- Presenting at national and international conferences on coaching and using a Solution Focus approach.
Key attributes
- Outstanding facilitator of learning that sticks and ability to make the complex simple
- Respectful in how she can walk beside when helping leaders and teams grow and move towards their preferred future
- Builds long term relationships with clients with many coming back for more ways of working together
- Has a vast knowledge and understanding of coaching in leadership and is highly acknowledged and respected by her colleagues and clients.
Alex Jenkins
Alex is an experienced psychologist, executive coach, mediator, trainer and facilitator. He is passionate about leadership development, creating high performance teams and building personal and organisational resilience. He has worked in GM and Director level roles and has over 15 years experience consulting with some of Australia’s largest public and private sector organisations. Alex has worked across a variety of sectors and industries facilitating team development programs, providing 360 Assessments, executive coaching, and facilitated leadership development and culture change programs.
Alex is a registered psychologist with a Masters Degree in Counselling Psychology. He is a Member of the Australian Psychological Society and an Approved Psychology Board of Australia Primary Supervisor. He is an accredited workplace mediator, has a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, and has Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Human Synergistics Life Skills Inventory (LSI) and The Leadership Circle (TLC) accreditations.
Alex’s work focus:
- Helping leaders understand and maximise their personal impact by integrating data from a variety of sources to develop an in-depth understanding of strengths and growth areas
- Supporting leaders to develop the skills to navigate conflict and challenging conversations
- Helping leaders and teams to build resilience
- Fostering resilience and mental health in organisations
- Mediation and conflict resolution
Key attributes
- Experienced psychologist who can draw on over 20 years counselling and coaching experience and has knowledge and experience working across a wide range of evidence based interventions.
- Ability to help leader’s foster genuine insight and to make lasting behavioural changes
- Skilled and sensitive in dealing with challenging and complex conflict situations
- Able to create effective coaching relationships built on high levels of empathy and trust
Maria Raines
Maria is an experienced facilitator and creative producer with a career spanning over twenty years. Seven years working for a leading HR forum and leadership consultancy has provided her with unique insights into Australia’s workplace culture. Maria is an accredited and registered Time to Think facilitator and an active and founding member of the Illawarra Facilitators Collective. She thrives on creating environments that support people to show up fully, connect authentically, and to think with imagination and courage.
Maria is highly skilled at: producing impactful communications and events; stakeholder engagement; content marketing; project coordination; workshop design and facilitation.
Key influences include Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environment, Theory U/ULab, Brene Brown and Seth Godin. Her passion for equality, diversity and inclusion has been a driving force since studying Sociology, Feminism and Philosophy and acquiring her BA in the early nineties.
Most recently, Maria has launched her own business, Shift Practitioners, a carefully curated directory of leadership consultants who share her vision of a world where our leaders are as diverse as the communities they serve and are equipped to show up with courage, authenticity and compassion.
Sylvia Vorhauser-Smith, FCPHR
Sylvia is a change leader, executive coach, speaker, author and leadership workshop facilitator with extensive experience in corporate and entrepreneurial business environments, including senior business and human resources positions at Westpac Banking Corporation and Citibank Limited. Sylvia specialises in bringing neuroscience principles into business practices. Previously, Sylvia founded and led consulting firm Talent Edge, specialising in bespoke leadership development and talent management solutions.
Sylvia created and led the PageUp Talent Lab, an international forum of executives and renowned thought leaders. Talent Lab set out to challenge contemporary thinking and explore the digital workplace of the future by facilitating the sharing of the knowledge and experience of HR and business executives across a wide range of public, private and not-for-profit organisations. Through Talent Lab, Sylvia hosted periodic executive forums, produced hundreds of research posts, numerous white papers, published articles and three published books.
Sylvia is an international speaker on applied neuroscience, the future of work and human capital management and a seasoned executive facilitator and coach. She is a featured contributor to Forbes Magazine, a member of the Australian Human Resources Institute, author of numerous white papers on talent management and co-author of the books Talented South-East Asia 2014, Talented Philippines 2015 and CLIFFHANGER, HR on the Precipice in the Future of Work 2017. In 2019, Sylvia co-founded Future Fit Learning, a change leadership forum for senior executives.
Sylvia holds a Master of Science in NeuroLeadership together with degrees in business and psychology. She is a Brain Based Certified executive coach, a Fellow Certified Practitioner of HR at the Australian Human Resources Institute and an accredited facilitator of the Hogan Assessment Suite and Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI).
KEY ATTRIBUTES
- Leadership & Executive Coach
- Change Leadership
- Future of Work & HR Transformation