Lyndal Hughes succeeds Tom Leary as Australia leader of Q5
Q5 has appointed a new leader for its Australian division. Lyndal Hughes succeeds Tom Leary, who led the firm’s entry in the country and grew Q5 into a well-known player in the organisational health and change space.
Founded in 2009 in the United Kingdom, today Q5 is a management consulting firm with over 250 consultants in four continents. The firm owes part of its growth story to its successful expansion in Australia, where Q5 launched in 2015 and now has a team of over 30 consultants and staff.
Leading the firm into its ‘next chapter’ is Lyndal Hughes, who joined Q5 in October last year from her own boutique Treacle Consulting and now assumes end responsibility for the offices in Sydney and Melbourne.
“Lyndal has been a friend of Q5 for a very long time, and her encyclopaedic knowledge of organisational culture, leadership and organisation design is something that many Australian CEOs have been lucky to experience over the last twenty years or so,” said Oliver Purnell, the Founder and Managing Partner of Q5. “We’re delighted to appoint her into the role.”
Hughes gained a decade of consulting experience at Accenture in the UK, before moving into independent consulting, and more recently leading her own boutique consultancy Treacle Consulting. In between, Hughes spent three years with Third Horizon Consulting (now part of Publicis Sapient) as a Director and Head of its Culture and Change practice.
Her experience spans implementing complex transformation and leadership strategies for professional services, blue-chip companies and government departments across Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US. She specialises in helping leaders design change, and down the line, making that change stick.
Hughes also is a sought-after executive coach, having spent 15 years coaching leaders in ASX50 companies, professional services firms, and Australian Federal and State government agencies.
Purnell: “I first got the opportunity to work with Lyndal back in 1995 (at the time Purnell also worked for Accenture), and know her to be fiercely bright, perspicacious and proudly Australian!”
The change of leadership now sees Tom Leary (also ex-Accenture) return to London, from where he will lead Q5’s further international strategy. Key regions of focus for 2022 are the US, the Middle East and Singapore.
Leary will meanwhile remain closely connected to the Australian business in support of long standing clients and international programmes.
Taking to LinkedIn to thank Leary for his leadership in Australia, Purnell said: “Tom launched Q5 in Australia a decade ago this month, and his passion for – and unwavering commitment to – building a business-from-scratch, and hiring amazingly talented colleagues has been a high point for me. He'll be greatly missed in Australia, but we are in good hands with our existing leadership team.”
The national leadership team is led by Hughes, and further consists of Vickesh Kambaran (Sydney office leader) and Melissa Kirby (Melbourne office leader), among others. A ‘Brisbaner’ by birth, Hughes is based out of Sydney.
Last year, Q5 was named one of Australia’s top employers, following in the footsteps of its British big brother.
