Kathy Rodwell

Kathy Rodwell - Global coach

Kathy's an in-demand coach with 20 years global experience working with clients ranging from ambitious C-suite executives accelerating their leadership, founders growing their start-ups, through to people redesigning new lives and careers. She draws on robust and adaptive facilitation skills in her work with diverse groups and partnerships. Kathy engages with warmth and has finely-tuned coaching instincts and skills that drive right to the heart of the change people desire. She's a tenacious and honest accountability partner and a trusted confidant to the thousands of change makers, executives and private clients with whom she's worked with.

Kathy's expertise is hosting big, thought-provoking conversions that trigger change, lift performance and generate greater fulfilment and engagement. She helps her clients decode the inner dynamics that create results in life, and understands how that relates to the experience provided for others. (Hint: it's not random – we each have that dynamic.) She helps redesign leadership and work style, and business and life strategies in a way that literally changes lives, as her clients and the people in professional and personal relationships with them come to experience interactions differently.

Her coaching is grounded in the cognitive behavioural sciences – she has several coaching accreditations plus diverse and rich business, and life experiences that sit behind her approach to success. She has a strategic focus on achieving measurable and sustainable results that deliver enormous value for her clients.

Kathy has recently coached:

  • health sector leaders working in hospitals at the frontline of our communities’ risk during the pandemic
  • people leaving careers that don’t work for them and courageously designing fulfilling new lives
  • Indigenous and non-indigenous leaders in environmental and wildlife conservation
  • co-founders of high-growth ventures
  • executives securing and assimilating into their first CEO or senior business role.

Kathy was a ‘corporate insider’ standing at a career crossroads weighing up an internal debate on whether to follow her head or her heart. Heart proved the more compelling reason, and in 2001 she launched her career in coaching. Fast forward to today, and she now supports others to navigate those crossroad moments, whether it’s creating a new life or career, growing a business, or becoming a better life partner or parent. She's on a mission to create ethical, compassionate, people-centric dynamics in workplaces, homes and communities – and for people to thrive in ways that are rich in meaning for them, rather than merely surviving in their life and career. Her clients say they value having a coach that's rich with diverse life experience, who relates to their business and life contexts, yet is independent enough to facilitate powerful new perspectives and change strategies with them.

Select client list: National Australia Bank (NAB), Westpac, ANZ Bank, Commonwealth Bank, Telstra, Atlassian, Qwilr, Worldwide Fund For Nature, Great Barrier Reef Foundation, Treasury Wine Estates, Australian Agricultural Company (AACo), MLC, Australian Unity, Bairnsdale Regional Health Service, Royal Vic Eye and Ear Hospital, Museum of Victoria, CPA Australia, Metropolitan Fire Brigade, Macquarie Bank, Vic Police, Parliament of Victoria, Department of Transport, Department of Sustainability & Environment, Department of Justice, Healthscope, City of Yarra, Blackmores, Catholic Education Office and Open Colleges Australia.

Client testimonials

From the first day I found our conversations to be honest, challenging and supportive - exactly what I needed. Kathy’s perspective was incredibly valuable - her expertise and experience was so insightful, helping me see myself and my career with a new lens. I had so many ‘light bulb’ moments I lost count!

- Sharon Thorpe
Commonwealth Bank, General Manager Financial Crime Compliance

I've had the opportunity to work with Kathy a couple of times. Her expertise has helped me to present myself in the best light and focus on key messages. Our time together was always well spent and helped me achieve the outcomes I was after and I have no hesitation in recommending Kathy as a coach.

- Eva Scheerlinck
Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you so much for an amazing experience of coaching with you. I have really valued the investment and the time you have taken with me.

- Caroline Skipper
NAB, General Manager Leadership (Acting)

The supportive, nurturing and safe environment that Kathy created for me whilst I went through a journey of personal reflection and growth was something that stands out. Kathy pushed me outside of my boundaries on numerous occasions and challenged me to dig deep to understand what was really driving my behaviours, views, and leadership style. I now live by and embrace the fact that who I am is all I need to be a great mother to my children, role model for others, and leader within my organisation.

- Janine Kennedy
Treasury Wine Estates, General Manager of Global IT

I can’t thank you enough. The kindness that I have watched people share with each other, the energy that people have bounced around, the willingness to learn new things, the courage with which people have accepted their pasts and presented their hopes for the future and more than anything else the complete faith in each other when at the start of this process we were all really a set of strangers.

- Yassmin Hijazi
Telstra, Business Enablement Manager

Many of the team have since been promoted, explored new career opportunities, made personal or professional adjustments while continuing to find the best versions of themselves. I am personally thankful for the experiences Kathy has provided for me and for my teams, and am equally fortunate to be part of her work.

- Justin Taliaferro
The Thornhill Companies, National Sales Manager

I found Kathy has the unique ability to quickly connect, to listen carefully and to work with the threads of our conversations in ways that facilitated for me discovery, inspiration and courage to go off on a path that I thought I had lost. Her questions were thoughtful, and her assessment of my situation helped me to make a few changes that, quite literally, catapulted me forward, and making a mental shift that was impacting nearly every aspect of my life.