Rebekah French

Advisory Board Member

Rebekah French is a Senior Associate in Arnold Bloch Leibler’s Workplace Advisory group. She provides commercial advice on all aspects of employment law, including complex and sensitive litigation matters.

With over 10 years’ experience helping clients navigate the challenges that come from managing employees. Her experience is broad, including recruitment, government, industry and private practice.

Regarded for her clear and commercial advice, Rebekah works with clients across a number of industries, including media, finance, manufacturing, hospitality, retail, construction and not-for-profit. She has worked on a number of high-profile matters including those relating to large scale restructures, complex employment litigation and employment aspects of sensitive business acquisitions.

Before joining Arnold Bloch Leibler in 2019, Rebekah was a Senior Associate at Norton Rose Fulbright, which included a secondment to a Victorian Government department.

Rebekah holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Business (Human Resource Management). In 2013, she graduated from Monash University with a Master of Laws.

Bruce McCowan

Advisory Board Member

Bruce has extensive experience as a HR Executive, HR Consultant, Executive Recruitment Consultant and Company Director across a range of industry sectors. He has held HR Director roles in financial services, utilities and disability. He has extensive HR Consulting experience in implementation of operating models, change management, culture change, leadership development, executive coaching and HR strategy development.

Bruce is passionate about understanding business strategy and developing HR strategies to meet business objectives. His experience includes HR function design, HR service delivery models, HR capability development and improving business outcomes. He is an experienced facilitator in leadership development and HR strategy. Bruce holds graduate and post graduate qualifications in education and is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Bruce is the Chair of the Accreditation Committee of White Ribbon Australia and is a Board Member of Able Australia.

Dr Nicola Watts

Advisory Board Member

Nicola has extensive global and local experience across many sectors – as a consultant, adviser, educator, board member and senior manager. In a time of unprecedented change and disruption, Nicola is acutely aware of the challenges of identifying and building skills for an equitable future that supports shared benefit. She is highly skilled in Strategy, Clustering, Smart Specialisation, Social Impact, Business Resilience, Systems Thinking, Governance, Capacity Building and Collective Leadership.

Nick Kennedy

Chair – The Workforce Planning Institute

Nick has over 20 years of experience, including strategic and operational workforce planning, project and program management, change leadership and global talent management. This is complimented by a strong aptitude for continuous improvement, supported by experience across sectors including, government, mining and resources, automotive, consulting and minerals processing.

Having managed strategic workforce planning and organisational design teams for large global organisations and overseen major change and optimisation programs, Nick has a deep understanding of the complex challenges faced by many organisations. He holds a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering and is passionate about connecting strategy, planning and people.

Nick has significant experience designing strategic workforce planning solutions across local, state and federal government clients and is an accomplished trainer and workshop facilitator. Nick has designed and facilitated public and in-house training in strategic workforce planning, workforce data & analytics, and capability mapping for clients in the state and federal government sectors across Australia.

Nick is also a current Board Member of Triathlon Victoria.