Anna Lee

Biography

After a diverse career spanning the higher education, publishing and entertainment industries, Anna established Anna Lee Consulting (ALC) in 2008, when her first child was 6 weeks old.

Over the next six years Anna worked with hundreds of women, primarily through two flagship programs, Catalyst Women in Leadership and the Springboard Women’s Career Development Program. Anna’s experience of working with women across all levels of the organisational hierarchy, from recent graduates to CEOs, confirmed her long-held belief that workplace gender equality will only be achieved when change occurs at both the individual and systemic level.

In 2014, Anna’s desire to impact on the ‘big picture’ led to the merger of ALC and Leed Consulting. This move saw Anna partnering with her brother Diarmid, a specialist in organisational culture, to offer interventions at the individual, team and organisational level.

Leed’s clients are some of South Australia’s biggest employers in their respective sectors, including Bendigo Bank, Minter Ellison, UniSA, Santos and the SA Department of Premier and Cabinet.

While Anna continues to thrive on working with women and men to achieve gender equality, her understanding of how unconscious biases underpin human behaviour frequently sees her working with executive teams to maximise effectiveness and make better decisions. This involves explicitly teaching techniques that ensure that limited resources (such as time, energy, attention and money) are allocated wisely, that innovation is stimulated rather than stifled and that diverse experience, knowledge, skills and perspectives are proactively engaged.
As a speaker, Anna’s primary focus is on the challenge that the information age presents to our overwhelmed brains. In 2016, we encounter more data, more decisions and more distractions in a single day than our ancestors dealt with in a lifetime. If we are to avoid overload and inefficiency, we must consciously and proactively learn how rest and refresh our minds, avoid systematic errors of thinking and apply an Explorer Mindset to ideas that differ from our own.

With a Masters in Professional Education and Training, Anna will have audience members practising new thinking skills before they leave their seats.

Anna has held various positions on executive committees and not-for-profit Boards. She is currently Chair of her children’s School Council and a member of the South Australian Premier’s Council for Women. She is the sole South Australian alumnus of the Centre for Applied Rationality, Berkeley.

Topics

• Explorer mindset
  • A new approach to innovation, engagement and organisational performance. Discover why your organisation needs explorers, and how to cultivate them.
• Pay attention!
  • Increase the ROI of your most precious resource. In an age of infinite data, decisions and distractions, how do we make sure our attention is wisely spent?
• How unconscious bias derails decision-making and what to do about it
  • Learn how to avoid groupthink, confirmation bias and other common biases.
• Princesses and superheroes
  • How gender stereotypes limit potential and compromise performance.
• What weighs women down: is your to-do list keeping you out of the C-suite?

Testimonials

Anna’s charisma, passion and deep understanding of how to engage people draws you into her presentations. Her style is conversational and engaging and with her in-depth knowledge of her subject, she hits a good balance and leaves you wanting to learn more. Anna’s readiness to work with you and adapt her topic and style to suit your audience is a credit to her competence and I would recommend her for any speaking engagement focussed on driving an organisational culture of engagement, inclusion and high performance.
Senior Manager
Local Connection Communication & Connection, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank

Anna! I’m searching for ways of making an hologram/avatar of you and your presentation…so I can present it at any/every opportunity. This stuff needs to be taught to everyone, everywhere!
CEO, Golf SA

Easily one of the best presenters I have ever encountered (and I’ve seen many!) and her knowledge and enthusiasm are contagious. She literally had all of us in the palm of her hand and hanging off her every word.
SA Police

Anna's enthusiasm and clarity sets the bar high - her ability to communicate complex ideas in a style that's engaging for a broad audience means that our people remember her key message a year later!
Research Scientist, the Australian Wine Research Institute