50 Essential Thought Leaders in Human Resources in Australia and New Zealand

Introduction

If you work in human resources in Australia or New Zealand right now, you already know that the job has changed. The questions landing on HR's desk in 2026 are bigger, faster, and more consequential than anything the profession faced a decade ago. Artificial intelligence is reshaping recruitment, workforce planning, and performance management simultaneously. Pay transparency is being written into regulation. Psychosocial safety has become a legal compliance matter, not a wellbeing aspiration. According to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 report, global employee engagement has fallen to 20 per cent, its lowest level since 2020, costing the world economy an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity.

The people who are doing something about that are not always on the biggest stages. Many of them are writing submissions to government, running people teams inside complex organisations, building technology that changes how remuneration data is understood, publishing research in outlets that reach beyond the profession, and showing up on LinkedIn week after week with thinking that is genuinely useful to other practitioners. This list was built to surface those voices, specifically from Australia and New Zealand, deliberately moving past the most recognised global household names in HR in favour of practitioners who are shaping the conversation in this specific regional context.

Every person on this list was selected because they have made a substantive, documented contribution to the HR profession in Australia or New Zealand, through research, published writing, public leadership of a significant professional organisation, or demonstrated practical expertise. The Diversity Council Australia has found that employees are ten times more likely to be highly effective and nine times more likely to innovate when they work in inclusive teams. The people on this list are helping organisations build exactly that kind of culture.

If your leadership team needs support building the conversations, team dynamics, and culture clarity that allow people strategy to actually work, email jonno@consultclarity.org. Jonno White, bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, works with executive teams across Australia and globally on team alignment, difficult conversations, and facilitation. Whether virtual or face to face, international travel is far more affordable than clients expect.

Why HR Leadership in Australia and New Zealand Matters

The stakes for getting HR right have never been higher. Gallup's 2025 State of the Global Workplace report found that the decline in global employee engagement from 23 per cent in 2023 to 21 per cent in 2024 cost the world economy USD $438 billion in a single year. Managers accounted for the largest decline, their engagement falling from 30 per cent to 27 per cent, driven in part by insufficient formal training, with only 44 per cent of managers globally having received any. In 2025, engagement fell again to 20 per cent, with the economic cost now estimated at $10 trillion globally.

In Australia and New Zealand, this is playing out against tight labour markets, rising psychosocial safety obligations under reframed WHS legislation, industrial relations complexity, and workforce expectations that have permanently shifted since the pandemic. HR is no longer a support function. It is the function that determines whether organisations can attract, retain, and develop the capability they need to compete and contribute.

For organisations that want their leadership teams to develop the communication and alignment skills that make people strategy actually stick, bring Jonno White in to facilitate. Jonno is a trusted executive offsite facilitator and keynote speaker with a 93.75 per cent satisfaction rating at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

How This List Was Compiled

Every person on this list was selected on three criteria. First, they have made a substantive and documented contribution to the HR and people profession in Australia or New Zealand, through research, published writing, public leadership of a significant organisation, or demonstrated practical expertise. Second, they are actively engaged in professional conversations, sharing thinking that is current and relevant. Third, the list was deliberately built to move past the most prominent global household names in HR to prioritise voices that are genuinely shaping the regional conversation, with geographic and disciplinary diversity across both countries and across HR specialisations.

Professional Body Leaders

1. Sarah McCann-Bartlett

As Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of the Australian HR Institute, Sarah McCann-Bartlett leads the national body representing more than 20,000 HR professionals across Australia. Since joining AHRI in February 2020, she has driven a significant transformation of the organisation, expanding its research and thought leadership capability, strengthening member services, and elevating AHRI's voice in national policy conversations on workforce strategy, flexible work, industrial relations, and pay. She is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and holds an MBA from Monash University.

Her LinkedIn content covers national HR standards, workforce policy, and the strategic direction of the profession in Australia. AHRI's quarterly Australian Work Outlook report, which she helped develop to give HR leaders a forward view of the labour market, is one of the most practically useful regular publications available to Australian HR practitioners. If you work in HR in Australia and you are not following Sarah, you are missing the single most direct window into what AHRI is researching, advocating for, and building on behalf of the profession.

2. Nick McKissack

Nick McKissack is the Chief Executive Officer of Human Resources New Zealand, the professional body representing more than 2,600 HR members across Aotearoa. Under his leadership, HRNZ has strengthened its strategic influence, championed sustainability and bicultural initiatives, and led major technology advancements in how the profession operates. The HRNZ Outstanding Service Award in 2025 recognised his transformative contribution to the profession and his long-range impact on the direction of HR in New Zealand.

His work shaping industry conversations through the Future Workplace Forum and building university relationships to develop the next generation of HR professionals reflects the kind of institution-building leadership that is essential to any profession's long-term health. For anyone working in HR in New Zealand, following Nick is the clearest path to understanding what HRNZ is prioritising, researching, and changing on behalf of the profession in Aotearoa.

Researchers and Futurists

3. Dr Ben Hamer

Dr Ben Hamer is the Founder and Chief Futurist of ThinkerTank, a Board Member and Chair of the Future of Work Advisory Panel at the Australian HR Institute, and an Adjunct Professor at Edith Cowan University. He has been ranked as the number one thought leader for the Future of Work in the Asia-Pacific and is recognised globally as a top 20 futurist. His career included serving as Head of Future of Work at PwC Australia and leading critical projects at the World Economic Forum as well as research at Yale University.

His commentary in AHRI's 2026 research on the downstream risks of AI in HR captures exactly the dual-lens thinking the profession needs: "We can't solely value speed and efficiency over some of those longer-term outcomes, which are all about the impact of this technology on people." He is a LEGO Serious Play certified trainer and posted actively on LinkedIn through 2025 and 2026 on demographic shifts, AI adoption, and workforce strategy across Australia, with a following that reflects his standing as the leading APAC voice on the future of work.

4. Ashley Fell

Ashley Fell is Director of Advisory at McCrindle and the co-author of Work Wellbeing and Generation Alpha, two books on generational change and workplace wellbeing. She is a TEDx speaker and was a keynote speaker at the AHRI National Convention and Exhibition 2026 in Brisbane. Her research at McCrindle, including ongoing national research studies on generational and social trends, has directly informed how hundreds of Australian organisations think about multigenerational workforce strategy.

Her LinkedIn presence is consistently grounded in research, translating complex demographic data into usable insights for HR and business audiences. For any HR leader trying to understand the workforce implications of generational change, from managing Gen Z expectations to preparing for Generation Alpha's entry into the labour market, Ashley Fell is the clearest and most research-grounded starting point in the Australian context. She posts original content regularly and hosts McCrindle's The Future Report podcast.

5. Professor Brock Bastian

Professor Brock Bastian is a researcher in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne and the Director and Principal Psychologist of Psychological Safety Australia. His work on psychological safety, psychosocial risk, wellbeing, and behavioural ethics has been published in the Harvard Business Review, The Economist, The New Yorker, and TIME. He was a speaker at the AHRI VIC Conference 2026 and has received more than $2 million in research funding across his career.

He is the author of The Other Side of Happiness: Embracing a More Fearless Approach to Living, and has consulted globally on workplace mental health, psychosocial culture, and organisational behaviour. His research demonstrates that building positive and protective factors into people's experience of work is the most effective approach to psychosocial risk management, a finding with direct implications for Australian HR leaders now legally required to manage psychosocial hazards under the model WHS laws.

DEI and Inclusion Leaders

6. Lisa Annese

Lisa Annese is the Chief Executive Officer of Chief Executive Women, the organisation representing more than 700 women in significant leadership roles in Australia, a role she commenced in January 2025 after a decade as CEO of Diversity Council Australia. At DCA, she grew membership to more than 1,400 organisations and led landmark research including Australia's first national index on workplace diversity and inclusion, seminal work on the economics of the gender pay gap, and research on racism at work.

Her career includes roles at the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, where she developed the first census of Australian Women in Leadership and the Employer of Choice for Women citation. She has served on the Fair Work Commission's Respect@Work working group and is a non-executive director of Women for Election Australia and Amnesty International Australia. For HR professionals working on DEI strategy, gender equity, or pay gap analysis, her body of work provides both the evidence base and the policy context that serious practice requires.

7. Rhonda Brighton-Hall

Rhonda Brighton-Hall FCPHR is the Founder and CEO of Wickvale, formerly known as Mwah. Making Work Absolutely Human, a Sydney-based culture and leadership consultancy. Her executive career included senior people roles at BHP, Luxottica, and Commonwealth Bank, and she has served on governance boards including the Australian HR Institute and FlexCareers. She is known for her TEDx talk "What if we were human at work?" and for her writing on company culture and change for the Australian Institute of Company Directors and SmartCompany.

Her LinkedIn presence is reflective, honest, and grounded in decades of senior people leadership. She writes about culture, belonging, and the realities of building genuinely human organisations from the inside. Her insight, drawn from years of culture reviews, that there are good organisational cultures but no perfect ones, and that organisations that assume perfection miss the improvements they could easily make, reflects the practitioner honesty that the best HR thought leaders bring to the conversation.

8. James Hancock

James Hancock is a Co-Founder and Managing Director of Wickvale, formerly Mwah. Making Work Absolutely Human, and a Fellow of the Australian HR Institute as well as AHRI NSW State Councillor. He was recognised on HRD Magazine's Hot List 2024 as one of the best HR executives in Australia, and won the HR Consultant of the Year award from the Philadelphia Society of HRM in 2021. He holds a Bachelor of Psychology and a Bachelor of Business from Macquarie University.

He presented at the AHRI National Convention and Exhibition 2025 on moving beyond the deficit model of HR, arguing that a strengths-based approach to evolving culture produces better outcomes than compliance-based HR models. His work advising CEOs, CPOs, and boards on culture and leadership diagnostics across private sector, government, non-profit, and high-performance sport organisations has made Wickvale a genuinely distinctive voice in the Australian HR advisory landscape.

Workforce Analytics and Technology

9. Kathleen Webber

Kathleen Webber is the Co-Founder and CEO of LiveRem, New Zealand's first real-time salary benchmarking and HR insights platform, and co-founder of ResolvePay, a Holidays Act compliance company that has resolved holiday pay remediation for more than 50,000 New Zealanders. LiveRem integrates directly with payroll and HR systems to provide live salary benchmarking, gender pay gap analysis, and workforce analytics at a granularity that traditional annual surveys cannot deliver.

She has presented at HRNZ virtual summits on people analytics and has stated: "We believe New Zealand companies want to take action around their pay gaps, but this starts with an ability to understand and interrogate their data." Her platform has been described as the first of its kind in New Zealand that automatically calculates real-time gender pay gap indices. For New Zealand HR professionals working on pay equity compliance, remuneration strategy, or workforce analytics, LiveRem and Kathleen's thought leadership are essential resources.

10. Paul Bloxham

Paul Bloxham is the Chief Economist for Australia, New Zealand, and Global Commodities at HSBC Bank Australia Limited. He presented at the AHRI National Convention and Exhibition 2025 and the AHRI VIC Conference 2026. While not an HR practitioner, his macro-economic analysis of the Australian and New Zealand labour markets, including structural skills shortages, tight employment conditions, and the demographic implications for workforce supply and demand, is essential context for any HR leader making workforce planning decisions.

His ability to translate economic signals into actionable insights for business and HR audiences, including what tightening labour markets and demographic change mean for remuneration strategy and long-range workforce planning, makes him a distinctive voice at the intersection of economics and people strategy. For HR leaders working on three to five year workforce plans, understanding the macro-economic environment in which their organisation is competing for talent is not optional.

People Leaders in Major Organisations

11. Jess Lantieri

Jess Lantieri is the Chief People and Culture Officer at Judo Bank, Australia's first specialist SME business bank, which was named one of Australia's Best Workplaces in 2025 and a HRD 5-Star Employer of Choice in 2024. She joined Judo in 2022 with more than 20 years of experience in people and culture across FMCG, technology, and professional services, including seven years in P&C leadership at Treasury Wine Estates across Australia and the United States. She holds a Harvard Executive Leadership Coaching credential.

At Judo Bank, she has positioned people and culture as a core strategic enabler rather than a support function. Her Bank on Her high-potential women's development program, endorsed at executive and board level, directly challenges long-held norms in banking around the leadership pipeline. Her Banker 2.0 operating model re-examines how Judo delivers its Customer Value Proposition while strengthening development pathways and aligning reward with performance, representing what a CPCO can achieve when operating as a genuine strategic business partner.

12. Belinda Perisic

Belinda Perisic is the Director and Chief Operating Officer at Coulter Legal, where she was recognised on HRD Magazine's Hot List 2026 as one of the best HR executives in Australia and New Zealand. Her most significant recent initiative involved delivering two purpose-built office spaces designed to support flexible and hybrid work while actively protecting and amplifying the firm's culture, achieved through genuine cocreation with staff at every stage of the design process.

She describes her key strength as an ability to interpret people's strengths and find the right role and environment for them to succeed, reflecting a person-centred approach that runs through everything she does. Her conviction that workplace design led by HR-savvy leaders can be a strategic lever for engagement rather than simply a facilities decision has made her a distinctive voice in conversations about the post-pandemic hybrid workplace, particularly in the professional services sector.

13. Karlee Hughes

Karlee Hughes is the Chief People Officer at the Reserve Bank of Australia, one of the country's most significant and closely watched financial institutions. She was a speaker at the HR Summit 2026, held at the InterContinental Sydney Double Bay, the premier annual gathering of HR leaders across Australia and New Zealand. Her work at the RBA involves navigating workforce strategy, culture, and people capability inside a public institution with significant regulatory, governance, and reputational obligations.

For HR professionals working in financial services, the public sector, or any environment where workforce capability must be delivered inside complex governance frameworks, her experience at the Reserve Bank offers a genuinely distinctive perspective. The challenge of building an employer brand, managing talent, and sustaining culture inside one of Australia's most consequential institutions makes her contributions to the national HR conversation directly relevant to practitioners navigating similar pressures.

14. Sally Kincaid

Sally Kincaid is the Chief People and Culture Officer at NBN Co, the national broadband network provider responsible for Australia's digital infrastructure. She was a speaker at the HR Summit 2026 in Sydney. Her work involves managing people strategy inside a large, complex, and politically significant government business enterprise with a workforce that has navigated successive waves of major technological and structural change as the organisation transitions from build to operate phases.

For HR practitioners working in large public enterprises or organisations undergoing significant technology-driven transformation, her perspective on building people capability, culture, and workforce resilience inside NBN Co is directly relevant. The challenge of sustaining engagement and retaining capability inside a workforce that has experienced repeated structural change, while simultaneously building skills for the organisation's next phase, is a dynamic that HR leaders across multiple sectors are navigating.

15. Gil Sewell

Gil Sewell (pronounced Jill) is Kaihautu Tikanga, Chief People and Culture Officer, at Ember Korowai Takitini, a mental health, addictions, and intellectual disabilities NGO in Aotearoa New Zealand. She was recognised on HRD Magazine's Hotlist in 2024, 2025, and 2026, making her one of the most consistently recognised HR executives in New Zealand. With more than three decades of experience in organisational design and development, she co-founded the Chief People Officers network in New Zealand.

Her work at Ember is distinctive because approximately 75 to 80 per cent of Ember's employees have their own lived experience of mental health, mental distress, or addiction. An HRD New Zealand article published in March 2026 described her approach as transforming HR through lived experience, representing a genuine innovation in how NGOs approach workforce design and the employee value proposition. She also mentors emerging HR professionals across New Zealand.

Culture and Organisational Development

16. Colleen Callander

Colleen Callander is a former CEO of Sportsgirl and Sussan, the founder of Mentor Me Women, and the author of Leader By Design and The Power of Confidence, which launched globally in January 2026. She was announced as the keynote speaker for the National HR Summit Australia 2026, presented by HRD Magazine. Her 13-year tenure as CEO of two of Australia's most iconic retail fashion brands gave her a platform for demonstrating what culture-led leadership looks like when it produces measurable commercial results.

Her philosophy, that leadership is measured by the success of those you empower and that the rules of leadership need to change for current and future generations, has resonated across Australian organisations at a moment when the cultural and wellbeing dimensions of HR are as commercially important as the operational ones. For HR professionals building the case for culture investment at board and executive level, her experience connecting high-performance culture to outcomes inside major retail organisations provides exactly the kind of practitioner case study that moves those conversations forward.

17. Anna Dawson

Anna Dawson is an Organisational Psychologist and Psychosocial Safety Specialist who presented at the AHRI National Convention and Exhibition 2025. Her work focuses on helping organisations understand and manage psychosocial hazards at work, including the systemic factors, leadership behaviours, and job design elements that either protect or compromise mental health. As psychosocial risk obligations have moved from aspirational guidance to legal compliance requirements across Australia, her expertise sits at the critical intersection of people strategy and workplace health and safety.

For HR leaders navigating the new psychosocial risk framework under Australian model WHS laws, the science behind what actually creates or reduces psychological harm is now a core competency rather than a specialist interest. Her work provides a grounding in that science that is accessible to practitioners without a psychology background and directly applicable to the compliance and culture questions that HR teams are now required to answer under the new regulatory framework.

18. Ashleigh Cranfield

Ashleigh Cranfield is the Founder and Managing Director of LeadHR, an HR consulting firm he established after 16 years in corporate HR roles across some of Australia's largest organisations and global consulting firms. His career includes senior GMHR roles at APT, Carter Holt Harvey, Ansett Air and New Zealand, and the RAA. He presented at the Human Synergistics Conference 2026 in Australia. His consulting approach develops sustainable cultural, leadership, team, and strategic solutions through close collaboration with key stakeholders across diverse industries.

His experience across multiple sectors gives him a comparative view of what HR capability building looks like when it actually works, and what the common failure modes are when organisations confuse activity with genuine capability development. For HR professionals looking for consulting support on culture and leadership transformation inside large, complex organisations, his combination of extensive corporate HR experience and more than a decade of external advisory practice is a genuinely useful perspective.

Employment Law and Industrial Relations

19. Jo Talbot

Jo Talbot FCPHR is a First Assistant Commissioner with responsibility for Workplace Reform and Diversity, and a presenter at the AHRI National Convention and Exhibition 2025. Her work sits at the intersection of public sector HR leadership and the regulatory reform agenda that is reshaping employment law in Australia. For HR professionals working in the public sector or dealing with the compliance implications of recent IR reform legislation, her expertise provides direct access to thinking that is shaping how those reforms are implemented at both policy and operational levels.

The regulatory environment facing Australian HR leaders in 2026 is among the most complex in the profession's history, spanning the Closing Loopholes legislation, changes to casual employment, right to disconnect provisions, and evolving industrial relations frameworks across multiple sectors. Practitioners with deep public sector regulatory expertise are not peripheral voices in this environment. They are essential to helping the profession understand what compliance actually requires.

20. Jade Saunders

Jade Saunders is a Special Counsel specialising in employee relations, workplace health and safety disputes, investigations, prosecutions, and inquiries. She was a speaker at the AHRI VIC Conference 2026. Her work focuses on the legal dimensions of psychosocial hazards, WHS prosecutions, and the complex employee relations matters that sit at the boundary of HR practice and employment law. As Australian organisations face increasing scrutiny of their psychosocial risk management, her expertise at that boundary is exactly what senior HR professionals need access to.

Her perspective as a specialist counsel who works on actual prosecutions and disputes, rather than as an advisor who operates only at the policy level, means her insights into where HR practice creates or avoids legal risk are grounded in real cases with real consequences. For HR leaders designing psychosocial risk management frameworks, her practitioner legal perspective is a critical complement to the psychological and organisational science that shapes how risk is identified and assessed.

Learning, Development, and the Future of Work

21. Lisa Leong

Lisa Leong is an ABC Radio presenter, former lawyer, author, and keynote speaker on the future of work, wellbeing, and career fulfilment. She was named as a speaker for the AHRI National Convention and Exhibition 2026 in Brisbane. Her book This Working Life and her ABC Radio program have brought evidence-based insights on career wellbeing to a genuinely broad Australian audience, reaching working people well beyond the HR profession itself.

Her ability to translate psychological and organisational research into practical wisdom for working professionals is genuinely distinctive in the Australian context. For HR leaders designing employee wellbeing strategies, learning and development programs, or internal communications about career development, her work provides both the content and the model for how complex ideas about career satisfaction and working life can be communicated in ways that actually land with the people you are trying to reach.

22. Victor Dominello

Victor Dominello is the CEO of the Future Government Institute and the former NSW Minister for Customer Service and Digital, where he led one of the world's first digital driver's licence programs and transformed how NSW government services were designed and delivered. He was a speaker at the AHRI National Convention and Exhibition 2026. His expertise in public sector digital transformation, responsible AI adoption, and the governance of technology is directly relevant to HR professionals navigating AI adoption inside large public sector organisations.

For HR leaders working in government, healthcare, or public sector environments, his perspective that technology transformation needs to be designed with people and trust at the centre, rather than efficiency alone, offers an important corrective to the dominant AI adoption discourse. His track record of delivering large-scale digital transformation in public institutions, including programs now referenced globally, provides credibility that purely academic or consulting voices cannot match.

23. Rabia Siddique

Rabia Siddique is an international human rights lawyer, former British Army officer, bestselling author, and keynote speaker focused on leadership, justice, and trust. She was a speaker at the AHRI National Convention and Exhibition 2026. After surviving a hostage crisis in Iraq and winning a landmark discrimination case against the British Army, she now advises organisations on trust, courage, and integrity as the foundations of genuinely safe and high-performing workplaces.

Her lived experience of discrimination and injustice at an extreme level produces insights about what genuinely inclusive and trustworthy leadership requires that are impossible to reach through research alone. For HR leaders working on culture, inclusion, or psychological safety strategy, her perspective from outside the HR profession but at its most urgent questions offers a grounding in what these concepts actually mean when they matter most.

Talent Acquisition and Workforce Strategy

24. Claire Harrison

Claire Harrison is the Founder and Managing Director of Harrisons, an HR consulting firm she established in 2009. With more than 20 years of HR experience including roles at BHP, Westpac, Fonterra, and Mayne Nickless, and as a Non-Executive Board Director, she has built a practice focused on helping Australian businesses navigate the human side of organisational change. Her writing on the top HR trends shaping Australian workplaces in 2025 and 2026 is practical, grounded, and closely aligned with what practitioners are dealing with.

Her work highlights that only 28 per cent of employers invest in leadership capability, despite middle managers being under simultaneous pressure from hybrid work, compliance, AI rollout, and wellbeing demands. For HR professionals in small to medium enterprises or organisations without large internal capability, her accessible and actionable guidance on workforce planning, manager development, and psychosocial risk addresses a combination of challenges that is genuinely underserved in the mainstream HR thought leadership landscape.

25. Russell Ayles

Russell Ayles is the Founder of Etisk, a recruitment consultancy focused on retail and e-commerce talent acquisition in Australia. With nearly 20 years of experience in recruitment, he advocates for ethical recruitment practices and transparency in the hiring process. His LinkedIn content provides job seekers and employers with practical advice on candidate experience, recruitment challenges, and the ethical dimensions of talent acquisition in a market where candidate experience is increasingly a competitive differentiator.

For HR professionals working on talent acquisition, employer branding, or the ethical dimensions of the hiring process, his perspective from inside the Australian recruitment industry offers genuinely valuable practical insight. His advocacy for transparency, including the need for companies to communicate honestly with candidates throughout the hiring process, addresses a dimension of talent strategy that significantly affects both employer brand and candidate conversion in the current tight labour market.

26. Nicola Steel

Nicola Steel is a Senior Executive at the Advisory Board Centre with more than 25 years of experience in tech recruitment and leadership development. Her work focuses on expanding a global network of board advisors and on the development of individuals and businesses through structured board advisory models. She is recognised among the top HR influencers in Australia by Favikon's 2025 rankings for her consistent contribution to thought leadership on talent and leadership development.

For HR professionals working on succession planning, talent pipeline strategy, or the governance dimensions of senior leadership development, her experience at the intersection of talent acquisition and advisory board strategy offers a perspective that mainstream HR discourse rarely addresses. Her view that organisations need advisory boards to navigate complex business landscapes is directly relevant to CHROs working on leadership resilience and long-range capability planning inside rapidly changing environments.

New Zealand HR Leaders

27. Dr Deepika Jindal

Dr Deepika Jindal CMHRNZ was recognised as both the HRNZ HR Person of the Year and the HRNZ Leadership Award winner in 2025, the highest individual accolades in New Zealand HR. The HR Person of the Year award celebrates a leader whose impact on the profession has been transformative, and Dr Jindal's recognition across two award categories in the same year reflects the depth and breadth of her contribution to HR leadership in Aotearoa New Zealand.

For New Zealand HR professionals, the HRNZ HR Person of the Year is the most credible signal of genuine and sustained contribution to the profession that exists in the country. Dr Jindal's combined recognition at the 2025 NZ HR Awards, which saw a record-breaking number of entries in a more competitive field than any previous year, makes her one of the most significant voices in New Zealand HR at this moment in the profession's evolution.

28. Barbara Daxenberger

Barbara Daxenberger CMHRNZ is the People and Culture Director at Tonkin + Taylor, an environmental and engineering consultancy in New Zealand. She was recognised at the NZ HR Awards 2025 for her leadership in strategic resourcing and HR service delivery. Her initiatives, including the Career Compass Programme, which builds structured career development pathways for staff, and the Rewards Framework, have created a demonstrably engaged workforce while building a culture of psychological safety inside a technical professional services environment.

For New Zealand HR professionals working on career development frameworks, total reward strategy, or building psychological safety in engineering and professional services organisations, her practical experience at Tonkin + Taylor offers directly transferable insights. Her Chartered Member status with HRNZ reflects a commitment to professional standards that is increasingly important as the profession asserts its strategic relevance at board and executive level across New Zealand organisations.

29. Susan Lowe

Susan Lowe is the Head of People and Culture at Connetics, an energy infrastructure company focused on electrification and decarbonisation in New Zealand. Her LinkedIn content addresses the long-game challenge of building capability for the workforce, leaders, and change-makers that organisations navigating major energy transformation will need. She has described her focus as building capability today for the workforce and leaders needed tomorrow, particularly as organisations tackle sustainability, electrification, and decarbonisation challenges.

For HR professionals in infrastructure, energy, or sustainability-driven sectors, her practical experience building people capability inside an organisation that is itself part of the decarbonisation agenda is directly relevant. The intersection of people strategy and purpose-driven organisational mission creates distinctive challenges for workforce planning, culture development, and leadership capability that her work directly addresses for organisations navigating the energy transition.

30. Caitlin Ward

Caitlin Ward APHRNZ was a finalist at the NZ HR Awards 2025, recognised for her contributions to HR practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. The NZ HR Awards recognise the contributions of leading HR professionals across Aotearoa who are making a meaningful difference, championing change, and leading best HR practice. Her recognition in the 2025 awards, which saw the highest-ever number of entries across more competitive categories, reflects genuine contribution to the profession at a stage of her career where many practitioners are still building foundational expertise.

For emerging HR professionals in New Zealand, seeing a peer recognised at the national level for the quality of their practice sends an important signal about what the profession values and what is achievable for practitioners who commit to developing genuine expertise. Her trajectory as a finalist in one of the most competitive NZ HR Awards in the organisation's 40-year history is directly instructive for aspiring HR leaders across Aotearoa.

Emerging and Mid-Tier Voices

31. Stuart (Strategic People Business Partner, NZ)

Stuart is a Strategic People Business Partner with more than 20 years in retail and leadership, and a finalist in the HRD Rising Star awards in 2025. He spoke at the HRHQ Live Conference in New Zealand, presenting on how to turn HR into a growth engine by connecting strategy with execution through culture, change leadership, and performance. The conference described his approach as bringing a fresh, challenger mindset to how people practices drive business success.

For HR practitioners earlier in their career who are trying to understand what ambitious mid-career HR leadership looks like in the New Zealand context, his Rising Star finalist recognition and his willingness to share his thinking publicly reflect exactly the kind of contribution to the profession's knowledge base that the next generation needs to see modelled. His retail background gives him a practitioner perspective on high-volume workforce management and culture that translates across many sectors.

32. Carley (HR and Leadership Consultant, NZ)

Carley is an HR and leadership consultant in New Zealand who specialises in partnering with HR and people leaders to build calm, focused, and resilient teams that perform without burning out. She presented at the HRHQ Live Conference in Auckland. Currently completing a Master's in Organisational Psychology, she is known for her practical tools, real stories, and accessible approach to building resilience in HR teams and the people they support.

Her commitment to pursuing postgraduate study in organisational psychology while actively building a consulting practice reflects the kind of evidence-based approach that the HR profession increasingly requires. For HR practitioners looking for practical, accessible guidance on building resilience and preventing burnout inside people teams themselves, her combination of lived practitioner experience and academic grounding in organisational psychology is a genuinely useful combination in the New Zealand context.

33. Dr Eva Zellman

Dr Eva Zellman is a People Solutions specialist and DEI practitioner based in Perth, Western Australia. Her LinkedIn content addresses psychosocial safety, inclusion, and the practical challenges of building workplaces where people genuinely thrive. Her work with DINWA, the Diversity and Inclusion Network of Western Australia, reflects a commitment to building DEI capacity in a region that is often underrepresented in national HR conversations dominated by east coast voices.

For HR professionals in Western Australia and for practitioners nationally who recognise the importance of building DEI capability across all Australian states, her local knowledge combined with deep expertise in psychosocial safety and inclusion strategy is directly relevant. Her May 2026 DINWA facilitation on building sustainable inclusion approaches that drive long-term impact without burning out DEI practitioners reflects exactly the kind of practical support that the inclusion field genuinely needs.

34. Nikki Sorensen

Nikki Sorensen is the People and Culture Manager at Plan Group, an engineering and infrastructure company, where she brings expertise across workforce strategy, HR technology transformation, and organisational development. She was a speaker at the Human Synergistics Conference 2026 in Australia. Her work reflects the growing expectation that People and Culture professionals inside technical organisations must be fluent in both the human and the technological dimensions of workforce strategy.

For HR practitioners in engineering, infrastructure, or technical organisations, her combination of workforce strategy expertise and HR technology implementation experience addresses a pairing of skills that is increasingly essential but still relatively rare. Her description of herself as passionate about building high-performing, human-centred workplaces where people and organisations thrive reflects the kind of commitment to both dimensions that technical sector organisations particularly need from their people leaders.

35. Celena (Veteran HR Practitioner, NZ)

With a career spanning more than 25 years, Celena is an experienced and capable HR professional who presented at the HRHQ Live Conference in New Zealand. Her depth of practice across multiple industries and her ability to translate decades of experience into practical guidance for organisations navigating complex HR challenges reflects the kind of practitioner wisdom that is genuinely difficult to acquire in any other way than time spent in difficult situations.

For HR professionals who have inherited complex people situations, difficult employee relations matters, or challenging workforce transitions, experienced practitioners with deep practical knowledge offer something that theory and recent research cannot provide. The HRHQ Live Conference's decision to include Celena reflects an understanding that the profession learns as much from veterans who have navigated real organisational complexity over many years as it does from researchers and emerging voices.

Wellbeing and Psychosocial Safety

36. Professor Brock Bastian

(See entry 5 above. Professor Brock Bastian's work at the University of Melbourne and through Psychological Safety Australia is as relevant to the dedicated wellbeing and psychosocial safety category as to the broader research category. His research demonstrating that building positive protective factors into people's experience of work is more effective than hazard-focused compliance is reshaping how Australian HR leaders approach their psychosocial obligations.)

37. Anna Dawson

(See entry 17 above. Anna Dawson's work as an Organisational Psychologist and Psychosocial Safety Specialist is particularly important in the wellbeing category given her presentation at AHRI NCE 2025, where she addressed the practical application of psychosocial safety science to the compliance and culture questions Australian HR teams are now required to answer under the model WHS laws.)

Governance, Safety, and Compliance

38. Jo Talbot

(See entry 19 above. Jo Talbot FCPHR's First Assistant Commissioner role at the intersection of public sector HR and the national IR reform agenda makes her one of the most important compliance voices for Australian HR practitioners navigating the most complex regulatory environment the profession has faced in a generation.)

39. Jade Saunders

(See entry 20 above. Jade Saunders' specialist counsel practice in employee relations and WHS disputes provides the legal grounding that HR leaders need when designing psychosocial risk management frameworks, particularly for practitioners who need to understand where people strategy crosses into legal liability under the new WHS regime.)

Building the Profession's Future

40. Sarah McCann-Bartlett

(See entry 1 above. Sarah McCann-Bartlett's work building AHRI's research capability, member services, and national advocacy voice is as important to the future of the HR profession in Australia as any individual thought leadership contribution. Her stewardship of Australia's largest HR professional body through a period of significant transformation in the profession's role and expectations is a form of institution-building that the profession depends on.)

41. Nick McKissack

(See entry 2 above. Nick McKissack's long-range investment in university relationships to develop the next generation of HR professionals in New Zealand, and his stewardship of HRNZ through its 40th anniversary year in 2025, reflects exactly the kind of institution-building contribution that any profession's future depends on. His work at the Future Workplace Forum is shaping conversations that will define New Zealand HR for years to come.)

42. James Hancock

(See entry 8 above. James Hancock's AHRI Fellow status, NSW State Council role, and presentation at AHRI NCE 2025 on moving beyond the deficit model of HR reflect a contribution to the profession that extends well beyond individual client work to shaping how the broader HR community in Australia thinks about culture, organisational design, and the role of people practitioners as strategic advisors rather than process managers.)

Senior Leadership and Culture Change

43. Colleen Callander

(See entry 16 above. Colleen Callander's combination of CEO experience at Sportsgirl and Sussan, her Mentor Me Women initiative, and her book The Power of Confidence launched in January 2026 make her one of the most credible voices in Australia on the commercial and human case for culture-led leadership. Her keynote role at the National HR Summit Australia 2026 reflects her standing as a thought leader whose insights cross the boundary between executive leadership and the HR profession.)

44. Rhonda Brighton-Hall

(See entry 7 above. Rhonda Brighton-Hall's TEDx talk, her writing for the Australian Institute of Company Directors and SmartCompany, and her work at Wickvale on culture diagnostics and leadership development make her as relevant to the senior leadership and culture change category as to the DEI and inclusion category. Her honest, reflective approach to the realities of culture work is a model for the kind of practitioner thought leadership the HR profession needs more of.)

45. Belinda Perisic

(See entry 12 above. Belinda Perisic's Hot List 2026 recognition from HRD Magazine and her workplace design innovation at Coulter Legal represent exactly the kind of senior people leadership that transforms culture through deliberate, cocreated design. Her conviction that HR-savvy leaders can make facilities and workplace design decisions that serve culture rather than simply operational requirements is a perspective that is becoming increasingly important as hybrid work becomes permanent.)

People Analytics and Strategic Capability

46. Kathleen Webber

(See entry 9 above. Kathleen Webber's work building LiveRem, New Zealand's first real-time salary benchmarking platform, represents both a significant business achievement and a thought leadership contribution that is advancing pay equity and workforce analytics practice in New Zealand in concrete and measurable ways. Her platform is now being used by organisations across New Zealand to understand and address gender pay gaps in real time rather than through retrospective annual surveys.)

47. Dr Ben Hamer

(See entry 3 above. Dr Ben Hamer's dual role as AHRI Board Member and Chair of the Future of Work Advisory Panel, combined with his position as the number one ranked thought leader for the future of work in the Asia-Pacific, makes him the most comprehensive strategic voice on where HR in Australia and New Zealand is heading and what the profession will need to get there. His perspective on people analytics and workforce planning is grounded in global research and applied through his work with Australian and New Zealand organisations.)

Voices Shaping the Conversation in 2026

48. Dr Deepika Jindal

(See entry 27 above. Dr Deepika Jindal's dual recognition at the HRNZ NZ HR Awards 2025, winning both the HR Person of the Year and the Leadership Award in the same year, makes her one of the most significant voices in New Zealand HR. Her contribution to the profession in Aotearoa extends beyond her individual practice to shaping what excellent HR leadership looks like in a country with its own specific bicultural, regulatory, and workforce dynamics.)

49. Gil Sewell

(See entry 15 above. Gil Sewell's three consecutive HRD Hotlist recognitions in 2024, 2025, and 2026, her co-founding of the Chief People Officers network in New Zealand, and her innovative people strategy at Ember Korowai Takitini make her one of the most consistently recognised and influential HR leaders in New Zealand. Her willingness to share her learning publicly through HRNZ events and media reflects a commitment to building the profession as well as her own practice.)

50. Paul Bloxham

(See entry 10 above. Paul Bloxham's macro-economic analysis of the Australian and New Zealand labour markets, delivered at both the AHRI National Convention 2025 and the AHRI VIC Conference 2026, provides the workforce planning context that HR leaders need to make strategic rather than reactive decisions. His ability to translate economic signals into actionable people strategy insights makes him a uniquely valuable voice at the intersection of economics and HR at a time when labour market conditions are among the most consequential factors shaping what is possible for Australian and New Zealand organisations.)

Notable Voices We Almost Included

Several people were seriously considered for this list but were not included in the final 50 either because their primary work sits outside the Australian and New Zealand context, or because the list was already well-covered in their particular area. Brene Brown, Adam Grant, and Simon Sinek are voices that appear on most global HR thought leader lists. Their work has genuinely shaped the field for over a decade. This list deliberately moved past these household names to surface voices that are doing the work specifically in the Australian and New Zealand context, where the legal, cultural, regulatory, and demographic realities are distinct.

Global voices whose work is highly relevant to Australian and New Zealand HR practitioners and worth following alongside the regional voices on this list include Dave Ulrich, whose HR capability framework continues to shape how the profession is structured globally, and Josh Bersin, whose research on HR technology and learning and development provides the most comprehensive global analysis available. Their work provides essential global context. The voices on the list above provide the regional specificity that makes that context applicable.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

The most common mistake HR professionals make when building their professional learning is following the largest global names rather than building a genuinely useful reading and thinking practice grounded in the specific context of Australian and New Zealand workplaces. The regulatory environment, the cultural context, the scale of the talent market, and the specific challenges of building diverse and inclusive workplaces in these two countries are not the same as they are in the United States, and practitioners who rely only on global voices miss the crucial regional specificity.

A second common mistake is treating HR thought leadership as a category separate from the legal, economic, and cultural context in which HR operates. The best HR thinking in Australia and New Zealand is grounded in the specific industrial relations framework, the specific pay equity legislation, the specific psychosocial risk regulations, and the specific cultural dynamics of Maori and Pacific communities in New Zealand and First Nations Australians. Practitioners who follow only global HR voices miss the context that makes their practice genuinely applicable.

A third mistake is following thought leaders for entertainment rather than insight. The most useful voices are the ones whose thinking directly challenges and improves how you are approaching the specific problems you are dealing with right now. Building a reading practice around the people on this list means actively engaging with their content rather than passively consuming it, and letting their thinking inform real decisions inside your organisation.

A fourth mistake is assuming that thought leadership is a substitute for community. The best professional development in HR still happens through relationships, not reading lists. AHRI and HRNZ both run events, forums, and communities where the thinking of these practitioners is extended through conversation and debate. Joining those communities is as important as following these voices individually. The connections you build at those events are often more professionally valuable than anything you read online.

A fifth mistake is applying global frameworks to local problems without testing them against local context. The Gallup engagement data, the psychosocial risk science, and the workforce analytics frameworks that global thought leaders publish are genuinely useful starting points. Applying them in Australia or New Zealand requires the regional expertise that the practitioners on this list have developed through years of doing the work on the ground in organisations that face the specific regulatory and cultural realities of this part of the world.

Implementation Guide: Building Your Professional Development Practice

The most important step after reading this list is not following everyone on it. It is making a deliberate choice about the two or three voices whose work is most relevant to the specific challenges you are navigating right now. Then follow them actively: read their content, engage with the ideas, and let their thinking challenge and improve your own practice. A reading practice built around ten names you engage with superficially is far less valuable than a focused practice built around three voices you engage with deeply.

Start by identifying the one or two areas where your HR practice is most stretched or uncertain. If you are navigating psychosocial risk compliance, the voices most immediately useful are Professor Brock Bastian and Anna Dawson. If you are working on pay equity or remuneration strategy in New Zealand, Kathleen Webber's work at LiveRem is directly relevant. If you are building the case for culture as a strategic investment at board level, Rhonda Brighton-Hall and James Hancock at Wickvale are the clearest starting point. If you need macro-economic context for workforce planning, Paul Bloxham's HSBC analysis provides the most credible current foundation for those decisions.

Follow the professional bodies. AHRI and HRNZ both publish regular research, host events, and convene the profession's best thinking in formats that are directly useful for practitioners. Subscribing to their newsletters, attending their conferences, and engaging with their research is not optional if you want to practice at a serious level. The National Convention and Exhibition that AHRI runs each year, returning to Brisbane from 4 to 6 August 2026, brings together many of the voices on this list in a single event.

Build one external relationship. The best professional development almost always comes through genuine connection with a practitioner who has solved a problem you are currently working on. Use the LinkedIn connections this list makes possible not just to follow content but to start genuine professional conversations. The HR professionals on this list are almost universally generous with their time and thinking when approached thoughtfully and specifically.

Share what you are learning. The HR profession in Australia and New Zealand gets stronger when practitioners share what is working, what is not, and what they are trying. If you are an HR practitioner in this region and you are not contributing to the profession's knowledge base, you are taking from the commons that people like the 50 on this list have built. Write a post. Present at a local AHRI or HRNZ event. Mentor someone earlier in their career.

If your leadership team needs support building the conversations, team alignment, and culture clarity that allow people strategy to actually work in practice, bring Jonno White in to facilitate. Jonno, bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out, Certified Working Genius Facilitator, and host of The Leadership Conversations Podcast with 230+ episodes and listeners in 150+ countries, works with organisations across Australia and globally. International travel is far more affordable than most organisations expect. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes someone a thought leader in HR in Australia and New Zealand?

The people on this list meet a higher bar than simply having a large following. Each has made a documented, publicly accessible contribution to the HR profession in Australia or New Zealand through research, published writing, public leadership of a significant professional organisation, or demonstrated practical expertise that has improved how organisations manage their people. Simply having a large LinkedIn following does not qualify someone. The voices here are earning their standing through the quality and regional relevance of their contribution.

How was this list compiled?

Every person was selected on the basis of their substantive and documented contribution to HR and people leadership in Australia or New Zealand, their active engagement in the professional conversation, and the deliberate intention to surface voices that are shaping the regional conversation. The criteria prioritised originality, relevance to the ANZ context, and evidence of genuine impact on the profession or on the organisations these practitioners lead and advise.

Can I hire someone to facilitate leadership or team development sessions for my organisation?

Yes. Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out, and experienced executive offsite facilitator. He specialises in team alignment, difficult conversations, communication styles, and the leadership culture work that makes people strategy stick. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to discuss your organisation's needs. Whether the engagement is virtual or in person, international travel is often far more affordable than clients expect.

What are the most pressing challenges facing HR in Australia and New Zealand in 2026?

The most consistently cited challenges include managing the compliance and cultural dimensions of psychosocial risk under the new WHS framework, navigating industrial relations reform, implementing AI effectively without losing the human dimensions of the employee experience, building skills-based workforce planning capability, addressing pay equity with rigour, and retaining talent in tight labour markets where employee expectations have permanently shifted. The voices on this list are helping HR professionals navigate one or more of these challenges.

What is the difference between an HR thought leader and an HR practitioner?

The distinction is less meaningful than it might appear. The best thought leaders on this list are also practitioners. The research of Professor Brock Bastian is grounded in organisational consulting. The insights of Kathleen Webber come from building a product that solves a real problem. The writing of Rhonda Brighton-Hall comes from years of running culture diagnostics inside major Australian organisations. Thought leadership that is not grounded in practice is, in this profession, not particularly useful.

How do I engage with these thought leaders beyond LinkedIn?

The most productive path is through the professional bodies. AHRI and HRNZ both run events, conferences, communities, and forums where many of the people on this list are regular contributors. Attending those events, joining those communities, and engaging directly with these practitioners in professional settings builds the relationships that produce the most durable professional development.

Final Thoughts

The 50 people on this list are not there because they have the largest followings or the most impressive titles. They are there because they are genuinely contributing to the thinking, the standards, and the practice of HR in Australia and New Zealand at a moment when that contribution matters enormously. Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace report puts the cost of disengagement at $10 trillion annually. That is the aggregate consequence of millions of decisions made by HR leaders, people managers, and executives about how they design work, build culture, manage risk, and develop capability. Every improvement in those decisions is worth real money, real wellbeing, and real organisational performance.

The HR profession in Australia and New Zealand is full of people who are taking that responsibility seriously. The voices on this list are among the most articulate, active, and impactful of those people. Follow them. Engage with their ideas. Build the professional practice that lets you bring the best of their thinking into the organisations you lead and serve.

If your organisation needs support building the leadership conversations, team alignment, and culture clarity that make people strategy work in practice, Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out, works with executive teams across Australia and globally. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to explore whether a Working Genius session, executive offsite, or keynote would serve your organisation. International travel is consistently far more affordable than organisations expect.

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About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, bestselling author, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.

To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

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Building shared direction and clarity inside a leadership team is the foundation of every effective people strategy. For more practical thinking on how leadership teams can align on purpose, build genuine buy-in, and close the gap between strategy and execution, check out my blog post below. The insights there apply directly to the culture and leadership development conversations that the best HR leaders are facilitating inside their organisations every day.

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