Bearing & Course brings together experienced professionals who run independent businesses. We know each other’s judgement, the standard of our work and how we work together when things get difficult.
Each engagement draws on the people and capabilities the work needs. You work with one coordinated team, with clear accountability through Bearing & Course.
Founder and Principal
I founded Bearing & Course because capable people often need more than advice to move important work forward. They need experienced people who can connect the pieces and carry the work through.
My experience spans executive leadership of public services, major digital platforms, operational reform and commercial technology. I bring that experience to understanding your situation, shaping the engagement and leading the agreed work.
I founded Bearing & Course Advisory because I kept seeing important work struggle to get the attention it needed. Capable people were busy running the organisation. Specialist advice could address parts of the problem, but someone still had to connect the pieces, make the decisions and carry the work through.
That shaped the kind of firm I wanted to build. One that could bring experienced people around a problem, work alongside the client’s team and take responsibility for moving agreed work forward.
My own experience comes from leading complex services and change in government, where technology, public trust and accountability meet. My executive responsibilities included major digital platforms, operational services, legislative and social reform, and programmes that had to work in practice, not simply in policy. That meant making difficult decisions, managing competing demands and remaining accountable while services continued to operate.
More recently, I brought that experience into a global technology business, working through the legal, ethical, operational and commercial questions surrounding AI and technology delivery. Across those environments, I’ve learned that a sound strategy or technical solution is only part of the answer. The people, processes, information and responsibilities around it determine whether it works.
Bearing & Course is the firm I wished existed. It gives clients access to senior judgement and specialist capability, brought together around the work, with clear accountability from the first discussion through to delivery.
These are just some of the people who bring their expertise to Bearing & Course engagements.
debbiemarshallau
Governance, risk, assurance and management systems
Debbie examines the connection between what an organisation says it does and what its processes and evidence demonstrate.
Her experience spans risk, controls, assurance and management systems. She brings a practical, rigorous approach to identifying gaps, testing whether controls work and preparing organisations for certification and customer scrutiny.
Packaged IT
Cyber security, technology leadership and architecture
Andrew combines executive advice on cyber risk and technology investment with hands-on architecture and technical delivery.
He has developed security strategies and roadmaps and implemented improvements across cloud, networks, identity, threat monitoring and operational technology. He also leads a managed IT services business, bringing direct responsibility for ongoing support and service reliability.
Petersburg Advisory
Identity, verification and trusted transactions
Andrew’s experience spans identity, borders, immigration, customs and major government programmes, including leadership of Document Verification Service implementation.
He brings an understanding of what must be established about a person or transaction, the evidence needed to support it and the policy, privacy and operational arrangements that make verification dependable.
Swantail
Stakeholder engagement and strategic communications
Jen focuses on the relationships, understanding and participation needed for important work to succeed.
She connects organisational objectives with the people affected by them, helping establish what needs to be communicated, where stakeholder input matters and how engagement can inform decisions and delivery.
We are business owners ourselves. We understand the commitment it takes to build something, win customers and keep delivering while finding room to grow. We share a belief that smaller businesses should have access to experienced people and specialist capability.
Working together through Bearing & Course lets us bring more to clients than any one of us could offer alone. Helping Australian businesses succeed creates opportunities for people, develops skills and supports other businesses. Our contribution starts with useful work that leaves clients better equipped to carry it forward.
You can draw on executive leadership, commercial judgement and specialist expertise across eight connected areas. We bring the combination your work needs, with people who understand both the decisions facing leaders and the practical demands of making them happen.
We bring executive and commercial experience to decisions about where your organisation goes next and where you invest. Our experience includes setting organisational direction, developing strategies and roadmaps, assessing investment options, building business cases and establishing new commercial models. We test assumptions, make trade-offs clear and connect the preferred direction with the resources and operating changes needed to deliver it. You draw on people who have held responsibility for those decisions and their implementation.
We bring leadership and assurance experience to questions about accountability, exposure and whether your arrangements are working. Our experience spans executive oversight, governance reviews, risk frameworks, regulatory obligations and management systems, including quality and information security standards. We provide practical risk advice to help you weigh opportunities, understand consequences and put proportionate safeguards in place. By examining how decisions, responsibilities and controls operate in practice, we give you a clearer basis for knowing what to rely on, where to intervene and what needs to improve.
We bring operational leadership and process improvement experience to the way your business runs. Our work has included full operational restructures, service redesign, clearer decision rights and changes across teams and suppliers. We look at how work actually gets done, where delays and avoidable costs arise, and what people need to perform reliably. This helps you improve capacity, consistency and control while keeping the business operating.
We bring experience developing and modernising services, shaping digital products and establishing commercial offerings. Whether you are testing an idea, improving an existing service or bringing something new to market, we connect what customers value with commercial viability and your ability to deliver. Our experience spans customer journeys, service design and high-volume operations, including environments where accessibility, accuracy and public trust carry significant consequences.
We bring leadership and workforce experience to changes that depend on people taking on new responsibilities, working differently or lifting performance. Our experience includes organisational design, operational restructures, role clarity, leadership alignment and managing workforce and industrial relations impacts. We help you work through the implications for workloads, capability and working relationships, so the arrangements you put in place are understood, workable and supported by clear accountability.
We bring experience progressing complex work where different organisations and groups have competing interests, responsibilities and expectations. This includes reforms involving government, service providers and independent institutions, where no single party controls the outcome. We help you understand those interests, work through disagreements and establish clear communication and decision pathways, building the cooperation needed to turn agreement into action.
We bring business and technical experience to decisions about the systems, information and security your organisation depends on. Our expertise spans enterprise and security architecture, infrastructure, cloud, integration, IT operations, data governance, privacy and identity. We connect business requirements with technical choices and implementation, helping you understand costs, dependencies and exposure, address weaknesses and put systems and controls into reliable everyday use.
We bring experience leading major projects and programmes across organisations, disciplines and delivery partners. From mobilisation to implementation and transition, we establish clear ownership, coordinate dependencies and manage the operational and people impacts of change. You gain visibility of progress, costs, risks and decisions, with experienced judgement to identify when work is drifting, address the causes and keep delivery focused on the agreed outcome.
You do not need a finished brief or know exactly what you need. Bring us what you want to achieve, and we can work through it together.
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