YS Up Podcast - Directorships, board and mentoring roles and responsibilities with Sarah Zeljko

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Directorships, board and mentoring roles and responsibilities with Sarah Zeljko


39:01 by Ainslie Cunningham
Directorships, board and mentoring roles and responsibilities with Sarah Zeljko

Episode 23 - Shownotes

In this episode of YS Up Governance and Boards Podcast, 3YS Owls Governance Consultants, Ainslie Cunningham and Deb Anderson interview Sarah Zeljko. Sarah is a professional non-executive director on the Boards of Powerlink Queensland, Energy Super, MILLovate Pty Ltd, Stockyard Beef Pty Ltd, and LogiCamms Limited (ASX:LCM). We discuss with Sarah running one of her father’s businesses while studying law, her early career working in organisations, like mining and big infrastructure projects, a wind farm in Wonthaggi, a foray in council, in statutory bodies and water businesses, always working in big organisations, big infrastructure, a lot of front-end construction and some of the hot topics around the Board table.

Probably the biggest challenge I had, was at WICET because it was, as I said, $4 billion project that was overtime and over budget. It was a massive coal terminal that was being built at the height of the coal boom. By the time I arrived, it was probably six to 12 months off being finished. It was $1 billion over time and over budget. For me, trying to move the organisation from the halcyon days of, this is a great project and this is going really well, to a $1 billion worth of contractor claims where everybody I was dealing, with claims from John Holland, BMD, big, small, you name it. It was a matter of taking a Board on a journey as well, because they were all representative directors of big coal companies like Glencore, Wesfarmers and Yancoal.

Sarah Zeljko

Summary of episode
  • How Sarah obtained her first non-executive director role
  • G8 Education Ltd (ASX:GEM)
  • Wiggins Island Coal Export Terminal (WICET)
  • Board meetings during COVID
  • Mentoring with McCarthy Mentoring
  • Mental Health in the workplace
  • Surround yourself with the clever people
  • Workplace health and safety
  • Working in male dominated businesses -v- female dominated businesses
  • Culture
  • 4 pillars of strategy
  • Plan on a page
  • Diversity
About Sarah Zeljko

Sarah Zeljko is a professional Non-Executive Director on the boards of Powerlink Queensland, Energy Super, MILLovate Pty Ltd, Stockyard Beef Pty Ltd, and LogiCamms. She is the Chair of the Energy Super Investment Committee, responsible for $7.5B in funds under management and also Chairs Powerlink's People and Culture Committee. Sarah also works as a mentor with McCarthy Mentoring.

Sarah has extensive executive, operational, governance and advisory experience across large ASX listed, government and private corporations, having led a range of Boards, Committees and Executives through strategic and operational challenges. She is recognised for her commercial acumen and has a record of delivering revenue growth in large corporations through developing and executing corporate strategy, negotiating commercial agreements, capital raising, M&A, construction and project management across complex multi-million dollar transactions.

She is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD), a Graduate of the Australian Superannuation Trustees (GAIST) and an admitted Legal Practitioner in the NSW and QLD Supreme Courts. She has previously held roles as General Counsel and Company Secretary for G8 Education Ltd (ASX:GEM), the Wiggins Island Coal Terminal Pty Ltd (WICET), and Cement Australia Holdings Pty Limited.

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About Us - 3YS Owls - Governance Consultants

3YS Owls are a corporate governance firm and incorporated legal practice who specialise in providing a variety of services and solutions across corporate governance, company secretary, board advisory, strategy, risk and business consulting. Contact the team today to see how we can help you.

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