Our Team

Peak Performance is proud to field an internationally experienced team of client partners, senior facilitators and coaches who achieve excellent results and outstanding ratings from our clients. Brief biographies of our core team members are below. We are also well connected within the Australasian learning and development community and have relationships with a select team of associates. This ensures best fit for each client and enables to us to bring in specialist expertise when required.

AUSTRALIA

Linley Watson – Managing Director and Client Partner

With several years senior marketing management experience within leading corporates including Compaq and Oracle, as well as 14 years running her own successful businesses, Linley's key strengths lie in management, marketing and business development.

As co-founder and managing director of Peak Performance International, her key areas of responsibility include business and marketing strategy, customer needs analysis and relationship management.

Over the years Linley has applied her business and communications expertise for clients within a wide range of industries, across Australia and New Zealand. Key clients include Bendigo Bank, National Australia Bank, Link Market Services, Sensis, Myer, Citywide, Telecom, Air New Zealand, Bank of New Zealand, Yellow Pages and Vodafone.

Linley has a passion for helping clients achieve their personal and professional goals and delights in contributing to their ongoing success. She has a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in Marketing and International Business and is based in Melbourne.

Deborah Truter – Lead Facilitator

Co-founder of Peak Performance International, Deborah is a successful manager with a broad range of experience including leading profit and loss business units in large and global corporates, as well as small start up businesses.

Consistently rated as an outstanding facilitator, Deborah combines her practical international business experience and dynamic communication style to invigorate small and intimate groups, audiences of hundreds and everything in between. She inspires people across a broad range of topics including leadership and management, business relationships, sales, customer service and change management.

Formerly national education manager with Oracle, Deborah is also a skilled trainer in a range of high tech products including operating systems, databases and different computer languages.

At Peak Performance, Deborah is responsible for developing and delivering world-class training and coaching interventions that achieve measurable business results. Her key strengths include developing effective business relationships, linking business goals and people's performance and crafting and delivering learning solutions that engage and inspire people to higher levels of achievement.

Deborah's many qualifications include a Bachelor of Arts and post graduate Diploma in Education. She is based in Brisbane.

Philippa Storey – Consultant, Senior Facilitator

Philippa started her career in marketing and advertising in the mid 1980's after a successful career in the entertainment industry. She has a certificate in Marketing and Business Management and progressed upwards through direct marketing companies and mainstream advertising agencies working with government and blue chip organisations.

Based in Sydney, Philippa is a sought after speaker, trainer and facilitator. Known for her engaging and entertaining style, Philippa is passionate about sales, marketing and customer service. As a consultant, her key area of interest and expertise is developing customer loyalty programs.

Brian Clark – Consultant, Senior Facilitator, Executive Coach

Brian is a renowned practitioner, writer and speaker. His areas of interest include building total customer cultures; total quality systems; values driven business leadership; business ethics and world best practice strategy and implementation. He has been a guest lecturer on world best practice for the executive management program at Monash University's Mt Eliza business college; an adviser to and key note speaker for the Singapore Productivity Association and a consultant and business coach to many major Australian and overseas corporations and governments.

Over the years, Brian and his business associates have collected several state and national business awards including a Victorian government business award for outstanding achievement; a Telstra Quality Award; the coveted Australian Customer Service Award as national winner in 1998 and Consumer Affairs Victoria's Retail Excellence Award in 2004.

In 1993, Brian was one of the select few Australians to have graduated from the Disney Corporation's management and service programmes at the Disney University in the USA. He is an Australian Government licensed World Competitive Service trainer (N.I.E.S.), and has designed and led 15 highly successful, overseas study tours for leading Australian corporations through his business enterprise, World Class Best Practice Study Tours.

Brian is also a certified Master Practitioner of NLP – Neuro Linguistics – the science of behavioural technology, strategies and communication at the unconscious level, and one of a select number of certified iWAM consultants. His current roles include specialist business coach for BMW Australia's business leadership program and a facilitator, coach and consultant with Peak Performance.

Louise Thomson – Senior Facilitator, Executive Coach

Louise's career has spanned 20 years in the financial services sector in areas ranging from banking, human resources, sales leadership and credit risk. One of the few female managers to 'crack the glass ceiling', Louise enjoyed the challenges of leading and implementing major changes in this often conservative male dominated workforce.

Louise's roles included Head of Global Operations, Credit Risk Management – influencing behaviours to make it a more desirable workplace; Change Consultant, People & Culture – briefing business leaders regarding the impending implementation of SAP (People Policy and Transactions) and necessary changes to their leadership style and business practises.

Alongside her business career, Louise has applied herself to almost 20 years of leadership development with Junior Chamber International, a community self development organisation. This included being assigned to India and other Asian countries as World Vice President – providing leadership and business training to its members, Chamber of Commerce and sponsor companies.

Louise is known and remembered by her clients for her energy, creativity, humour and connection with people whilst having an absolute focus on the goal to be achieved. She is based in Melbourne.

Susan Davie – Senior Facilitator, Executive Coach

Originally from the United States, Susan's background includes nearly 20 years of sales experience and more than 5 years training and coaching of business professionals.

A desire to focus her energies in the personal development field led to building a successful private practice for individuals and groups incorporating NLP, hypnotherapy and life skills coaching. Susan joined the Mercuri International Sales Performance Consulting team upon arrival in Australia in January 1999 and achieved recognition of being the highest performing consultant in her second year, and subsequently joined Rogen International in 2002 with the merger of Mercuri and Rogen in Australia.

Now, as a key member of the Peak Performance team in Melbourne, Susan continues to blend her experience in sales, sales management, customer service, effective communication skills, training and coaching in a powerful and personable style.

Her numerous qualifications and certifications include Doctor of Clinical Hypnotherapy Degree, Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming, Accreditation's in Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Human Synergistics LSI/GSI, Genos Emotional Intelligence and iWAM.

Industry experience includes Energy, Financial Services, Telecommunications, Health Care, Insurance, Direct Sales, Professional Services, Real Estate, Retirement Living, Pharmaceuticals, Media, Manufacturing, Utilities, and Superannuation. Susan is based in Melbourne.

Robynn Pym - Client Partner

Robynn Pym’s background combines 17 years of sales and sales management experience with State, Regional and General Management responsibilities.

In the past 4 years she has applied her expertise with projects including site relocation and change initiatives in attracting high performers to an organisation; as well as implementing a customer service strategy from the front line order process to the back end deliverable. As a high performing sales professional she has applied her expertise in understanding the customer needs and breaking down the barriers of service and operations to execute successful ‘can do’ environments.

Over the years she has applied her sales and management expertise working with companies such as Inchcape, Canon, Konica Minolta, Drake International, Accra Corporation and Pitney Bowes.

She is currently completing her MBA Executive and is a client partner for Peak Performance International.

NEW ZEALAND

Sue Bottema - Lead Facilitator, Coach

With more than 20 years of human resources management and training in her background, Sue Bottema brings international experience and a positive, practical style. Her people skills and ability to relate to and influence employees at all levels has earned her a reputation as a friendly, empathetic professional who makes a lasting difference.

Over the past 12 years Sue has worked across a wide variety of industry sectors including; travel, insurance, hospitality, airline, IT, telecommunications, financial services and health. Sue's core strength lies in bringing out the best in people via coaching, team building, and facilitating an array of customised training programs that deliver results. She is also renowned for creating and initiating simple, effective human resources functions for both small and larger businesses.

As a coach, Sue has completed the Career Coach Institutes Executive Coaching, MBTI (Meyers-Briggs) and various other related topics. She is a member of the Graduate School of Coaching and has participated in coaching intensives with Thomas Leonard, founder of Coachville as well as numerous coaching and marketing conferences. Sue is also one of the first certified iWAM consultants in New Zealand. She is based in Auckland.

Elsa Kingsley Jones – Client Partner

Elsa has a broad range of experience both local and international in small and large organisations. She is enthusiastic and highly motivated, with strong interpersonal and communication skills. Her extensive international work and life experience helps her relate well to people of all cultures, at all levels.

Starting her career in the Airline industry, Elsa became actively involved in training and development and for several years tutored at Tertiary level in the travel field.  She then pursued her passion for exceptional customer service within industries such as; Hospitality, Insurance, Beauty, IT, Travel (Wholesale & Retail), Call Centres, Event Management, General Management and leadership level.

Esla excels in building strong, long lasting relationships with clients and represents Peak Performance in New Zealand. She is a passionate facilitator who loves to inspire people to achieve more. Amongst other qualifications, Elsa is an NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) Practitioner & coach and she is based in Auckland.

Sarah Greaney – Senior Facilitator

Sarah has a strong background in financial services having completed the Management Trainee Program at Halifax Building Society in the U.K., progressing through to Assistant Branch Manager and finally Training Advisor. She held the position of Operations Manager at Sovereign Financial Services in New Zealand and has consulted to Wizard Home Loans and The New Zealand Home Loan Company, which involved the redevelopment and production of training materials and designing and delivering recruitment, operations and sales training for their franchisees.

Sarah has held senior HR Advisory roles and is skilled in facilitation and the management of training processes. She has a strong emphasis on systems, coupled with the ability to communicate at all levels to provide clarity and focus to a broad range of business situations.

Sarah has a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Business Studies from the University of Bradford in England and is an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers. She is also accredited in the Belbin Team Role instrument. Sarah resides in the beautiful South Island of New Zealand.

Karen Webb - Senior Facilitator

Karen Webb has more than 24 years training and development experience covering NZ, Asia & Australia. In Asia she owned and operated a training consultancy business that included long term contracts with Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, DDI, SWIFT international and IWNC Group. In 2001, Karen returned to NZ and established a business specialising in team based programmes. This company then became the on site team building division for The Waiheke Island Resort which she owned and operated from 2003 to 2006.

In 2007 Karen established Wild on Waiheke NZ Ltd – a multi-activity venue offering fun team activities set within a vineyard and brewery which she continues to own and operate. Karen holds an Advanced Diploma in Adult Education and has been an associate facilitator with Peak Performance since 2001.

Nikki Hommes

Nikki’s passion is unleashing potential within people. Her career has taken her through administration, training, counselling, coaching, special project work and various industry committees, different areas of social responsibility work and event management in South Africa, Mauritius, and New Zealand.

The strengths that Nikki brings as a Peak Performance facilitator and coach include her natural warmth and ability to rapidly build rapport, her deep understanding of people and human behaviour, her wide experience and business acumen. She has trained and coached frontline, customer-facing team members, middle management and executives in the Hospitality, Insurance, Reinsurance, Financial Services, Corporate and Retail sectors.

Nikki has formal qualifications in Hospitality, Life, Executive & Workplace Coaching, Training and Business. During her years of working within the Financial Services Industry, she achieved an MBA, with her dissertation focusing on ‘Coaching and Mentoring in the Workplace’. She is based in Auckland.

ASSOCIATES

Simon Bruce – Senior Facilitator, Executive Coach

Simon is a creative and energetic organisational development professional with excellent skills in consulting, coaching, presentation, communication, emotional intelligence and leadership. He also has extensive experience in establishing educational leadership and strategic partnerships in the corporate environment.

Simon started his career as a graduate trainee at National Australia Bank in 1985 and worked his way through the ranks. His roles included Business Banking Manager, Credit Manager and Manager Learning Delivery. More recently he was Manager, Product Strategy for Deakin Prime.

His role at Peak Performance includes developing learning strategies, facilitation, project management and executive coaching.

Simon has a Bachelor of Economics from La Trobe University, a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment and numerous training and coaching qualifications. He is based in Melbourne.

Suzanne Mercier – Senior Facilitator, Consultant

Formerly a senior executive in the advertising and marketing industry, Suzanne is an experienced keynote speaker, trainer, facilitator and coach with specific expertise in management performance, business and marketing strategy and communication.

Competent at all levels – from front line to board level, Suzanne is a skilled communicator who thrives on creating engagement through purpose and meaning. Her skills include business strategy, marketing, advertising, communication and the development of human potential. Suzanne was the first female Board Director of George Patterson Advertising and a strategy planner for the agency working to create maximum engagement for leading brands in banking, food, cosmetics, animal products, beverages, fine china and crystal.

Suzanne is a thought provoking speaker and a published author. She has numerous marketing and training qualifications and is currently undertaking an MBA through AGSM. Suzanne is based in Sydney.

Mike Kaaks – Executive Coach, Strategic Consultant

Mike is an executive coach accredited by the UK based Alexander Corporation. He honed his coaching skills in the final 6 years of his term with Cadbury Schweppes. His strong interpersonal skills drive his success in coaching, facilitation, and change. Mike has a down-to-earth and relaxed communication style which puts people at ease. His empathy enables the quick establishment of strong connections with those around him. He is an optimist who readily sees and strongly advocates the infinite possibilities of people, believing we all are capable beyond measure.

Mike's long experience includes multinationals in the FMCG and building industries, culminating in 4 years membership of the leadership team at Cadbury Schweppes. His accountabilities have been diverse including finance, sales, IT, IP management, strategy and planning, and capability development. Mike has strong organisational understanding as a result of this diversity.

In addition to coaching and facilitation his capabilities include change management, process design and implementation, merger & acquisition activity ranging through due diligence to negotiation and integration, finance and risk, and sales management. Mike is based in Melbourne.