Social change

What we do

Fuelling organisations in the business of creating positive social change

We work with organisations dedicated to supporting and uplifting the most vulnerable people in our community and we are proud of the extra impact we have assisted our clients in achieving.

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Case studies

Some of the ways we have supported social change

Growing its reach

Consent Labs, a youth-led consent and respectful relationships educator, wanted to reach more young people without losing the peer-to-peer approach that made its programs work. Right Lane worked with its founders and leadership team to test the options for growth, landing on a clear pathway to scale that the Board could back with confidence.

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Scaling its impact

Our Watch, a national leader in preventing violence against women and children, needed the strategy, capability and funding base to match the scale of its mission. Since 2019, Right Lane has partnered with Our Watch across strategic planning, leadership development, operations and financial modelling, and developed an evidence and impact strategy that helps it demonstrate the difference it makes.

Reimagining legacy

The Queen Victoria Women’s Centre (QVWC) wanted to refresh its five-year strategy and secure its long-term sustainability while staying true to its purpose of serving women and gender diverse people. Right Lane ran strategic workshops, stakeholder consultations and a values process that aligned QVWC’s mission with Victoria’s gender equality agenda, addressed key financial risks and strengthened its community engagement and public profile.

Testimonials

What our clients say

Thanks so much for all your work in preparing for and delivering today’s session. We nailed the key issues that were causing friction and everyone is now aligned – which is a huge relief. I’m not sure we would have got there without you. So thanks again. Amazing job!

Chair

UNGNCA

Thank you all so much for last Friday. The preparation was profound and supported a really smooth, sometimes challenging, but ultimately extremely satisfying day when everything we hoped to get accomplished, was. Everyone loved it, Zoe, and were so impressed with how you brought it all together at the end. I don’t know how you do such synthesis on the go, including all the collating at the same time. We are eternally grateful for the ongoing support of Right Lane, a true and enduring partnership. I think we have got to a critical point in our work, using the deep listening and data analytics to come to the point of identifying the critical underlying driver of systemic intergenerational disadvantage. I feel empowered by the work, a bit scared too as to how we get the message out. But, it has to be said!

Executive Officer

Mornington Peninsula Foundation

I wanted to say a heart-felt thank you for yesterday, and all of the work you did in the lead up, including over the weekend. Chiara was an excellent MC/facilitator, Sacha managed the online chat so well, and everything ran like clockwork. Nothing was too much trouble, and I really appreciated you checking in throughout the day to see if we were happy – it personally gave me great comfort. I have only heard positive feedback all round, including this from Cathy (who was in the videos, and is one of our longest standing team members): It was such a professional and polished day. We’ve never had anything like it before – what an achievement! Well bloody done! Indeed, well done to you all, and thanks again for a highly successful, memorable day!

CEO

National not for profit

We have been exceptionally impressed with the support and expertise provided by RLC. Right from the beginning when I spoke to Stella, who really captured our brief so well from our initial conversation which was a lot of me rambling that was somehow pulled into a cohesive document. The level of organisation and planning prior to sessions, as well as your skilled facilitation and knowledge of the legal sector, has meant the sessions have been incredibly productive. Thank you also Chiara for your support in the background. The follow up post sessions with the notes has also been of such a high standard. I’m so pleased that we have ended up somewhere we couldn’t have envisaged at the beginning of the process as it means we weren’t anchored and have really been guided by the process. Thank you!

CEO

Arc Justice

Right Lane held us together whilst we explored our particular ideas around our model in quite a large diverse group. The Right Lane team were able to provide the right care, guidance, structure and process that enabled us to reach our midway point in our foundation phase, applying our model alongside Aboriginal enterprises. The impact the work Right Lane has had on Worthwhile Ventures is best described as reconciliation in action. Without their work and support we would not have seen the diversity of Worthwhile Venture’s business community come together and successfully collaborate and share ideas. So, the long-term impact really is about the model that Worthwhile Ventures has been able to bring to the market. It is quite unique as a not for profit venture capitalist model for Aboriginal people and the Aboriginal community. We are really appreciative of Right Lane’s support and commitment along the way.

Director

Worthwhile Ventures

Right Lane took the time to really understand the unique aspects of our organisation and adjusted their thinking and evaluation models accordingly. Definitely NOT a cookie cutter approach. The team at Right Lane really know how to listen.

CEO

QVWC

Our experts

Our people supporting social change

Meet our team

Zoe Pappas

Executive Director

Zoe is an executive director at Right Lane Consulting. She has been with the firm for 16 years. In the past 3 years, Zoe has worked on nearly 130 consulting projects and facilitated over 200 workshops, primarily with executive teams and boards. Zoe has developed a reputation for clear thinking and communication, including the ability to reframe complex problems making them easier to understand and solve. Her projects consistently achieve high client satisfaction and advocacy ratings, in part because she stays close to clients and their wants and needs. Zoe prides herself on never missing a client signal and always being on top of how directors and executives are thinking about her projects.

Experience

Zoe has extensive experience in leading strategy, planning, growth and organisation projects in the financial services, retail, healthcare and government sectors. Her recent projects have involved:

Facilitating strategic thinking and strategic planning workshops with a multitude of for profit, not-for-profit and government organisations. Facilitating steering committees (including a diverse range of stakeholders and views) as they oversaw a critical organisation change. Developing a strategy and organisation design for a disruptive specialty retailer with a promising growth trajectory.
Working with several organisations in the financial services and travel and leisure sectors to help board and executive teams rethink their vision and purpose statements to help guide strategic decision making.
Facilitating staff and board workshops with one of Australia’s largest industry super funds. Working with a large client team to transform a financial services organisation’s approach to growth strategy, from executing priority growth options to supporting a subcommittee of senior directors to advance the merger agenda.
Leading organisation redesign projects for wealth management, superannuation and telecommunications industry clients. Helping clients to design and operationalise integrated performance management systems, from corporate balanced scorecards to individual KPI frameworks. Working with marketing, business development and operations teams to improve the effectiveness of their structures, processes, resource allocation and performance management.

Qualifications

Before joining Right Lane Consulting, Zoe had 15 years’ experience in operational and management roles. She was previously a business manager, financial controller and management accountant in the publishing, entertainment, communications and IT security industries. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne and an MBA from Melbourne Business School.

Publications

Levy, M., & Pappas, Z. (2015, June). Create compelling company statements. Right Lane Consulting. https://www.rightlane.com.au/create-compelling-company-statements/
Pappas, Z. (2021 September). The importance of offering quality pro bono consulting services. Right Lane Consulting. https://www.rightlane.com.au/the-importance-of-offering-quality-pro-bono-consulting/
Williams, D., & Pappas, Z. (2016, May). Preparing for the vision discussion. Right Lane Consulting. https://www.rightlane.com.au/the-vision-discussion/

Radhika Chelliah

Associate Principal

Radhika is an associate principal at Right Lane Consulting. She has significant experience in transformation and change, gender equality, and strategy. With external and in-house consulting experience, she brings a human-centric focus for sustained outcomes. Radhika’s focus areas include organisational effectiveness, operating model, workforce transformation, organisation design, change management and business case development across Australia, Asia, UK and EMEA.

Experience

Her experience has included:

Redesigning the target operating model for project delivery in a professional services firm, through job redesign and process improvement with a user-centric focus; increasing effectiveness of client servicing teams and increasing employability of back-office staff.
Leading projects with the Commission for Gender Equality in the Public Sector (CGEPS) to explore opportunities to strengthen gender equality mechanisms, in consultation with defined entities. Supported several defined entities in their GIA, GEAP, workplace indicators progress reporting and gender pay gap analysis. Designed a success factors framework to improve gender equality practices within the organisation.
Conducting a global strategic review for organisational effectiveness and cost efficiency of finance teams. Built a business case for potential areas of improvement including team structure, talent fit assessment, system improvement, process improvement, and centralisation of activities
Working with different lines of services to cascade strategic decisions through to all staff; providing forums for staff to present their perspective and co-design the implementation plan.
Designing and delivering end-to-end change management for a multi-country shared service centre and ERP implementation, leading stakeholder alignment, communication, training and staff engagement.

Radhika has a deep passion for creating change agents and is the Founder of Impact Catalyst, which delivers experiential learning projects for undergraduate students, anchored on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Her recent projects have been commended by the Financial Times and Harvard Business Publishing.

Qualifications

Prior to joining Right Lane Consulting, Radhika was with PwC and EY. Radhika holds a Masters Degree in Human Resource Management and Organisational Analysis from King’s College London, CIPD Level 7, PROSCI certified change practitioner and a Bachelor of Commerce degree (Accounting) from Monash University.

Alice Zeng

Associate Principal

Alice is an associate principal at Right Lane Consulting with extensive experience in supporting organisations and senior leaders on strategy development and organisation-wide improvement projects. Alice has worked across a broad range of sectors including in the caring economy, social justice, public and not-for-profit sectors. Alice is a strategic, logical and creative thinker with a proven track record in delivering high quality, differentiated outcomes for clients through data-driven research and analysis.

Experience

Alice’s recent experience has included:

Developing a series of practical, meaningful strategic planning and measurement documents to cascade strategy to business functions and enable ongoing monitoring of progress for a Victorian public authority and purpose-driven organisations.
Working with a leading Early Years Management (EYM) organisation to review its portfolio performance and potential, building on their strategic approach and portfolio optimisation frameworks and models to present relevant insights on portfolio performance and potential to the executive and board.
Working with the executive team from a Victorian public authority to define their CEO-2 and full structure of key functions to maximise impact and deliver on strategic ambition. Alice has also supported a global biotechnology company to define its global risk and compliance structure, design new processes and develop interaction and customer experience models.
Working with the CEO and executive team of an industry superannuation fund to develop a compelling value proposition and service model for its financial help and guidance offering. This included consultation with end users and development of journey maps, personas and mock prototypes.
Conducting several ways of working focus groups with staff, gathering perspectives required to support the establishment of the new merged division. Alice developed a report for senior leaders with a summary of collective themes heard from staff and proposed next steps to support a successful transition to the new division.
Reviewing the governance and institutional arrangements for a Victorian government owned corporation and development of an enterprise-wide governance and decision-making framework for a global biotechnology company that was endorsed by the CEO.

Qualifications

Prior to joining Right Lane Consulting, Alice worked as an Associate Manager in Strategy and Consulting at Accenture. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce/Laws (Honours) from Monash University and studied abroad at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

Ready to see how we can help you create even more impact?

We work alongside clients who do great work within the sectors they operate, and we are excited to be involved in creating outcomes that truly make a difference.

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