Advisory Board

Victorian Leaders has a nationally recognised Advisory Board, consisting of leading Australian executive and non-executive directors to assist in developing the ongoing strategic direction of the Victorian Leaders network. The Advisory Board includes:

Vivienne Anthon

Vivienne is an experienced management consultant, professional facilitator and mentor to women in business. She was formerly CEO of the Australian Institute of Management and has held executive positions in private education, professional services firms and not for profits. Vivienne works with private companies to create the conditions and conversations in which people will contribute their best. She sits on a number of Boards including the Queensland Leaders Advisory Board and is Deputy Chair the La Boite Theatre Company. Vivienne holds a Bachelor of Law from ANU, a Graduate Diploma in Education from QUT and an MBA with Distinction from Griffith University.

Kim Lion

Kim’s career has been in the advertising and marketing industry, working for global media-communications agencies in Australia and internationally. Her degree in Business Tourism with a PR major, took her to TIME Magazine where she discovered her love of the business side of media, transitioning into agencies to lead major global and domestic clients.

Throughout her career, Kim’s been a passionate believer in the power of leadership and culture for organisational health and change. Now a decade into her People and Culture role responsible for strategic culture projects, DEI, learning and development to name a few, Kim’s on the Executive Leadership Team at Mediabrands, a certified Australian Human Resources alumni (CPHR), a Smith Family iTrack mentor, and becoming even more passionate about helping people find ease and engagement in their work.

James Paulsen

James initially worked in investment banking and private equity for several years assisting private companies access new opportunities, capital and exit strategies. He also founded Enterprise Angels, one of the first cloud based business angel networks in Australia. In 2006 he founded Queensland Leaders, a platform based business initiative to work with leading private companies to assist them become national and international market leaders. After the success in Queensland, he established the Leaders business platform across Australia, New Zealand and the UK through the International Leaders business. James studied accounting at QUT and then completed an MBA with Bond University. His focus for the last 25 years has been to assist private business owners achieve their best through access to expertise, experience and inspiration.

Matt Murphy

Driven by the focus and purpose of guiding, supporting and advising business owners to achieve their goals and aspirations Matt has had extensive career in business experiencing every aspect from start up to sale, from private company to listed public company. Matt, a Chartered Accountant, has advised thousands of businesses as CFO, Mentor and Advisor. At heart he is an educator, always loving to teach business owners a better way to make their businesses thrive and their life easier, as demonstrated in his book, Dream to Realisation – The Business Owners Journey and his Podcast series – The Spirit of Business.

Matt created and built a unique Accounting & Advisory firm that supported business owners in every aspect of growth, and through a merger with the ASX listed national advisory firm, Prime Financial Group Ltd, realized the goal of creating a venture capital fund and a corporate advisory arm to further assist business owners to realise their business value. Matt led Prime’s Accounting & Business Advisory division as the Managing Director and is now Executive Director of Prime Financial Group.

With a desire to support Small Businesses in Australia, Matt was a member of the Victorian Government Small Business Council advising the Small Business Minister.

Matt continues to lead, guide and support businesses as a Board Advisor of Victorian Leaders & NSW Leaders.

Scott Thompson

Scott is an ex-Googler who served as the Head of Innovation for Customer Engineering. Scott worked in Google from 2015 through 2024 in the Ads Data Platforms, Analytics and Google Cloud product areas in AuNZ and APAC. Before Google, Scott worked with Adobe across APAC on digital strategy and digital transformation. He also worked for Telstra and Sensis in digital transformation and held the role of CTO in an Australian startup focused on personalised video advertising for mobiles. He is passionate about working with and helping startups throughout AU and NZ.

Caroline Banhidy

Caroline brings over 30 years experience in business, strategy and organisational transformation from manufacturing and professional services to wealth management and industry bodies. Caroline currently sits on a couple of boards as Chair as well number of Committees including Investment, Audit & Compliance, Risk and People & Culture Committees. She’s CEO of Foresters Financial and consults to family businesses in regard to strategy and continuity planning for the future.