Steph Sullivan

Key Skills

Industry experience

• Energy (retail, transmission & distribution)
• Telecommunications
• Rail & infrastructure
• Government
• Health & mental health services
• Financial services
• Not-for-profit

Experience

EnergyAustralia, Digital Strategy & Customer Experience Workstream Lead, Customer Transformation Program

Jul 2025 – Apr 2026

Established and led the digital workstream for a large transformation program spanning CRM and billing replacement, digital customer experience redesign and channel optimisation.

• Core leadership team member, including the program Control Board and Design Authority, and Steering Committee for an adjacent Digital Authentication Project.
• Defined the cross-channel and digital strategy, measurement framework and prioritised Horizon 1 capability roadmap.
• Built a business prioritisation framework scoring customer and commercial value levers (CX, cost-to-serve, bad debt, digital adoption, retention, CLV), and aligned senior leaders across Marketing, Product, Service & Sales Ops, Digital and IT through ELT workshop.

Telstra, Consumer and Small Business, GM / Principal

Jun 2015 – Apr 2021

Senior strategy, planning and performance roles aligning investment, priorities and channels to strategic objectives and business outcomes.

• Business Performance Principal, Contact Volume Reduction Program (2020–21): Identified operational improvement opportunities and set program governance and benefits reporting across five business areas and nine Product Owners, driving a 20% contact demand reduction target.
• Group Planning & Performance Lead (2019–20): Led planning, prioritisation and benefit realisation for Telstra's largest group (~270 FTE) through its move to agile; co-authored the group Game Plan. Selected by executives to mobile and drive cross-functional team to resolve a critical business issue driving complaints and revenue leakage.
• GM, Strategic Planning & Business Architecture (2015–19): Built this new function from inception, including business capability model, maturity assessment, and prioritisation framework to prioritising more than $400M in annual capital requests and optimising the consumer roadmap for ~$100–120M annual CAPEX. Advised the ELT on capability gaps, trade-offs and risks, and lifted business accountability for benefit delivery.
• Head of Connected Channel Strategy (2015): Defined the omnichannel strategy and roadmap across digital, retail and contact centre channels, removing duplicated capabilities and investment.

Accenture, Management Consulting (Service Transformation), Senior Manager

Oct 1998 – Jun 2015

Led service strategy, operating model and experience design and transformation engagements across telco, energy, government and not-for-profit clients.

• Service operational performance: Go-to expert across AU/NZ for assessing and optimising customer-facing service channels, developing recommendations, roadmaps and business cases. Identified opportunities for a 10% reduction in demand and a 10% improvement in operational efficiency while improving customer experience.
• Lifeline Australia: Assessed service operations and defined the transformation program, securing buy-in from the Board, C-suite, 38 member organisations and a largely volunteer frontline. Exceeded the 17% projected improvement in channel capacity, and calls answered rose from ~61% to ~85% despite a 37% rise in demand.
• AusNet: Defined the customer strategy, guiding principles and five-year, $25M transformation roadmap, supporting the regulatory funding submission for the VIC smart meter rollout and the shift from asset-centric to customer-focused.
• Telstra and AT&T: Led business readiness streams for large-scale business and IT transformation programs.

EYLC Pty Ltd | Founder & Executive Coach

May 2021 – Mar 2026

Coach and mentor to senior and emerging leaders (Directors, GMs, Principals) on leadership, stakeholder buy-in and decision-making.

• Used AI tools to design and build an online assessment capability, automating data capture and synthesis and making the service scalable.
• Co-authored an award-winning book on courage and embracing change (Amazon International Best Seller 2024; International Impact Book Award 2025).

Certificates

• Transform Business with AI (Microsoft, 2026)
• Coaching, incl. Transformational Change Methods (2021)
• Neurolinguistic Programming (2022)

Education

MBA, International Business & Marketing
Crummer Graduate School of Business, Rollins College, USA (Dean's List Honors)

B.Sc., Mathematics & Spanish
College of Idaho, USA (with Honors)