Keith Ryall - Australasian Regional Representative

Keith Ryall (B.Sc B.Ed. CPF) has been working in the field of professional and personal development as a facilitator, trainer, consultant and coach with a wide range of government departments, healthcare organisations and private sector companies for over 35 years. He specializes in developing high performing individuals and groups with healthier and more balanced and productive work-life styles.

He has a particular interest in helping people speak candidly and honestly to others, at work and at home. Keith has had active roles with the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI), the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) and IAF where he completed his CPF (Certified Professional Facilitator) program in 2004 andis now a fully Certified Assessor.

Dr. Tom Schwarz - Australasian Regional Representative

Dr. Tom Schwarz is a CPF (Certified Professional Facilitator, IAF) – the first in ANZ - and CPF Assessor – with a broad formal and informal facilitation, business and conference presentation and training background – both from international corporate roles and running his own Facilitation/Organizational Effectiveness and Change practice over Asia Pacific.

Tom been working in Asia Pacific since the middle 80’s –including more recently almost a decade of living in Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai). Over the period 1994 through current he has been using participatory and comprehensive/inclusive values based modes - for the design and the execution of effective and efficient collaborative approaches to future-based Organisational Agility – through facilitated Strategic and Action Planning, Change and Change Management, leadership development, Facilitation approaches to learning, and reflective thinking modalities. His company mission statement says it all.

"Partners in Dialogues – the path to Enduring Change..... working collaboratively with staff, customers and stakeholders to effectively and efficiently achieve sustainable outcomes..."

Sheryl Smail - Regional Director New Zealand

Sheryl is an experienced chief executive, director, facilitator, and mentor, who established her own business in 2000. Pivotal Professional and Business Services' focus is ‘Bridging to Action’ and the alignment of vision, strategy, people and performance - concepts to plans; plans to performance; disputes to resolution. 

Sheryl is an IAF Certified Professional Facilitator and a LEADR accredited mediator. She is well equipped to facilitate in a diversity of settings; her MBA and breadth of executive management and governance expertise are complemented by accreditation as an SME Consultant with the Institute of Accredited Business Consultants (NZ) Inc and provisional accreditation as a director with the Institute of Directors in NZ. 

Sheryl has extensive experience in the health sector working with central government agencies, regional health funders and providers, and mainstream, as well as Maori, health service providers. She also has a proven record of providing focused, practical and highly professional services for a range of other sectors including tertiary education, Iwi, and a diversity of commercial and NGO clients.

Rhonda Tranks - Regional Director Australia

Rhonda is one of Australia's most experienced facilitators and organisational trainers. She has long recognised that, by getting people to shift perspective and open up to new ways of thinking, great change is possible.

"My approach is to shed light on new possibilities and pathways, drawing people towards their own realisations, encouraging them to explore better options and to use their knowledge in new contexts."

"Over many years, I've observed that an enormous amount of productivity, energy and emotions goes into professional relationships. If these relationships aren't working, they simply obstruct the business process."

"My skills as a facilitator and trainer begin with understanding how and where to work with a group or individual, which tools to use, how to draw out connections between information, and how different people make sense of this. Often it's about helping them find the light for themselves."

Susan Benedyka - Regional Director Australia

As the founding director of RDC, Susan is passionate about creating successful and sustainable communities and has extensive public and private sector experience in rural and regional development including;

• Strategic planning
• Facilitation
• Regional community leadership development
• Community consultations and engagement programs
• Corporate governance training
• Reviews and strategies
• Program management and evaluation

Susan’s great strength is the way in which she uses her highly developed communication and facilitation skills to enable other people's vision to become reality. She is also adept at sourcing relevant funding for specific projects and is a dynamic and engaging public speaker.

Susan holds a Graduate Diploma in Business, Training and Development, a Certificate IV in Workplace Assessment and Training, and is a Certified Professional Facilitator. Susan has also completed the Company Director’s Course, Practitioner’s Certificate in Mediation and Conciliation, Australian Rural Leadership Program, and Financial Management Certificate.

Stephen Thorpe - former IAF Secretary, Editor-in-Chief Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal, IAF-ANZ Webmaster and Regional Newsletter Editor

Stephen Thorpe is an academic, educator and group facilitator specialising in the online domain and trains others in online facilitation. Working with Zenergy, he has been researching ways to enhance the effectiveness of online groups. His PhD explores facilitation as a vital domain in assisting online groups with a focus on the benefits of story in online relationship development.

Stephen is the former Secretary of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) and the Editor-in-Chief of the IAF’s Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal. He is an Advisor for the Global Facilitators Service Corps (GFSC), a member of Heart Politics, The New Zealand Computer Society, Toastmasters (District 72: Club 7686) and the Participation Community of Practice - part of New Zealand's E-government Strategy.

Stephen holds a Zenergy Diploma of Facilitation, a PhD and a Bachelor of Business with first class honours from Auckland University of Technology (AUT) where he has a background researching computer-assisted group work. He was part of a team who researched, developed and commercialised a multi-site large interactive digital whiteboard. Stephen has also managed projects developing online and cd-rom based tutorials for systems modeling. He is a part-time lecturer at AUT teaching on the Human Computer Interaction paper in theBachelor of Business degree.

Stephen has recently written a chapters on The Use of Storytelling in Building Online Group Relationships in the Handbook of Research on Computer Mediated Comminication, and a chapter entitled Facilitation Online in The Art of Facilitation and has previously co-written a chapter on Facilitator Values and Ethics in the IAF Handbook of Group Facilitation with Dr. Dale Hunter.

Dr. Andrew Rixon - Book Review Editor Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal

With one of the first PhD's in Complex Systems and Complexity Science from the University of Queensland in June 1999 Andrew has gained global experience in working with organisations, within Australia and internationally in the USA, the Netherlands and the UK. Working in Boston in 2000, Andrew joined in some of the early story and storytelling workshops of Dave Snowden and Steve Denning. Today, Andrew's focus is on how complexity inspired approaches, such as story and narrative, can change the way we work. As a keynote speaker, professional facilitator and change consultant, Andrew's style is engaging, light hearted and curious.

Sascha Rixon - Associate Editor Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal

After completing an honours degree in linguistics in 2002 at the
University of Queensland, Sascha travelled and worked in London in a
variety of corporate environments. On returning from London, Sascha spent
many hours in unproductive meetings and became curious as to how effective
communication could facilitate more productive meetings.

To this end, in 2007 Sascha commenced doctoral studies at the University
of Melbourne exploring language in the workplace with a focus on the
language use of facilitators in facilitated workshops. Sascha has
co-authored an article on language use in facilitation in issue #8 of the Group
Facilitation Journal and also a book review in issue #9.

Dave Rees - CPF Assessor and Process Manager

Dave has been a facilitator for 19 years, 10 of which have been as an independent consultant. He has facilitated over 500 workshops in the UK, other European countries, the USA and Canada. His philosophy on facilitation is that an organisation can solve most of its problems by using its best asset, its people, given the right framework of a structured, facilitated environment.

He trained in the USA as a JAD/RAD (Joint/Rapid Application Development) facilitator in IT but quickly applied the basic principles to other areas such as business change and transformation programmes, developing group based approaches covering a range of topics including requirements gathering, business process redesign, organisational change, strategy and planning, risk assessments, resolution of issues and problem solving.

He is a founder member of UK Facilitators, a member of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) and is a Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF). He is an active member of the CPF programme as an assessor and process manager and has assessed in the USA, Canada, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland and the UK. He has developed and delivered his own facilitation skills training programme and is an accredited DSDM practitioner. Dave has a post-graduate Diploma in Management Studies from the University of the West of England.