Meet the Leadership Team

Jim McKerlie

Executive Chair

Jim is Kendo’s Executive Chair. He is widely known and highly regarded as an entrepreneur, business leader, management consultant, university lecturer, broadcaster and public company director.

Jim has served as a board director of many public companies including ASX 100 corporations. He has chaired several Remuneration and Audit and Risk Committees and is still involved in public company Remuneration

He has been instrumental in the developing and executing growth strategies of numerous Australian and International success stories across diverse sectors including software development, IT, oil and gas, telecommunications, broadcasting, and digital marketing.

His insight into strategy and emerging opportunities is highly regarded. As a sought after opinion leader, Jim has worked as a national radio broadcaster talkback and news presenter, host of ABC television’s Made in Australia series and Judge of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Awards.

Jim was a leadership partner of the international consulting arm of Deloitte and then KPMG. In this capacity his expertise had him work around the world with government, multinational corporations, international banks, and multiple equity capital market firms doing landmark engagements. In 2000 Jim founded the Bambu Digital Group, a software development organisation that developed and sold performance management and HR software to thousands of users around the world. Jim is a fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand. He has an economics degree and post graduate qualification in financial management. He has completed the International Business Programme at IMD in Switzerland.

Vanessa Wende

Advisory Board member and people science expert

Vanessa was Kendo’s Director of People Science before transitioning to an Advisory Board role. She is an accomplished human capital specialist with expertise in career and performance coaching, building individual and organisational capability, enhancing team effectiveness and helping organisations drive employee engagement, cultural change and performance.

Vanessa has worked as an organisational development and head of people for leading corporations and government bodies. Her work history includes Qantas, TNT, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations and Transport NSW. From 2015 to 2021 she led projects at Cricket Australia’s high-performance team.

Vanessa is registered psychologist and has a Masters in Organisational Psychology. She has extensive additional professional development experience including OCI/OEI culture tools – Human Synergistics accreditation, Mindfulness and Resilience, Acceptance and Commitment training, Mercer internal position evaluation system and Lominger Competency Library accreditation.

Ian Dardis

Chief Operating Officer

Ian leads major organisations through executing and realising the value of growth-oriented strategies and transactions aligning both corporate intent and the implementation of performance management processes. His expertise encompasses professional services organisations as well as broader services environments.

He was CEO of Dentons Australia for ten years. Dentons is the world’s largest law firm and Ian was responsible for Dentons operations across seven offices in Australia, PNG, and New Zealand.

Up until late 2007 Ian was a Global Vice President with EDS (now HP).  In this role Ian was responsible for EDS’ Applications Outsourcing Services business in Asia with overall responsibility for technology services in Australia, New Zealand, India, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia & Korea.

Prior to joining EDS, he was a 12-year equity partner at Deloitte.  He has more than 35 years of professional services firm leadership experience in audit, consulting and as a CEO.  His industry expertise encompasses the financial services, government, utilities, and telecommunications sectors.

Ian has extensive experience in leading successful services organisations in various geographies.  He has successfully implemented go to market strategies, acquisitions of new businesses, industry programs, partner and people development programs as well as selling major projects.  Ian has succeeded in turn-around environments, mature and new market entry strategies, and growth through acquisition.

In his extensive career, Ian has developed personal expertise in strategy development and execution, culture change, organisational design, innovation strategy and value proposition development.  He has a passion for people empowerment and the use of innovation to disrupt traditional professional services models.  He has attended numerous professional development courses including a leadership program at Harvard Business School.

He has played golf very badly for over 20 years.

Craig Errey

Director of Customer Experience

Craig is Kendo’s Director of Customer Experience. He’s an organisational psychologist, business architect and UI/UX/CX designer specialising in connecting people, work and technology. Craig is passionate about giving people more time and capabilities to do the things that really matter. This is the foundation for successful, lasting digital transformation in the workplace.

One of his particular skills is finding the root cause of work performance issues. And for the most part, he says it’s not people. It’s usually the environment they work in and tools they use. At Kendo, he sets the vision for the design and user experience of the platform and ensures it embeds best practice in psychology and people and business management in how it works. It’s about lifting up everyone’s capabilities to get the best out of them.

Craig has nearly 30 years’ experience in business IT covering strategy, change management, business architecture and user interface design. He’s worked on requirements and UI design of mission-critical applications for many of the largest organisations in Australia including Commonwealth Bank, Telstra, and the NSW government. These apps that are used by millions of people every day.

He is a registered psychologist and holds a Masters in Applied Psychology from UNSW. His insight into technology and its use in the workplace has been called on by media outlets including the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, 2UE and ABC Radio National. During 2015, Craig delivered a TEDx talk on the four-day week at full pay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G5WQ2R8jU8 (or search for ‘Craig Errey and TEDx’).

On a personal note, he has a music collection that spans a thousand years. He wishes he had a litre-bike, but the boss won’t let him. And he loves languages and is working hard on his French and German, soon to be followed by Portuguese. He’s also very much into his craft beer – generally, the weirder, the better!

Michael McKerlie

Chief Digital Officer

Michael drives value through technology and teams and is a fierce champion of building efficient and capable work environments through people, process and technology innovation. Michael has strong focus on individual and team performance in the context of alignment to the organisation strategies, objectives, and purpose.

Michael was Managing Director of digital agency Bullseye Asia for 6 years, delivering services from Indonesia to significant Australian companies, such as Coca Cola, BMW, ANZ Bank and to Asian based clients such as Genting, Permata and DANONE. He built a large offshore development centre that is today Ogilvy Digital’s offshore headquarters for digital services.

Prior to this Michael had 15 years’ experience in professional services software development and sales based in the London servicing accounting firms around the world. His role included marketing, sales and customer support including technology consulting and training. The range of software solutions was centred around value adding through performance improvement and people development.

Michael is a graduate of the University of New South Wales where won a scholarship for the Business Information Technology course.

Michael is one of the founders of Kendo, a frequent player of tennis, and a leader in a craft beer appreciation group.