Delivering an Executive Search to strengthen industry partnerships and innovation capability for a public education provider
The Brief
Future Leadership was engaged by a large public vocational education provider in Australia to appoint an Industry and Innovation Lead, a newly created executive role critical to advancing industry engagement, innovation, and commercial education partnerships.
The organisation was undertaking a significant structural transformation, establishing a new division responsible for future-focused education and student outcomes. The Industry and Innovation Lead role was designed to strengthen alignment between education delivery and current and emerging industry needs, while supporting regional economic development priorities.
The appointment required a collaborative and commercially minded leader with experience spanning education, industry engagement, innovation ecosystems, and government relations. The successful candidate needed the ability to translate emerging trends into practical, scalable education and training initiatives, while operating credibly with senior government and industry stakeholders.
Candidate Net Promoter Score
Future Leadership combines truly personalised relationships with innovative technology solutions to ensure an approachable and efficient process for all our Net Promoter Score across clients, successful candidates and unsuccessful candidates is well above industry standard.
Candidates supported every year
We maintain genuine relationships with past candidates and continue to support them with leadership solutions long term, after they land their role.
Senior Women Appointed since 2002
Over half of the executive search assignments undertaken by our team have resulted in the appointment of outstanding female or LGBTQI+ leaders to high profile roles.
Candidate Retention Rate for 12 months since 2002
Our thorough briefing process and ability to engage passive candidates mean that we go to great lengths to find the right person for the role – long term!
Future Leadership undertook a comprehensive executive search process tailored to the strategic and operational context of the role and the organisation’s transformation agenda.
• Briefing and Strategy Development: Detailed briefings were conducted with the executive leadership team to clarify role scope, success measures, and the complementary capability requirements across three concurrent executive appointments.
• Targeted Candidate Search: A national search was conducted, supported by targeted advertising and proactive research across vocational education, higher education, public sector, and innovation-led organisations.
• Market Mapping and Outreach: Extensive mapping identified senior leaders with experience in industry engagement, innovation, and commercial partnerships, including referrals from trusted networks and proprietary databases.
• Candidate Assessment: Candidates were assessed against leadership capability, sector relevance, and cultural alignment through structured interviews and due diligence.
• Final Evaluation: Shortlisted candidates were interviewed by a panel comprising senior executives and government stakeholders, with comprehensive reference checking completed prior to appointment.
Future Leadership Capability Framework
Stakeholder Relations
Works strategically and systemically to encourage diverse thinking with all types of people. Actively contributes to teamwork, and deliberately builds relationships and networks across a range of people and communities.
Innovation and Creativity
Positively challenges the status quo, expected norms, and workplace paradigms. Contributes new ideas, solutions, and perspectives to current challenges and thinking practices enabling the creation of new products, solutions and opportunities.
Communication and Influence
Communicates with clarity and impact to facilitate individual and collective understanding, inspire action and enable information exchange. Leverages human-centric communication and storytelling to effectively influence stakeholders across the physical and virtual realms.
Systems Thinking
Systematically breaks down siloes across the operating environment and connects stakeholders to harness convergent ideas. Understands the leverage points of systems change and demonstrates the ability to think beyond known systems.
Commercial Acumen
Provides a deep understanding of relevant industry, marketplace and business drivers as applicable to the organisation. Leverages the application of commercial tools and frameworks to manage opportunities, conflicts and trade offs. Able to focus on customer service requirements and acts proactively to raise the customer experience.
The Outcome
The process resulted in the appointment of a highly experienced Industry and Innovation Lead with a strong track record in establishing industry engagement platforms, developing innovation precincts, and leading complex partnerships across education, industry, and government.
The appointee brought experience across public sector, advanced manufacturing, ICT, defence, health and emerging technologies. They had previously been accountable for establishing new centres of industry engagement within a major university environment and for leading innovative partnership models aligned to economic development priorities.
Their appointment positioned the organisation to strengthen its industry advisory frameworks, expand commercial education partnerships, and enhance alignment between training delivery and future workforce needs, supporting both organisational growth and regional economic outcomes.