Andrew Watt

Co-Founder | Director

Andrew Watt is a seasoned leader in strategy development, stakeholder and community engagement, and social impact assessment and management. With decades of experience across urban planning, development, education, infrastructure, and the resources sector, he brings a uniquely multifaceted perspective to complex challenges. An experienced Company Director and education executive, he combines deep cross-sector knowledge with practical, on-the-ground insight.

He has led numerous complex projects and is widely recognised for delivering award-winning outcomes for clients, communities, and projects alike. As Co-Founder of CFPI, he is a strategist and trusted partner to clients navigating high-stakes environments.

Andrew is a recognised expert in the resources sector, particularly in transient workforce planning, and an industry leader in stakeholder engagement and communications, known for building trust, managing risk, and delivering enduring social value.

Prior to co-founding CFPI, he held executive roles across consulting and education, strengthening his expertise in governance, decision-making, and community dynamics. Listening carefully, earning trust, and navigating complexity are hallmarks of his approach.

His professional standing includes leadership roles as former President and Fellow of ACHPER WA, former Board Member of Healthway, and Chair of its Sports Advisory Committee, as well as board leadership of community organisations and schools, reflecting his commitment to strategic leadership.

Andrew’s work spans the full breadth of CFPI’s services. He has led landmark planning, engagement, and communications programs including the City of Perth’s Capital City Plan, the Minister for Education WA’s Safe and Respectful Schools Roundtables, and complex urban development initiatives.

This same evidence-based rigour underpins his work in impact assessment and social value, where he has led Social Impact Assessments, Social Impact Management Plans, as well as social investment strategies that translate insight into practical and targeted frameworks. His work is grounded in robust research, including community sentiment, workforce analysis, and performance measurement frameworks that inform strategy and investment.

He brings deep experience in organisational transformation and leadership development, having led teams through significant growth, reform, and structural change, and works with leaders and organisations to navigate complexity and strengthen performance.

Core Capabilities 

• Stakeholder and community engagement strategy and delivery
• Social Impact Assessment, management planning, and social value strategy
• Community sentiment and social research design
• Organisational diagnostics, cultural reviews, and transformation planning
• Leadership development, mentoring, and succession planning
• Building alignment across diverse and competing stakeholder groups
• Multidisciplinary team leadership on complex, high-stakes projects

Beyond the Work

Community isn’t just Andrew’s profession, it’s how he lives. He co-founded Future Bayswater Inc, advocating for town centre revitalisation, running a food pantry for people in need, and hosting the Bayswater Twilight Markets. It reflects the same belief that drives his professional work: that places and people thrive when communities have a real voice. Outside of work is passionate supporter of the Fremantle Dockers and Claremont Football Club and hosts the Sandgroper Sports podcast. His family and close circle of friends are central to his life, and he takes great pride in the people who share that journey with him.

Qualifications and Credentials

With a Bachelor of Education (Hons), a Diploma of Teaching, and IAP2 Public Participation Certification, Andrew combines strong academic foundations with internationally recognised practice standards, bringing to CFPI a depth of capability and sector credibility that sets the consultancy apart.

Jenny Ethell

Co-Founder | Director

Jenny Ethell is one of Australia’s most respected organisational leaders, with more than 30 years of executive experience driving institutional transformation, building high-performing cultures, and navigating the complex human dynamics of change. As co-founder of CFPI, she brings that depth of lived leadership to bear as a strategic advisor, facilitator, and non-executive director, working alongside boards, executives, and leadership teams at critical moments in their organisations’ journeys.

Jenny’s career has been defined by her ability to build cultures that endure. As Head of Oxley College NSW, Principal of Perth College, and former Principal of Methodist Ladies College WA, she led institutions through significant transformation, embedding inclusion, lifting performance, and deepening community trust. At Perth College, she positioned the school as a global leader in Positive Education, led a Foundation that raised $18 million in six years, and led major infrastructure programs from conception through delivery. She counts the staff who grew into leadership roles under her watch among her proudest achievements.

That experience translates directly into CFPI’s work. Jenny’s advisory practice is built on the same foundations: organisational transformation and strategic planning informed by decades of frontline leadership; stakeholder and community engagement grounded in genuine relationship-building rather than process; and leadership development that draws on her own experience of building capability, mentoring emerging leaders, and navigating the personal and organisational dimensions of change.

Her governance work as a non-executive director for the Association of Heads of Independent Schools, the Alliance of Girls Schools Australasia, and the Independent Sporting Association NSW, and currently on the boards of Youth Futures Ltd and Hale School, gives CFPI a depth of governance insight and sector networks that few consultancies can match.

Across all of it, her approach is the same: understand what an organisation truly needs, build the relationships to get there, and deliver solutions that last.

Core Capabilities

• Organisational transformation and strategic planning
• Stakeholder and community engagement
• Leadership development, coaching, and succession planning
• Executive search and leadership advisory
• Board governance and non-executive director services
• Cultural reviews and organisational diagnostics
• Designing and implementing impactful educational and social initiatives

Beyond the Work

Jenny enjoys the outdoors, sport and is someone drawn to meaningful challenge. She completed the Camino de Santiago, one of the world’s great pilgrimages, an experience she describes as truly transformative. It speaks to a quality that defines her professional life: a deep commitment to the journey, not just the destination, and a willingness to do the hard work required to arrive somewhere worth reaching. Family is central to who she is, and she takes genuine pride in the people her children have become and loves spending time with her grandchildren. That same spirit is what drew her to co-founding CFPI – the opportunity to work alongside people she genuinely respects, bring hard-won skills into new contexts, and do work that makes a real difference.

Qualifications and Credentials

Holding a Bachelor of Business and Graduate Diploma in Education from Curtin University, and having completed the Australian Institute of Company Directors course, Jenny combines rigorous professional foundations with decades of real-world leadership, bringing to CFPI a governance lens and sector credibility that sets the consultancy apart.

Peta Mabbs

Partner

Peta Mabbs is a highly experienced executive and systems thinker with a career spanning more than four decades across state and local government. She has led organisations through some of the most demanding conditions in the public sector: post-corruption reform, machinery of government change, organisational transformation under public scrutiny, and the kind of whole-of-government collaboration that most executives talk about, but few achieve. At CFPI, she brings that depth of public sector leadership to bear as a trusted advisor on strategy, governance, cultural change, and organisational performance.

The breadth of Peta’s experience is unusual even by senior public sector standards. As Director of Corporate Services and Acting CEO at the Corruption and Crime Commission, she led a comprehensive program of strategic and operational reform in the wake of the Commission’s most challenging period, managing machinery of government changes, restructuring processes, systems, and people, and helping restore institutional integrity under intense external scrutiny. As CEO of the Town of Bassendean and Executive Director of Governance and Strategy at the City of Perth, she demonstrated that her skills translate equally well into local government, leading organisations through significant change while maintaining the governance rigour and stakeholder trust that complex public environments demand.

One of Peta’s most significant career achievements is also one that rarely gets the recognition it deserves. She was a significant force behind cross-government support and investment for a whole-of-government Shared Land Information Platform, a genuinely innovative initiative that replaced agency-centric, siloed systems with a shared infrastructure for whole of government outcomes including emergency management, land development, and natural resource management. The initiative was recognised with a WA Premier’s Award and cited by the former Under Treasurer as a gold-standard example of cross-portfolio collaboration in Cabinet submissions and investment. It is the kind of outcome that requires not just technical competence but the ability to bring agencies and competing interests to a common purpose, and to hold the architecture together long enough for it to deliver. Earlier in her career, Peta developed the inaugural WA Police Strategic People Plan, addressing attraction and retention challenges in a tight labour market, work that earned her a Highly Commended Female Administrator of the Year recognition from the Australian and New Zealand Police Advisory Agency.

At CFPI, Peta works with organisations that need clear-eyed analysis, honest advice, and the kind of steady hand that comes from having led through genuinely difficult circumstances. She is particularly well-suited to cultural and organisational reviews, governance improvement, strategy and policy development, and leadership advisory work, especially in the public and not-for-profit sectors where accountability, community trust, and long-term sustainability matter as much as short-term performance.

Core Capabilities

• Cultural and organisational reviews and diagnostics
• Organisational transformation and performance improvement
• Strategy, planning, and public sector policy development
• Governance frameworks, integrity, and accountability systems
• Leadership development and executive advisory
• Cross-agency collaboration and whole-of-government initiatives
• Stakeholder engagement across government, community, and sector bodies
• Research, data, and evidence-based decision support

Beyond the Work

Peta is someone who values connection, in her work and in her life. She keeps active through walking and swimming, finds renewal in travel and the garden, and is at her happiest in the company of family, friends, and her dog Ruby. As an Age-Friendly Ambassador, Peta is committed to an inclusive and connected community for older adults. She is drawn to work that makes a genuine contribution, and to colleagues she can learn from as well as contribute to. It is a quality that has defined her public sector career, and it is what she brings to CFPI.

Qualifications and Credentials

Australian Institute of Company Directors Course (2020) | IAP2 Certificate (2019) | Executive Fellow, Australian and New Zealand School of Government (2015) | Masters of Public Administration, Curtin University and UWA (2007) | Post Graduate Diploma in Policy Science, Curtin University (2001) | Executive Certificate in Public Sector Management, Flinders University (1999) | ANZPAA Highly Commended Female Administrator of the Year 

Jim Bell

Partner 

Jim Bell is a senior executive and former Deputy Director General of one of Australia’s largest public sector agencies, with a career that spans government system leadership, policy reform, cross-agency collaboration, commercial strategy, and board governance. He has operated at the highest levels of the WA public sector, advised three Ministers of the Crown, and spent three years in the private sector leading major commercial outcomes in the resources industry. What connects all of it is a consistent ability to read complex environments, align competing interests, and drive meaningful change at scale.

At the WA Department of Education, Jim served as Deputy Director General and Acting Director General, leading an agency that supports 60,000 staff and more than 325,000 students across 830 schools. His contribution went well beyond the education system. He was instrumental in the development of the Department’s five-year Strategic Plan, established its first Strategic Policy Office, and played a lead role in the whole-of-government COVID-19 response for the education sector, coordinating across agencies, unions, professional associations, and government stakeholders under extraordinary pressure and at speed. He negotiated two teacher Enterprise Bargaining Agreements, represented WA on national education reform working groups, and advocated for Western Australia’s interests on Commonwealth policy priorities, strengthening the State’s relationships with other jurisdictions in the process. His Quality Teaching Strategy has since attracted interest from every state and territory in Australia and stands as one of the most significant system-level reforms in WA education in recent years.

Before returning to the public sector, Jim spent three years as Manager of Business Strategy and Development at Veolia Environmental Services, where he led strategic planning and commercial growth across all WA operations. He was instrumental in securing a $40 million waste management contract at Chevron’s Wheatstone operations in the North West, and negotiated a landmark Joint Venture between Veolia and the Thalanyji People, the traditional owners of country around the Ashburton River and Onslow. The Wheatstone win was a significant commercial achievement in a highly contested resources market, and the Joint Venture required a level of cultural sensitivity, stakeholder trust, and commercial creativity that few executives bring to the table.

At CFPI, Jim works with government bodies, not-for-profits, and private sector organisations where strategy, governance, and stakeholder complexity converge. He is especially well-suited to engagements where organisations need to navigate government systems, build cross-agency alignment, develop and implement policy, or manage high-stakes consultation that requires someone who has sat on both sides of the table. His governance credentials, including board roles at Scitech and Constable Care and his AICD Graduate qualification, make him a trusted advisor to boards managing change and accountability.

Core Capabilities

• Government system leadership, strategy, and policy development
• Cross-agency collaboration, advocacy, and intergovernmental relations
• Stakeholder engagement across government, unions, media, and sector bodies
• Commercial strategy, business development, and contract negotiation
• Organisational transformation, cultural reviews, and performance improvement
• Executive coaching, leadership development, and succession planning
• Board governance, not-for-profit advisory, and AICD-accredited director
• Research design, evidence synthesis, and data-driven decision support

Beyond the Work

Jim will tell you without hesitation that family comes first. He is immensely proud of his wife, his two adult children, and his three grandchildren, and time with them is where he is most content. Beyond family, he is drawn to the outdoors: camping, prospecting, and diving are pursuits that speak to his curiosity and his appetite for discovery. It is the same quality that has made him an effective leader: a genuine interest in what lies beneath the surface, and the patience to keep looking until he finds it.

Qualifications and Credentials

Graduate, Australian Institute of Company Directors (2022) | Leading and Evolving Vision, Harvard University (2016) | Engaging in the Change Equation, Harvard University (2016) | Business Strategy, Macquarie University (2011) | Diploma of Project Management, Australian Institute of Management (2010) | Executive Coach, Growth Coaching International (2006) | Bachelor of Education, Edith Cowan University (1989) | Board Member: Scitech (4 years), Constable Care (2 years)

David Wanstall

Partner

David Wanstall is a Fellow of the Australian Council of Educational Leaders, a published researcher, and a senior government leader with four decades of experience driving system-wide reform, shaping policy, and building the institutional conditions for sustained high performance. His career has taken him from the front line of service delivery to the upper levels of government leadership, giving him a perspective on organisational and system improvement that is rare in its depth and unusually practical in its application.

As Director for Primary, Early Childhood and Education Support at the WA Department of Education, David worked where government policy, cross-agency strategy, and statewide service delivery meet. He led the development and implementation of the Phonics Initiative and the Centre of Excellence in the Explicit Teaching of Literacy, both requiring sustained collaboration across government agencies, universities, unions, professional associations, and school communities. These were not discrete projects but system-level reforms, coordinated across a complex stakeholder landscape and designed to shift practice at scale. His 2020 Fellowship Paper, ‘Beyond School Review: A Model for School Improvement’, was adopted by the Department as the foundation for a statewide case management model, a direct example of research translating into government policy and operational change. His work is widely recognised for strengthening school and system performance and building high-impact teams capable of delivering sustained improvement.

David’s approach to government advocacy and policy development is grounded in evidence and earned credibility. He has worked across the full policy cycle: identifying what the data is saying, building the analytical case for change, consulting the stakeholders whose support is essential, and implementing reforms in ways that stick. His twenty years of experience in rural and remote WA, leading in under-resourced and geographically dispersed environments, gave him a hard-won understanding of how government policy lands at the community level. He knows the gap between what a policy says and what it does, and he knows how to close it.

At CFPI, David applies this capability across organisational transformation, research and insights, leadership development, and social impact work. He is most at home with government bodies, not-for-profits, and institutions working through complex reform agendas, where reading the system, building cross-sector consensus, and translating strategy into measurable outcomes makes the difference between initiatives that endure and those that don’t. His view is straightforward: there are no shortcuts to high performance, but there is a clear path, and it starts with an honest assessment of what is actually happening and why.

Core Capabilities

• Government system leadership, policy development, and reform implementation
• Cross-agency collaboration, stakeholder consultation, and advocacy
• Organisational transformation, cultural diagnostics, and performance improvement
• Research design, evidence synthesis, and data-driven policy and strategy
• Leadership development, coaching, and building high-performance cultures
• Social impact assessment and community-level program evaluation
• Institutional improvement planning and post-review support frameworks
• Stakeholder engagement across government, universities, unions, and community

Beyond the Work

David’s commitment to community extends well beyond his professional roles. For the last 4 years, he has led the Ankor Project, a community initiative supporting 24 disadvantaged schools in Cambodia, raising over $750,000 to deliver clean water, sanitation, and educational resources to children who would otherwise go without. It is a quiet but remarkable expression of the belief that has driven his entire career: that a person’s background should never determine their future. Outside of this, David is a passionate West Coast Eagles and West Perth supporter, an enthusiast of Australian muscle cars, and enjoys hitting the open road on his Harley Davidson.

Recognition and Credentials

Fellow, Australian Council of Educational Leaders (2024) | Principal Fellow, WA Department of Education (2020) | Advanced Leadership, Harvard University (2018-2019) | Lead School, Centre of Excellence in the Explicit Teaching of Literacy, Department of Education and Curtin University (2019-2022) | Finalist, WA Education Awards, Primary School of the Year (2016) | Published: ‘Beyond School Review: A Model for School Improvement’ (2020) | Featured in ‘The Self Transforming School’, Caldwell and Spinks (2013)

Lia Ursich

Associate

Lia Ursich is a versatile and energetic consultant who brings a rare breadth of capability to CFPI: community engagement, research, communications, business operations, and marketing, woven together by a genuine curiosity about people and an instinct for getting things done. Where others specialise, Lia connects. She moves comfortably between the strategic and the operational, between client-facing engagement and behind-the-scenes delivery, and between sectors that rarely talk to each other.

Her project experience spans resources and FIFO communities, urban planning and land development, education, health, local government, and not-for-profit organisations. She has supported major engagement programs for BHP, Rio Tinto, Mirvac, Cedar Woods, the City of Fremantle, UWA, Alzheimer’s Australia, and the Minister for Education’s Safe and Respectful Schools Roundtables, among many others. Across all of it, her contribution has been the same: bringing structure and momentum to complex work, ensuring that community voices are captured with care and that insights are meaningfully translated into planning and decision-making.

Lia also brings genuine capability in business operations, marketing, and systems, an asset that sets her apart in a consultancy environment. She has supported organisations across freight logistics, real estate, technology, and community services to streamline their operations, sharpen their communications, and build the internal systems that allow them to grow. At CFPI, this means she can contribute across the full lifecycle of a project, from research design and stakeholder engagement through to reporting, implementation support, and client experience. Currently completing a Bachelor of Arts in Community Development at Murdoch University, she continues to build the theoretical foundation that underpins work she has already been doing in practice for years.

Lia was recognised as Young Volunteer of the Year for her contribution to community life in Perth, including her work supporting Perth’s Youth Advisory Council. It is a signal of something consistent in her character: a willingness to show up, contribute, and care about outcomes beyond her own.

Core Capabilities

• Stakeholder and community engagement, research, and consultation
• Communications strategy, content, and delivery
• Business operations, systems, and process improvement
• Marketing, digital engagement, and brand support
• Project coordination and implementation support
• Social impact research and data gathering
• Youth and community sector engagement
• Report writing, design support, and client-facing documentation

Beyond the Work

Lia is most at home near the water or on the road, and weekends will often find her at the beach, on a road trip, or at a live music gig. She plays netball, values the discipline and connection it brings, and is someone who takes personal development seriously, both professionally and as a way of life. She has a keen interest in creative projects and in supporting people to bring their ideas to life, which is as true of her work as it is of how she spends her time away from it.

Qualifications and Credentials

Bachelor of Arts (Community Development), Murdoch University (Current) | Micromasters Program, Reputation Management and Digital Branding, EdX via Curtin University (2018) | Diploma of Business (Marketing) (2015) | Diploma of Business (Administration) (2013) | Microsoft PowerBI, Introduction and Intermediate (2023) | Young Volunteer of the Year

Madeleine Fisk

Communications and Design Associate

Madeleine Fisk is a designer and communicator who helps organisations translate complex ideas, into something communities genuinely connect with. Trained at Billy Blue College of Design and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. Her practice spans graphic design, visual identity, brand development, engagement collateral, workshop facilitation, and art-based community initiatives. She brings a rare combination of artistic capability with a strong focus on meaningful, practical outcomes in every project she undertakes.

Madeleine’s strength within a consultancy environment lies in her ability to understand both the message and the audience behind the work. She has developed communications and engagement materials for organisations including the Minister for Education, Guildford Grammar School, and Amana Living, transforming complex or sensitive information into communication that is clear, approachable, and visually considered.

Her work with the City of Stirling, alongside branding and identity development for We Are W/M, Bayswater Bridge District, and Future Bayswater Inc, reflects a designer who thinks beyond aesthetics to create work grounded in identity, place, and community connection. This includes branding across the Growers Market, Twilight Market, and 6053 Pantry. These distinct initiatives are united through a cohesive sense of local character and trust.

Madeleine’s proudest projects reflect a consistent thread: design as a tool for equity and inclusion. She developed a consent education poster project, ‘Taking Matters into Our Own Hands’, that was presented at the Australasian Sexual and Reproductive Health Conference in Sydney and displayed on screens at the Spilt Milk festival. She has painted murals and run creative workshops for disadvantaged students to support their engagement with education. These are not peripheral activities but expressions of a creative practice that is rooted in values, and they sit comfortably alongside her commercial and client-facing work because for Madeleine, the purpose behind the work has always been the point.

At CFPI, Madeleine supports the team across client-facing materials, engagement collateral, reporting design, brand management, and visual communications, ensuring that the quality of CFPI’s work is reflected in everything the consultancy puts in front of clients and communities.

Core Capabilities

• Graphic design and visual communication for engagement and consultation
• Brand development, visual identity, and rebranding
• Communications collateral for stakeholder and community engagement
• Workshop facilitation and art-based community initiatives
• Report and document design and layout
• Digital content, event graphics, and promotional materials
• Illustration, mural design, and stencil art
• Internal communications and brand management

Beyond the Work

Madeleine is an artist in the fullest sense: someone for whom creativity is not confined to working hours. She paints, draws, and illustrates, and has a strong appreciation for thoughtful design in everyday objects and experiences. She is passionate about women’s health and mental health advocacy, committed to community activation, and has a genuine love of movement and fitness. Events coordination is another string to her bow, and she brings the same attention to experience and detail there as she does to her design work. Having had the courage to move interstate at a young age, build her own freelance practice, and pursue her creative vision on her own terms, Madeleine is someone who has always backed herself. She finds that same energy in the people around her, including her husband, and it is a quality she brings in full to the work she does at CFPI.

Qualifications & Credentials

Advanced Diploma of Product Design, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) | Diploma of Graphic Design, Billy Blue College of Design, Sydney