Company: Sentis Pty Ltd, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Company Description: Sentis is a successful global organisation, fostering sustainable change through the application of psychology to safety, wellbeing, organisational and leadership performance. Since 2003, we have delivered our services to clients across a broad range of industries, involving over 66,000 participants in 22 countries utlising five languages.
Nomination Category: Individual Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Female Executive of the Year in Asia, Australia or New Zealand

Nomination Title: Chandra Clements, CEO, Sentis Pty Ltd

Describe for the judges the activities and accomplishments of the nominated executive since the beginning of July last year (up to 500 words):

In 2010, when I commenced as CEO of Sentis, the business was experiencing significant financial and cultural challenges. Significant clients had been lost and people had become disillusioned and distracted by everything other than moving forward. Money, time and talent was being "misused".

Since July 2011, with the help of a great team, I have turned this situation around,with a 33% revenue uplift in the first twelve months and a staggering 230% uplift in EBIT. This situation is special to me, not so much because of the figures yet because the results were achieved from a team that perhaps did not have the experience to deliver this result, but instead held an endless amount of determination and commitment to learning.

Since this time I have led Sentis to achieve multiple awards for Innovation and its culture. We have been presented with the Brisbane Innovation Scorecard Certificate and have been named as a BRW Great Place to Work for three consecutive years. We have opened a new office in Newcastle and grown our Innovation Team to 16 people globally.

I have recently been listed as a finalist for the AIM Professional Manager of the Year Awards for Queensland. I am a key note speaker at the HR Summit in October in Australia where I have been asked to unveil the secrets of a "Great Place to Work" and have two of my managers currently competing for further management excellence awards.

At present we are preparing for another record breaking year with an unprecedented number of business leads entering the organisation globally. I have returned our US operations to profitability after five years of trading unprofitably and am actively recruiting for new Business Development Managers in South Africa, Europe and the Oil and Gas region in Houston Texas.

In early 2011, I had a vision to launch our own in house digital studio. This has come to life and we now produce our own digital work internally. We have recently released the "Brain Animation Series", a series of five Brain animations, on You Tube and are preparing to add to this suite in the coming months. The work of our digital team and the quality of our output is, in my opinion, world class. Especially when you consider that the average age of our digital and development team is 30 years of age.

In August 2011, I led our team to sign up our biggest international contract with the world's largest salmon farmer. This was a truly entrepreneurial project and ventured in to regions that we had only dreamt of working in. I successfully secured this contract and we have received excellent client reviews for this bespoke piece of work, designed from the ground up to address the unique performance and safety challenges of the salmon farming industry.

I have increased our service offering from nine services to over forty service offerings, have completely rebranded the business and have empowered my leaders to rely on each other, rather than on me.

Provide a brief biography of the nominated executive (up to 100 words):

With a diverse industry background spanning education, retail, mining, construction and distribution, Chandra has built her professional career around the application of psychological concepts to global business issues. Her success has relied on her ability to connect with ‘untapped’ human potential in organisations such as Rio Tinto, Fluor Daniel and OPSM. In 2009, she led a business of 380 employees to achieve a Lost Time Injury rate of zero, down from 19 two years earlier and implemented a three tiered business model which arguably changed the direction of the business from one of short term viability to long term.