Who is Navii
Navii is an Australian Government-backed, independent community of small business owners, industry and digital experts doing what they can to help businesses use digital tools and systems to operate more efficiently.
Navii is relentlessly committed to helping small business owners stay up-to-date with transformative technology and business opportunities brought by changing markets. We aim to help businesses to leverage these new opportunities in the most time and cost-effective manner.
The Navii platform is built leveraging interconnected free cloud platforms available to anyone, from anywhere, to deliver cost-effective training and the ability for any business, independently of their location, to share best practices without reinventing the wheel.
The team behind Navii
Liz Ward
Founder & CEO
Liz is a committed advocate for innovation in marketing and distribution and recognised expert in strategy with more than 20 years experience specialising in travel and tourism.
Liz has pioneered many first-time digital transformation initiatives that have had lasting impacts including starting up the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) and being its CEO for over ten years.
Fabienne Wintle
Founder & CIO
Fab - or Fabie (but she responds to pretty much anything) is an advocate for digital self-sufficiency and her hands-on approach has enabled thousands of small and large business owners with the tools and knowledge to make a living.
She's now bottled her special blend of digital know-how, business knowledge, training and coaching skills into the veins of the Navii platform which allows us to reach and help more Australian small businesses with the tools and knowledge to 'do digital'.
Julia Retson
Digital Solutions Manager
"JR" is Navii’s digital engineer, creating and connecting Navii’s digital systems across a range of technologies. With her unique background in rocket science, visual effects and teaching, she can build you the most aesthetically pleasing space-shuttle-like automation and then teach you how to use it in plain English.
Her and Fab also share an odd passion for Google Sheets formulas which they find oddly relaxing.
Claire McCollum
DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT HEALTH CHECK™ MANAGER & COACH
You're likely to meet Claire in Zoom as she's our lead coach and small business strategist. Claire's ability to explain things simply and make your motivational juices flow to reach your goals is why our coaching track record is so good.
Claire also manages our Digital Health Check product and our team of Assessors.
Molly Dobbins
Program Coordinator & Customer Service Advocate
Molly is Navii’s Programs Coordinator and Customer Service Advocate.
Her passion for supporting small businesses began when her parents started their own business. Molly witnessed firsthand the struggles, triumphs, and hurdles that goes into operating your own business. Through various experiences working for small businesses, Molly is determined to help your business improve its digital marketing.
Molly is also studying a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management and International Tourism Management.
Despina Karatzias
Business Coach
Desi has incredible business expertise and unsurpassed experience in all aspects of running and growing a successful business and her passion transpires across everything she does.
Despina loves to work with the small to medium business owner or manager who struggles to figure out cost-effective ways to maximise and grow their business through digital, social media, distribution and partnership marketing.
Emily Barry
Business Coach
You may have met Em at one of our workshops or in a coaching session where she empowers businesses to go from where they are to where they want to be with small achievable actions.
Sam Ward
Business Coach
Sam is part of Navii's coaching crew. He is passionate about developing and growing products and processes – start-ups and small businesses. Through his mentoring approach he elicits business creativity using lean canvas processes to flesh out the economic value of a goal and helping others thrive through coaching and achieving milestones.
Clem Lallement
Business Coach
Clem is an outstanding expert in digital business and marketing. She has been consulting, assisting businesses in the NT and across Australia with business improvement through digital marketing, e-commerce and digital advertising.
Mandy Murray
Business Coach
In her life before joining the Navii team, Mandy built her career as an accomplished Organisational and Leadership Development consultant in the technology sector. Customers are at the core of Mandy's coaching philosophy - she knows that acquiring and maintaining loyal customers is key to the success of businesses at any size or stage in their development. Having spearheaded a successful skincare brand, Mandy has firsthand experience of building a brands digital presence from the ground up and knows what it takes to get your business and product seen by your target customer. Mandy's passion for supporting people, building community and unleashing their business potential is entirely contagious - she leaves coaching clients feeling empowered and inspired.
Kerrin Wallace
Business Coach
Kerrin is the founder of Left Bank Design, a Melbourne-based design studio specialising in web design and digital marketing. She has over 25 years of marketing experience in Australia and the UK, working for world-famous brands such as Sony Music & Estee Lauder. Kerrin has spent the last decade helping a wide range of Australian businesses (from tourism to retail) reach their full potential by creating and implementing marketing strategies that ignite real business results.
Navii is the outcome of the Small Business Digital Taskforce...
The Empowering Business to Go Digital program is a key outcome of Australia’s Federal Government’s Small Business Digital Taskforce report.
Navii was the outcome of seeding funding from this grant which aimed to future-proof small businesses as they navigate the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, with new online tools to help them go digital and to develop resilient, growing businesses. Read Minister Andrew’s media release here.
... but remains independent and unbiased.
2.1 million small businesses power the Australian economy yet the current ecosystem which is supposed to support them with information and advice to be smarter with digital is disjointed.
There are a lot of programs, a lot of courses, but where do you start when you are not even sure what you need?
Born from the rather unusual union of two passionate small business strategists and a team of visionary founding fathers in Canberra who followed the recommendations of the Small Business Digital Taskforce, Navii is an independent NGO being raised with one objective: to provide small businesses who don’t have the luxury of having a digital whizz on their team with the best possible resources and advice to take the next digital step.
“As we’re 100% independent (we’re a small business ourselves), we have free range in building the ultimate tools and resources as we see fit. However, thanks to the Federal government having our back, an array of doors have opened for us to take your struggles to the table of the big players.”
