Our People
TSG operates a network of experts, using carefully selected specialists to operate within a system of tight quality controls.
Once we understand the needs of a particular assignment we engage one, or some, of our experts to manage a process to deliver an optimal solution. A selection of contacts follows:
Chief Executive and Principal Consultant
Jon Kenfield LLB CA FIAMA
(Founder and Chief Executive)
Principal Facilitator, Dispute Resolver, Problem Solver and Conflict Systems Consultant.
Associates
Breda Annesley
Georgia Russell
Kate Telfer
Technical Consultants
Mack Hay - Psychologist and Team Builder
Glenda May - Psychologist
and Team Builder
Jon Kenfield - Forensic Accountant
Roger Timms - Taxation
Jim Richards - Capital Raising
Jon Kenfield LLB CA CPA FIAMA MBO
Founder, CEO and Master Solutionist
Jon is the Founder and CEO of The Solutionist Group and the principal designer of the Solutionism concept (trademark pending). He is our lead dispute resolver (for Dispute Solutions) and our Master Solutionist (for Solutioneering International). From a former life he is also the Principal of 'Jon Kenfield, Forensic Accountant' - a specialist forensic accounting practice based in Melbourne.
Jon gained an LLB (Hons) in the UK. He is a chartered accountant and a CPA; a Grade 2 Commercial Arbitrator and an Advanced Mediator & Conciliator. He is also an accredited Family Business Adviser.
Jon is currently the Chair of LEADR Victoria and is a member of the Victorian State Executives of the Institute of Arbitrators & Mediators Australia and Family Business Australia.
Jon is a qualified teacher and an accredited instructor in a number of outdoor pursuits (eg: scuba diving and mountaineering). He has been involved in professional training in accountancy, arbitration and mediation for over 20 years and runs workshops on topics as diverse as: strategic, business and succession planning and managing conflict in family business.
Jon has lived and sometimes worked in England, Canada, Africa, the Middle and Far East. He has been in Australia since 1985, living in Perth and Melbourne and working throughout the country.
Work Experience
After graduating from one of the UK's leading law schools with an honours degree, Jon worked as a professional diver for 4 years - first as a scuba instructor and diving safari guide in the Red Sea and then as an underwater photographer on the oil rigs of the North and Java Seas. He spent a year in London developing and promoting adventure travel, which involved going to some very exotic places and then talking and writing about them. Bored by this hum-drum existence, he then qualified as a chartered accountant.
Immediately after qualifying, Jon went to Africa with Deloittes for 2½ years (Zambia and Zimbabwe) before migrating to Australia in 1985 and settling in Perth.
Jon established a Legal Support Group (forensic accounting) for Deloittes - just in time to catch the big corporate collapses of the late 1980s. Increasingly, his experiences with major fraud enquiries and civil litigation matters compelled him to question the received wisdoms of conventional professional practice.
All the lights came on for Jon at a breakfast briefing at the WA branch of the Australian Institute of Management in 1986. The guest speaker introduced the idea of using mediation to resolve business disputes - an exciting new development in commercial, professional and legal practice in the US at the time.
Jon was an instant convert - with a thirst for new knowledge and skills that has since taken him into studies of: problem solving; communication; negotiation; lateral thinking; conflict management processes and systems; strategy and business planning and the challenges of family business - to name a few!
Deloittes moved Jon to Melbourne in 1992. Two years later he established an independent, boutique dispute resolution consultancy that became Dispute Solutions in 1996, and eventually blossomed into The Solutionist Group and Solutioneering International, in 2004.
As a professional accountant and business consultant / adviser for over 25 years, (with some legal knowledge and a broad collection of other skills) Jon has been rationalising, problem solving, peacemaking and resolving disputes of most kinds for individuals, business and organisations of most types and sizes.
Professionalism
Jon takes his work very seriously, recognising that the outcomes will have profound effects on people's lives and relationships. He obtains as much personal and professional satisfaction from helping individuals to deal with their matrimonial, partnership and workplace problems and family business conflicts as he gains from working with larger clients on major commercial problems. These letter include: major corporations, banks and financial institutions, professional institutes, trade unions and government departments.
A combination of reading and research, with an increasing focus on family business problems (from very small to very large private businesses) has contributed to the formulation, and the formalisation, of Solutionism as Jon's core business concept and underlying methodology.
He is looking forward, with passion, energy and enthusiasm, to wherever this particular journey is taking him. In the expanded business that has become TSG, he is also looking forward to training and mentoring his business associates and the increasing numbers of trainees attending TSG courses.
Interests and Pastimes
Jon's many interests include reading and films. His passion (outside work and family) is currently focused on fly fishing, which he regrets having come to about 30 years later than was proper and reasonable.
Jon is working on the first of two books that he hopes to publish over the next two years. The first deals with preventing and handling conflict in family business, the second will formnally introduce the world to Solutionism.
Breda Annesley LLM BEc AIAMA
Senior Associate
Breda is a senior member of the TSG team. She worked with Jon Kenfield to develop and refine the concept of Solutionism and helped to establish The Solutionist Group.
Breda’s unique combination of legal and commercial skills support her work as a Solutionist -providing professional dispute resolution, problem solving, facilitation and training services.
Breda is on LEADR’s Victorian Chapter Executive and is an Associate and sub-committee member of the Institute of Arbitrators and Mediators Australia.
Work Experience
After working in a large legal firm in Melbourne, Breda realised she wanted to play a more proactive role in resolving disputes and reducing the risk of recurring conflict. Most of her career has been spent in commercial management and business consultancy roles, and while completing her Master of Laws, she discovered a way to combine her passions for dispute resolution, law and change.
Breda has held senior commercial management roles with BHP, in Australia and the U.S.A., being both an employee and a consultant. Her experience ranges from managing stevedores in Port Kembla and tug boats around Australia, to developing a cost review process that delivered significant savings (and was implemented elsewhere). She also led a multi-skilled team that developed an e-business strategy for a division of BHP, under severe time constraints.
Breda has worked with a wide range of major companies and industries, including publishing, chemical, manufacturing, transport and retail. She is equally at home working with smaller businesses, having grown up in that environment and having worked with a large variety of small and medium sized business clients.
Breda established her own dispute resolution business, “Next Step Mediation and Facilitation”, before joining TSG. TSG gives Breda the benefit and challenge of working closely with professionals with whom she shares similar visions and values, where she can take her own ideas further and faster, while also expanding her service range.
Professionalism
With over thirteen years experience in commercial dispute resolution, Breda has a proven ability to help parties resolve problems, issues and disputes. She enjoys working with people and assisting them to develop new options to solve their problems. As a Solutionist, she has a comprehensive kitbag of tools and techniques that she uses to help her clients gain new perspectives on situations that help them to make wise decisions and gain optimal outcomes.
Breda is an enthusiastic and accomplished trainer who willingly shares her knowledge, experiences and skills in the areas of problem solving, communication, negotiation and conflict minimisation.
Interests and Pastimes
Breda loves anything and everything to do with the ocean – preferably sailing - but she is also satisfied with walks along, and even lying on, a beach. She enjoys sharing a glass of wine with family and friends, or a champagne if she has had a win at the races (another of her favourite pastimes, even if backing a winner is rare!).
Breda does volunteer work with St. Vincent de Paul, is Vice-Chair of her local Community House and is keenly involved in other community activities.
Georgia Russell LLB Bsc
Associate
Georgia is the newest member of The Solutionist Group. She completed her Bachelor of Law/Science at Monash University, Melbourne, in 2003 and had her eyes opened to the world of dispute resolution and problem solving at the end of her degree. She hasn’t looked back!
Georgia is a member of the Law Institute of Victoria (Family Law and Young Lawyers Sections) and VADR. She is also a member of the executive committee of the Victorian Chapter of LEADR.
Work Experience
Despite her tender years, Georgia has a long history of working with and helping people. She has been an athletics and cross country coach, a teacher and a tutor of secondary school students in a variety of subjects.
Georgia has been on a steep learning curve since joining The Solutionist Group - and she’s loved every minute of it! Not only has she been introduced to the concept of Solutionisim, which is exciting in itself, she has had the privilege of learning from the best in the field. Her involvement in the company has given her the opportunity to enhance her dispute resolving and problem solving skills, as well as encouraging her to branch out into new areas – including business, accounting and marketing.
Professionalism
Georgia is currently working as an apprentice Solutionist and Dispute Resolver. Her role includes process co-facilitation and co-mediation, research, co-ordinating meeting logistics, note and minute taking.
Inevitably, the youngest member of the team gets “the technology gig”. Accordingly, Georgia leads TSG’s practice development in online dispute resolution.
Her interest and ability in dealing with family-related matters has been rewarded with the responsibility of managing our family law service – facilitation and mediation services for separating couples, both de facto and matrimonial.
Interests and Pastimes
Georgia’s interest in travel started young when she went to China as part of an Australian athletics team. Since then she has visited: Scandinavia (where she lived for a year), Italy (where she completed part of her degree), London, Thailand, Indonesia and Mexico. She has also travelled extensively around Australia, but still can’t find the on-ramp to City Link from Spencer Street!
With her travel bug suppressed, at least for the time being, Georgia is indulging her other passions in life – mainly sport – which includes: athletics, cross country, water polo, basket ball, swimming and triathlons.
Georgia loves reading (particularly crime novels), eating out (especially Vietnamese and Japanese) and, most importantly, spending time with friends and family.
Chris Grigsby (Associate)
Rod Groves (Associate)