The team behind the work.
These are not figureheads. Every person below has carried direct delivery accountability in regulated and sensitive environments, and brings that judgement into client work personally.
Sushim is the founder of Sapience Consulting and a cyber, risk, technology and program leader with more than 15 years of experience across financial services, telecommunications, government and defence, health, energy and critical infrastructure. He specialises in translating cyber security strategy into practical implementation and measurable business outcomes, working directly with executive and technology leadership to frame risk, prioritise investment and guide major security and resilience initiatives.
He has led programs valued above $20 million, built cross-functional teams and supported more than 75 organisations to strengthen cyber security and risk management capabilities. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering specialising in radio frequency systems, which underpins the engineering rigour and first-principles thinking he brings to security architecture and control design. He is a security patent holder and PMP-certified, with a track record in highly sensitive government and defence environments.
As organisations accelerate adoption of artificial intelligence and agentic systems, Sushim brings dedicated focus to the security risks these technologies introduce, and to preparing organisations for the cryptographic disruption that post-quantum computing will drive.
Ilya is a Principal at Sapience Consulting, specialising in cyber security architecture, strategy and fractional CISO services. He brings enterprise security experience across major financial institutions, government agencies and critical infrastructure, working with CISOs, CIOs and boards to build security architectures grounded in risk appetite and business logic rather than vendor roadmaps.
His practice is grounded in the SABSA enterprise security architecture methodology and extends to cyber security strategy, governance, compliance and senior security leadership. Regulatory frameworks he works across include the Essential Eight, IRAP, APRA CPS 234 and the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act.
A growing part of Ilya’s work is focused on the security implications of artificial intelligence, agentic AI systems and post-quantum cryptography, where sound architectural thinking is essential and where many organisations currently lack internal capability to assess or respond to the risk exposure these technologies create.
As a fractional CISO, Ilya provides sustained senior security leadership to organisations that require ongoing strategic direction, executive accountability and team oversight without the cost or commitment of a full-time appointment; a practical model suited to organisations in growth, transition or building their security capability for the first time.
Rasika is a Principal at Sapience Consulting, working at the intersection of AI governance, technology risk and regulatory compliance. She brings over two decades of experience across financial services, energy, infrastructure and government, helping boards and executive teams establish accountable governance over operations and technology.
Her work bridges policy and delivery. She has designed and operationalised governance frameworks for highly regulated organisations; translating obligations under regimes such as the Security of Critical Infrastructure (SOCI) Act, Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II and KYC/AML/CTF into operating-model elements. She contributes to global standards through multiple IEEE working groups on AI governance and ethics oversight in AI projects, and as a Digital Skills Facilitator at the Australian Institute of Management she educates and coaches clients on AI strategy, governance and transformation.
She is PMP-certified, with degrees in finance and software engineering, a Master’s in Environment, AI for Energy Solutions from MIT, Quantum Computing, Cyber Security and Robotics from Deakin University, a Climate Risk, Valuation and Investing Certificate from the CFA Institute, and an Advanced Diploma in the Systemic Transformation of Organisations currently underway.
She is particularly effective where governance must be stood up from scratch or operationalised across complex, multi-stakeholder environments; critical infrastructure, financial services and government; translating regulatory obligation into practical business decisions.
David is a Principal at Sapience Consulting and a fully qualified lawyer. He has senior executive and consulting experience, including roles in the university sector. He has led projects and managed large teams, partnering with major global organisations on work valued at more than $2 billion. His project work has required negotiation and approval at senior levels of government and the military, in Australia and overseas. He has worked across the Defence sector, government agencies and commercial enterprises including mining.
David is experienced in identifying and protecting intellectual property, leading to their commercialisation. This is relevant as organisations bring AI enabled products to market and need to manage protection, disclosure and risk together. He combines legal training, direct experience negotiating through crises, and exposure to sensitive government and Defence environments.
Chris is a Principal at Sapience Consulting with over 25 years of program and portfolio delivery experience across banking, insurance, wealth management and government. He specialises in complex technology and data transformation programs in regulated financial services environments, where delivery discipline, stakeholder management and governance accountability determine whether programs succeed or stall.
His career spans senior program leadership at AustralianSuper, Macquarie Group, Westpac, AMP and ANZ, as well as engagements at ASIC and the Australian Federal Government. At AustralianSuper, he recovered and led the flagship Liquidity Treasury Management System program, onboarding four investment portfolios onto a new global digital platform, uplifting over 200 business controls and establishing a global operating and trading model across Sydney, Melbourne and London.
At Westpac, he established a three-year Customer Mastering Program comprising 17 project streams. His earlier Macquarie tenure included front-to-back Calypso implementation across equities, FICC, treasury, payments and cash management, with board-level reporting accountability and delivery teams built on Agile and Scrum principles.
He holds PMP, PRINCE2, MSP and Professional Scrum Master certifications, with a consistent track record of delivering high-value programs where regulatory compliance, operational risk and technology complexity intersect.
Our advisers are an integral extension of the Sapience team; each brings independent professional standing and engages with us on a flexible, as-required basis from within their own established practices.
Francis is an Adviser at Sapience Consulting and a cyber security governance, risk and assurance specialist with more than five years across Australian Government and Defence aligned environments, built on an earlier technical career in network engineering and secure infrastructure delivery that began in 2006.
He currently leads cyber security audits and assessments for Defence aligned organisations, covering scope definition, stakeholder interviews, evidence review, findings and practical remediation advice, and he quality reviews the work of junior assessors. Before that he delivered security risk assessments and Authority to Operate support at the National Disability Insurance Agency across enterprise systems, APIs, cloud services and AI enabled solutions. He has also assessed Essential Eight maturity and supporting governance controls for organisations entering or maintaining DISP membership.
His working focus is turning ISM, PSPF, DSPF, DISP, NIST and ISO 27001 obligations into controls, evidence workflows, risk and findings registers, remediation tracking and reporting that hold up under independent scrutiny. He works across cloud and identity controls, vendor and third-party risk, vulnerability management, and the governance and threat modelling of AI systems under ISO 42001 and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework.
Francis brings direct relevance for clients carrying Australian Government and Defence obligations, where assessment outcomes are tied to accreditation, DISP membership and contract eligibility.
Steve is an Adviser at Sapience Consulting. He has over a decade of experience across cyber security, incident response and telecommunications engineering. His work supports enterprise, government and critical communications environments.
His career covers complex incident response, security assessments, infrastructure audits and security maturity uplift across large scale telecommunications networks. He has led investigations into high severity incidents involving SIP and VoIP environments, telecommunications fraud, network security events and service outages affecting business critical communications. He is an experienced web application penetration tester who has worked across government and enterprise, with further depth in reverse engineering and digital forensics. Steve's expertise is penetration testing for Web applications, working through authentication and session handling, access control, injection paths, business logic abuse and exposed interfaces.
His engineering background in electronics and telecommunications shapes how he reads risk. He understands where security exposure meets network architecture, operational resilience and service continuity. His delivery experience includes voice and video integrations, platform migrations, network monitoring and the design of resilient communications environments for enterprise organisations, government agencies and essential services. He has also advised a telecommunications startup on technical direction and growth.
At Sapience, Steve advises on cyber security posture, incident preparedness and response, security assurance and risk remediation. His depth sits in telecommunications and critical communications infrastructure. He converts technical findings into practical actions that strengthen resilience, governance and security outcomes.
Sumedha is an Adviser at Sapience Consulting and an experienced CISO and Head of Information Security with more than 25 years of experience across financial services, payment technology, banking, not-for-profit and professional services. He combines cyber strategy, technology risk, governance, security architecture and operations, with a proven ability to translate complex cyber risks into clear investment, assurance and resilience decisions for executives and Boards.
Most recently, as Head of Information Security at Indue, Sumedha led security strategy, governance, architecture, cyber risk, compliance and security operations for a payment technology environment supporting card processing, mobile-wallet integration and fraud-management services. He developed and governed multi-year security roadmaps, led the transition to PCI DSS 4.0.1 and ISO 27001:2022, and strengthened alignment with APRA CPS 234 and NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0. His work also included security operations and monitoring, vulnerability management, identity and privileged access, third- and fourth-party risk, penetration testing, incident response, cyber insurance and crisis preparedness.
Earlier in his career, Sumedha established and led the information security function at Australian Red Cross and served as Group Head of Information Security for Ahli United Bank Group, overseeing security across an eight-bank network spanning the Middle East and the United Kingdom. He has also held senior technology-risk and assurance roles with Commercial Bank International, EY and PwC, and founded Zeroday Security to provide practical governance, risk and security advisory services. At Sapience, he brings senior practitioner judgement to cyber strategy, regulatory assurance, security transformation, operational resilience, supplier risk and executive-level consideration of emerging AI and quantum-related risks.
Manzoor is an Adviser at Sapience Consulting with over 20 years of SAP-centric experience spanning implementation, sustainment and migration. His career combines a decade of technical consulting with over a decade in management and leadership roles, with a focus on program delivery, portfolio management and delivery-led sales across large and complex SAP engagements.
He spent 19 years at IBM, where he held roles as Associate Partner and SAP Practice Area Leader for the Public Sector, with accountability for practice development, client relationships and delivery leadership on major government and enterprise SAP programs, including greenfield S/4HANA implementations. His sector experience spans healthcare and life sciences, government, consumer packaged goods and automotive, with particular depth in pharmaceutical environments including thorough knowledge of 21 CFR Part 11 compliance.
Manzoor holds PMP, Certified ScrumMaster and ITIL Foundation certifications, and is certified in Generative AI at SAP. He has been recognised with multiple awards including the IBM GBS Global Delivery Top Contributor Award.
Michael is an Adviser at Sapience Consulting with senior executive experience across banking, superannuation and insurance. He specialises in operational risk, third-party and supplier governance and procurement, with practical depth in managing service provider risk in environments regulated under APRA CPS 230 and equivalent frameworks.
His career spans executive accountability at Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, Colonial First State and Insignia Financial. At Colonial First State, he built and led the third-party risk and governance function as Director, with full accountability for supplier risk policies, frameworks and Trustee Board reporting. At Commonwealth Bank, he held Group Supplier Management and COO accountability for Mortgage Operations, leading teams of up to 1,500 people with expense accountability exceeding $50 million.
His program leadership experience includes separation programs at Westpac and MLC following major divestments, where he led procurement workstreams and built new procurement operating models from the ground up.
Maggie is an Adviser at Sapience Consulting and a Certified Scrum Master with more than 19 years in IT project and delivery management. She has run portfolios worth more than $20 million a year, delivering 10 to 15 concurrent projects, and has led distributed teams of more than 100 people across onshore and offshore locations.
As project manager, Maggie has directly owned vulnerability management and penetration testing activity, and has embedded security testing into code development and system integration cycles rather than treating it as a separate workstream. This work has required her to coordinate multiple vendors under different contractual and delivery scenarios, and to manage stakeholders across security, engineering and the business.
Service offering: Maggie works with technology and delivery teams to run agile and hybrid delivery programs that build security testing and vulnerability management into the delivery cycle from the start. Clients typically engage her to manage delivery on programs where penetration testing, vulnerability remediation and secure system integration sit on the critical path, and where multiple vendors need to be coordinated to keep that work on schedule.
Prashil is an Adviser at Sapience Consulting and the founder and CEO of Cyber Acads, Fiji’s dedicated cyber security consulting firm. He brings over 15 years of technology and cyber security leadership experience across aviation, financial services, automotive and large-scale retail in the Pacific region, with a track record of building enterprise security capability in complex, regulated and operationally demanding environments.
His career is anchored by a decade at Fiji Airways, where he progressed from IT Operations leadership to Senior Manager of IT and Cyber Security. He established the airline’s Information Security division from the ground up, implemented Security Operations Centre capability and led board-level technology strategy across a regulated aviation environment where operational continuity and security posture are directly linked. Prior to Fiji Airways he held IT management responsibility at Carpenters Fiji, overseeing a centralised IT function serving a group of companies spanning financial services, automotive, retail and hardware operations.
Prashil brings specific regional relevance for clients operating in or across the Pacific, where cyber security expertise at this level is limited and the risk exposure is growing. His engagement model is hands-on and outcomes-focused, covering risk assessment, framework implementation, SOC design and virtual CISO advisory.
Natasha is an Adviser at Sapience Consulting with over 27 years of experience across insurance broking, underwriting, risk and compliance management in Australian and international markets. She is the Founder and CEO of A-Cubed Risk Solutions and brings executive-level depth across insurance strategy, specialty and complex risk placement, alternative risk transfer and regulatory compliance that is directly relevant to the risk management and cyber resilience work Sapience undertakes with clients.
Her career spans country-level leadership at Lloyd's of London and Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, Vice President-level advisory at Marsh McLennan, and senior distribution and underwriting leadership at Zurich Insurance. As Lloyd's Country Head and General Representative in South Africa, she was responsible for regulatory and compliance oversight, governance of local cover holders, board membership and strategic market positioning of the Lloyd's brand. At Swiss Re, she led the strategic implementation of property, casualty, energy and agriculture underwriting across local markets with full P&L accountability. Her Marsh experience covered risk advisory and new business development across mining, construction, healthcare, power, energy and technology sectors, including positioning Marsh in the renewable energy sector where she achieved broker appointments across 60 per cent of the business.
She founded A-Cubed Risk Solutions in 2023, building a Barangaroo-based insurance broking and risk advisory practice within the Steadfast group. Her qualifications include an Insurance Broking Diploma, RG146 Tier 1, Compliance and Risk Management from the University of Cape Town, and postgraduate business education from GIBS Business School.
Michelle is an Adviser at Sapience Consulting and a Senior Business Analyst with extensive experience translating technology and cyber risk obligations into business requirements, processes and governance systems that hold up under regulatory scrutiny. She works across Legal, Risk, Compliance, Product and IT teams to move a program from requirement to delivery.
Her delivery experience spans the Digital Operational Resilience Act, which covers ICT and cyber risk across identity management, third party risk and business continuity, and APRA's CPS 230 operational risk standard. She has also led implementation of governance, risk and compliance platforms and crisis management tooling used to coordinate the response to operational and technology incidents, including cyber events.
Service offering: Michelle works with risk, compliance and technology teams to convert technology and cyber risk obligations into delivered requirements, processes and systems. Clients typically engage her for regulatory change delivery, third party and vendor risk process design, and embedding the governance and crisis management platforms that give boards confidence an obligation is genuinely managed.
Somnath is an Adviser at Sapience Consulting with 19 years of SAP consulting experience, specialising in S/4HANA Sourcing and Procurement, SAP Ariba and supply chain transformation across private and public cloud implementations. He holds SC (Security Clearance) and brings deep expertise in enterprise procurement technology across central government and complex commercial environments.
His current engagement is on Project Unity at HM Revenue and Customs; a unified SAP platform spanning HMRC, the Department for Transport and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and one of the most significant SAP consolidation programs in UK central government. Prior to this he served as S/4HANA Functional Lead on the Department for Transport’s pathfinder implementation, which became the design reference for central government SAP-based systems.
His broader experience includes global P2P and supply chain transformation at Johnson Matthey across six countries, SAP integration leadership at Shell through Accenture, and Ariba supplier risk and lifecycle management implementation at Wella globally. He has been recognised as an SAP Superstar and has published white papers on Product Service Group Code and Metal Accounting Solutions in SAP.
