Rachel Southee is a Chartered Accountant and Risk Specialist with 10 years' experience across finance, risk, strategy, governance and business transformation in New Zealand, Australia and Germany. Her career spans Big 4 advisory, start-up leadership, global dairy trading operations, manufacturing and product development, including senior roles with Fisher & Paykel Appliances, Global Dairy Trade and Oji Fibre Solutions.

Rachel has led significant transformation and change initiatives, developed enterprise risk and governance frameworks, redesigned operating models and built scalable financial systems. At Oji Fibre Solutions, she led finance transformation across Australia and New Zealand, and developed enterprise risk and treasury frameworks. At Bearing360, she helped redesign the business model, contributing to an improvement in gross profitability of more than 20%.

Beyond her corporate career, Rachel represented New Zealand three times in competitive road cycling and was involved in developing New Zealand's first lactose-free dairy yoghurt. These experiences, combined with her engineering and commercial background, give her a distinctive perspective on performance, resilience, innovation, risk and turning ideas into action.

Rachel is also an experienced board member and facilitator, known for translating complex financial and risk issues into clear strategic decisions and bringing people together around strategy, priorities and change.