Chief Executive Officer

Established Multi-Site Community & Property Business | Melbourne

Executive Leadership | Commercial & Financial Acumen | Strategy & Innovation

Sawyer Sourcing has been exclusively engaged to undertake the search for a CEO to lead an established and successful privately owned Melbourne-based organisation through an important generational transition.

Operating across three significant community-based locations comprising approximately 600 residences, the business has a long and successful history, strong underlying assets and an established management team.

After more than two decades of founder leadership, the organisation is now seeking an accomplished and commercially sophisticated executive to take responsibility for the business and lead its next chapter.

This is not simply a business-as-usual CEO appointment.

The incoming CEO will be entrusted with protecting and enhancing an established operation while bringing fresh thinking to its future. Working closely with the Board, they will have the opportunity to review the existing business model, strengthen organisational capability and identify new opportunities for innovation, diversification and sustainable growth.

The Opportunity

Reporting to the Board and leading an established management team, the CEO will have overall responsibility for:

• Strategic leadership and execution

• Financial and commercial performance

• Multi-site operational leadership

• Governance, risk and regulatory compliance

• Property and asset performance

• People, culture and organisational capability

• Identification and evaluation of new business opportunities

• Building strategic partnerships and complementary revenue streams

• Leading the successful transition from founder-led to executive-led management

With the existing portfolio mature and well established, the Board is particularly interested in appointing a CEO who will look beyond traditional operating models and ask "what's next?"

This could include new services, partnerships, acquisitions, complementary business activities or future development opportunities. The successful executive will have the commercial judgement to distinguish genuinely attractive opportunities from ideas that do not withstand rigorous financial and strategic analysis.

About You

We are deliberately keeping the candidate market broad.

Previous experience within this organisation's particular sector is not essential.

You may currently be a CEO, COO, CFO/COO, General Manager, Commercial Director or senior executive within property, healthcare, aged care, community services, accommodation, professional services or another multi-site or asset-intensive business.

More important will be your demonstrated ability to understand and lead an entire enterprise.

You will bring:

• Exceptional financial and commercial acumen, including P&L, budgeting, forecasting, cash flow and capital allocation

• Strong strategic and analytical capability

• Sound understanding of contracts, commercial risk, governance and legal matters

• Proven operational leadership and the ability to lead through others

• An entrepreneurial mindset balanced by disciplined commercial judgement

• Experience identifying and evaluating new business or growth opportunities

• High emotional intelligence, maturity and diplomacy

• The confidence to lead an established organisation through significant leadership transition

• Outstanding Board, stakeholder and communication skills

Relevant tertiary qualifications are expected, with an MBA or equivalent postgraduate business qualification highly regarded. Accounting, finance, legal, property or governance qualifications would also be viewed favourably.

A Rare CEO Opportunity

This appointment offers the opportunity to inherit a successful and established business rather than repair a broken one.

The challenge is to understand what has made it successful, ensure those strengths are retained, establish the organisation for its next generation of leadership and determine where its future opportunities lie.

A carefully managed transition and knowledge-transfer process with the Founder and Board will form an important part of the appointment.

Melbourne based | Executive remuneration commensurate with the significance of the appointment

This is a confidential executive search being managed exclusively by Dan Sawyer, Principal Recruitment Consultant, Sawyer Sourcing.

For a confidential discussion regarding the opportunity, contact Dan Sawyer at Sawyer Sourcing, or submit an expression of interest and further information will be provided to suitably qualified candidates.