Profile
Helena Steel
Career Profile
- Educator and Speaker
- Career Development & Transition Specialist
- Executive and Workplace Coach
- Facilitator and Trainer
- Human Resources & Organisational Change Management Executive
Career Summary
A talented speaker presenter, and motivator, Helena was speaking to groups from primary school age. She remembers coaching her school friend at 7 years of age, to speak to the class in “Show and Tell”.
A highly qualified and internationally experienced Human Resources (HR) professional, she spent her first 20 years, working and educating herself in great HR and Industrial Relations roles. Strategically she chose to work in different industries, to advance her career and be promoted. She was always interested in careers, and spent many years assisting women, graduates, apprentices, CEO’s and other executives to “find their right place” in jobs, and to become better leaders! Naturally talented in finding and hiring the “right staff, she built a reputation for intuitively placing and promoting the right people into business. Working and qualifying as, a trained Executive Coach and Career Mentor so that she could guide others, was an easy transition from HRM.
Helena had the unfortunate job of managing one of the largest corporate collapses in Australia’s history – Ansett Airlines. As one of the last senior HR executives standing, she was challenged with the transition of 17,000 long serving specialist employees. At the same time as the September 11 attacks, the airline employment market diminished, worldwide. Working under Administration, with no resources, and few staff, she project managed an Ansett Employee Hotline. She re opened an Ansett Call centre, website, and telephone lines, and began providing career, information, and HR transition support for staff over telephones. With their long service, no payout, and limited job prospects in a two airline market environment, the task was thankless. Many Ansett staff failed to comprehend that there was no redundancy money forthcoming, and that they lost their jobs for ever. Understandably at the time of her own departure some 12 months after the collapse, Helena refused to consider a mainstream HRM role. Disillusioned, and exhausted in delivering organisational change, she questioned her work . The HR Executive after completing her first Career plan asked, “What do you do when you out grow your work”, and “What can l do now”? This became her own watershed year, of self discovery.
Today she is a sought after Speaker Motivator, Coach, and Trainer in the “Career Development” and “Career Identity” arena. Her key clients are now Educational Institutions and Graduates, along with Corporations, and Executives. Her key deliverables are speaking/education programs both online and training, tools & resources for job and career search. Helena’s Career Identity workshops are unique, powerful, and are real enablers for her clients. She is considered a Mentor in this area.
Qualifications / Associations/Achievements
- Master of Business in Organisational Change Training and Development
- Postgraduate Diploma of Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management
- Certificate IV in Training and Assessment
- Certificate IV in Workplace & Business Coaching
- Certificate IV in Life Coaching
- Advanced Certificate in Personnel.
- Fellow of the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI)
- Professional Member of the Career Development Association of Australia (CDAA)
- Professional Member National Speakers Association (NSAA)
- Co-course developer for the Certificate IV and Diploma in Workplace and Business Coaching – a first for Australia.