Guide Dogs NSW/ACT is one of Australia’s most trusted charities. For over 60 years, Guide Dogs organisations’ have been assisting children, teenagers, adults and the elderly who have low vision or blindness achieve their goals in life. Their professional services extend beyond the provision of Guide Dogs, and include innovative children’s mobility programs, orientation and mobility training for adults as well as social networking programs to support active community participation.

The Role

The organisation, in partnership with its other state counterparts, are focused on connecting to their customers in collaborative and innovative ways; This includes implementing 3 new cross-border ‘Centres of Excellence’ in NSW/VIC, creating new physical and virtual touchpoints within the community, further optimising evidence based approaches to guide dog production and customer matching, partnering with likeminded organisations via new channels to deliver greater understanding and awareness of vision loss, as much as proactive and practical intervention.

Advising the Board and CEO and working with multiple stakeholders across the face of the organisation, you will be primarily responsible for the company secretarial requirements of the business, with oversight of any legal activities. This hands-on role has visibility and scope to influence the commercial decision making in the business and is seen as a crucial part of the Board and Executive leadership team. It must be noted your effortless ability to create associations of trust, respect, responsiveness with stakeholders will be a key performance metric.

About You

The successful candidate must have been ideally responsible for ensuring a similar sized complex entity conforms proactively to their company secretarial and statutory obligations; been seen to be following best practice standards of corporate governance practice; as well as delivered timely and efficient administration of Board affairs. This will have included experience designing and supporting Board and Director development programs. In addition, you must have a history of partnering effectively with internal or external legal counsel, particularly in the areas of contracts negotiation.

A reputation for being self-assured, practical, adaptable and able to quickly anticipate, evaluate and respond to scenarios strategically is critical. Equally you will be able to demonstrate a balance between the application of your commercial acumen; a passion for the craft that is company secretarial and working effectively with an active and engaged Board. You will be able to be admitted as a Solicitor and ideally hold qualifications from the Governance Institute of Australia and Australian Institute of Company Directors.