Careers & Conversations

Meet Kirsty McGovern Hooley – Senior Manager, Canberra

Kirsty McGovern-Hooley is a woman who wears many hats. Senior Manager, video gamer, martial artist, mother and passionate advocate for NDIS and non-profit organisations.

We spoke to Kirsty about her life experience and how it’s shaped her professional journey. She opens up about her secret love of the nerdier things in life, her former career in advertising and media relations and how becoming a mother to neurodiverse children changed everything.

Personal Life

TELL US SOMETHING WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU...YET.

One year when I was around 13, my little brother got an “expert Dungeons and Dragons (DnD)” set for Christmas. We found ourselves spending that Christmas in a hotel, and he persuaded my sister and I to join him in a game. I loved it, my sister hated it.

During my university years, I met my (now late) husband who happened to be an avid DnD player. Since then, I've played all kinds of role playing games (RPGs), both tabletop and video, together with our friends for many years.

I am also quite crafty and enjoy activities such as cross-stitching and diamond painting. My collection of science fiction books could rival that of most bookshops and I obsessively complete jigsaw puzzles.

Drawing from my fervour for RPGs and board games, it's safe to say that I'm a devoted video game enthusiast. Currently, I am deeply engrossed in the challenging realm of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. For those familiar with the game, you'll understand the level of frustration it can induce, particularly for someone like me, who thrives on completing every aspect of a game. For example, one notable accomplishment in my gaming history is fully completing Mario 64, where I conquered every single star in the game.

Outside of video and board games, I also trained in Tae Kwon Do for many years, until knee issues forced me to stop. Before that, I achieved the first dan in Tameshigiri Iaido, a Japanese martial art that focuses on sword techniques and cutting practices.

HAVE YOU WORKED OVERSEAS (OR OTHER PARTS OF AUSTRALIA)? WHAT WAS IT LIKE?

My folks are from Fremantle in WA and my dad was in the army, so I got the army brat experience of moving every year or two. I have either lived in or visited every state in Australia apart from the Northern Territory.

I had my own independent travelling adventures, before I settled down and started a family. Some years ago, I had the privilege of living and working in Singapore. I got to travel extensively across Asia, working with the local ZenithOptimedia offices and network.

I loved learning about different cultures and really enjoyed working with people from diverse backgrounds. It was common to have meetings where every attendee was from a different country and spoke a different home language. I really miss the Singaporean food and the late-night shopping every night! 

SOMETHING I’M PASSIONATE ABOUT

I have many passions, but the ones that have really shaped my professional journey are my passion for education, my passion for seeing my children succeed and my passion for disability services and helping the organisations that provide those services achieve success.

I inherited a passion for education from my parents. My mother's academic achievements were truly exceptional, consistently ranking among the top five students in the entire state. She studied hard and was rewarded with a scholarship which she unfortunately couldn’t accept due to her family’s circumstances at the time. She did eventually go to university to study science though, after marrying my dad and having some children. Some of my earliest memories are of my mother dragging me to her university lectures on microbiology when I was home sick from school. My own high regard for education definitely stems from the way my parents prioritised it. I’m grateful to them for their role in my attainment of a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications (Media).

After completing my tertiary studies, I became a mother to two children who were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. When you become a parent, you feel an overwhelming desire to see your children thrive and get the same access to opportunities as other children have. To support my children’s education and the school community, I joined the Parents and Citizens (P&C) association. The canteen at the school had a number of underperforming areas and needed extra support. I took it upon myself to work with the P&C’s canteen business to resolve those issues. Within 12 months I had successfully revitalised the canteen, turning it into a profitable business. After that I joined the peak P&C body, where I advocated not only for canteens but also for students with disabilities.

These experiences ignited my interest in understanding the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Living in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), we were one of the first jurisdictions to transition to the NDIS. I started researching the scheme to learn as much as I could about it. At the same time I began working closely with an RSM client who was also one of my daughter's service providers, to help them understand how the NDIS would impact their revenue.

Using the NDIS tools the RSM team had posted on our website, I conducted a cost/price analysis and discovered that the client was going to lose about 75% of their revenue. Because their work involved animals, they would have limited options in terms of accessing restructure or redesign programs. I worked with the CEO to communicate this to the board and subsequently developed a compelling business case to present to the ACT Government in pursuit of funding support.

I understand the reality of running an effective services business with very limited funding, and the enormous challenges of managing fee for service funding in a NFP environment and culture. I am also deeply passionate about the NDIS and making not for profit organisations successful.

Professional Life

ABOUT MY CAREER PATH

My career journey is definitely not what you’d call a straight road. My former career was actually in advertising. I was a media strategist at Australia's largest advertising agency, George Patterson Bates for 16 years. It was an exciting place to work, and I had the privilege of working with some of Australia’s largest brands and businesses. Working in media strategy, I cultivated a strong foundation in market research, data analytics, marketing, and business strategy. I also sharpened my negotiations skills to deliver our media strategy and plans at the best possible price.

Then I moved on to ZenithOptimedia Singapore, where I assumed the role of Regional Director overseeing media accounts for global technology giants such as Nokia and Hewlett Packard throughout the Asia Pacific region. This was just before Apple released the first iPhone which was an intensely competitive period, so it was a very high-pressure, but exhilarating environment. However, this role involved travel commitments that clashed with family life, so after three to four years I decided to return home from that very fun job because it wasn’t compatible with having babies.

I took a few years off while I had our two kids and then my career journey took an unexpected turn when I discovered that my children were neurodiverse. I then started working on a casual basis with a local provider, helping them with costing and pricing their services under the NDIS. This provider was an RSM client, and that’s how I met the BA team and started working with them on NDIS projects.

WHAT LED YOU DOWN THIS CAREER PATH?

Being a non-accountant in an accounting firm is always an interesting experience. I often make bad jokes about how weird it is that some people actually like tax. But, on a more serious note, I like being able to bring a different perspective and experience to the work I do. I might tease them a little, but I do hold great esteem and appreciation for my accountant colleagues, They have a calm sensibility and a reasoned approach that I appreciate. Plus, accountants are typically pretty smart people (most of the time!).

If you’d told me in high school I’d end up working in an accounting firm I wouldn’t have believed you because I never thought I was very good at maths. But then I went into advertising, in the media department of Australia’s largest advertising agency, which is all maths.

I was negotiating the pricing of advertising and comparing that to the audience impacts you are buying, and doing calculations on reach and frequency of campaigns, and I found it engaging and interesting. I really enjoyed understanding people’s behaviour and how to motivate and change behaviour -  and relied on numerical data such as research and sales to evidence this. I pursued some very early development in marketing ‘return on investment’ - understanding how much marketing investment was needed and what kind of return could be gained for the business, and this led me into media strategy, which involved working with the business on solving their real problems.

Clients would often think marketing would deliver a solution, and upon interrogating this, I would often discover that the real issue was something a television ad couldn’t solve – the issue was in the supply chain or distribution or a functional problem with the product.  It taught me to work on solving the problem with the business first, and to define the role and function of what marketing could achieve with the business investment. This led me into running media strategy at a regional level for Nokia and HP for the Asia-Pacific. I was directing media strategy and investment across 13 countries. It was a complex and busy role working with the different countries, cultures and teams, while we compared statistics and costs and relative business value. Then I left that job and stopped working for a few years to have children.

Discovering that my children were neurodiverse led me to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), and I started working part time assisting a provider with NDIS costing and pricing.

That is where I met the RSM BA team, and they brought me on board to help deliver the NDIS Business Investment Packages and Ready4NDIS programs on behalf of the ACT Government.

WHAT ARE THE COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS PEOPLE HAVE ABOUT BUSINESS ADVISORY?

Many people have misconceptions about Business Advisory (BA). I guess from the outside it looks like compliance work but the core of our work with clients is actually about cultivating long-term professional relationships. There are many times our team will work with clients over the course of ten or twenty years, supporting their business as they evolve from humble beginnings in a back shed to thriving multi-million-dollar enterprises. BA can become a lot more than just the ‘compliance accountant’, as they get to know their clients and their families. I’ve seen my team go out of their way to provide that extra level of support, especially when there is a crisis in the client’s family or their business.

The work I do in BA is around supporting business transformation and change. Most of my work is consulting or project based and involves solving complex problems for NFP or government funded industries and sectors, and capacity building clients. We have continued to do interesting work with NDIS providers, applying activity-based costing, unit costing and financial modelling to help organisations understand their business model, reduce their unnecessary costs and understand where to improve productivity to meet some very tight funding constraints. We have also undertaken industry and sector analysis, such as the Lawn Bowls Sector report and artsACT organisations, applying a financial lens over supply and demand in the industry to assist with funding decisions. I have also led projects working with national and local not-for-profits on restructuring, governance and organisational change, which identify complex issues across multiple stakeholders and propose solutions.

Life at RSM

WHO HAS INFLUENCED YOU AND WHAT INSPIRES YOU?

I have been through some enormous personal loss in recent years. The support that RSM, the Canberra office and our BA team have given me, and continue to give each other and their clients, is nothing short of inspiring. It’s a privilege to work with people who are so kind, practical, and helpful. 

Furthermore, I am very inspired by our BA partner Andrew Sykes. In the face of abject crisis and insurmountable problems, he is brilliant at listening and breaking the problem down to the base priorities and focusing on the critical things that you have control over and can change.

WHAT ARE THE MOST SATISFYING ASPECTS OF YOUR JOB?

As I previously mentioned, I specialise in Business Advisory for NDIS and non-for-profit businesses. I find it rewarding as I develop a greater understanding of how to best manage purpose-based businesses with the added challenges of costs and productivity pressures from both a consumer and government perspective. Furthermore, having a child who is an NDIS participant I can empathise with the many situations involved. It adds a personal perspective to the work, helping me engage and connect with a variety of stakeholders.

I receive satisfaction from delving deeper into the inner workings of businesses and gaining a comprehensive understanding of their respective industries. I equally enjoy exploring the factors that contribute to a business's success and identifying opportunities for improvement.