About Janet Sernack

Janet Sernack aspires to be a person who is connected, compassionate and courageous. Her inspirational and creative nature sets her apart as an excellent coach, educator and facilitator.  Her skills have helped shape leaders from individuals, communities and corporations across Australia and New Zealand.

Janet's career continues to be an adventurous and remarkable journey filled with exciting and unusual experiences which demonstrate her resilience, agility, c and adaptiveness to life’s many challenges. Her career began in the 1970's when, upon completing her HSC, she spent a year working on a Kibbutz in Israel in pursuit of the ‘socialist dream’. She then worked and partied as an international Qantas air hostess for five years in celebration of freedom, fun and adventure.

In the 30 years since her auspicious start Janet's experience in business has included 10 years in senior management positions in the retail and wholesale sectors - most recently as Marketing Development Manager and Fashion Direction Manager with Grace Bros (now Myer) department stores. Janet was responsible for analysing, forecasting and directing fashion and lifestyle trends for all merchandise purchases. This busy role meant travelling the world up to four times a year, where she liaised with international retailers, wholesalers and merchandise specialists to identify trends and adapt them to the needs and wants of the Australian consumer and marketplace. She was required to work with local and international manufacturers in product development, as well as to train all merchandise buyers in the application of seasonal fashion trends to the Australian fashion marketplace.

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Janet later accepted the role of Marketing Development Manager. In this role she added the management of the Grace Bros Corporate Identify Program, Market Research, the development and management of the Grace Bros Home Brand, and the Interior Design Service to her already wide range of responsibilities.

When Janet left her corporate career in 1988, (as a result of a lifestyle decision), she was considered to have held, at the time, the highest position for a woman in the Australian retail marketplace. She then began working as an independent management consultant to the manufacturing, wholesaling, financial services, telecommunications and retail sectors.

Janet's fashion marketing consulting business focused on assisting Australian fashion and lifestyle manufacturing companies in the areas of design management, brand development, business management and strategic planning. Her client list expanded to include other leading brands such as Seafolly, Image Clothing, Kerry McGee, John Kaldor, George Syprou, Events, Wombat, Oroton, Charlie Brown, as well as the prestigious International luxury brand Chanel.

As a leading fashion marketing and management consultant Janet was able to excel in the people and customer focused marketing arena, bringing together skills in strategic planning, relationship marketing, quality and brand management.

In 1992, she realised that the best laid business plans often ended up in the bottom drawer because many business managers either avoided taking action or simply didn't know the skills and techniques of effective implementation. This new insight and methodology marked the beginnings of a long association with Corporate Vision, where she was hired as an ‘organisational development consultant’ specialising in facilitating learning and culture change initiatives that enable organisations to implement change and deliver results. Janet’s association with Corporate Vision culminated in 2004 as a Senior Consultant responsible for the design, development and delivery of leadership and team effectiveness programs for senior executives and top teams. She became fascinated with the whole idea of culture change and corporate education as a means of helping organisations identify their cultural strengths and consequently developed high gradient, broadly based achievement based leadership and team effectiveness programs.

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She then started Compass Learning www.compasslearning.com.au  which focuses on Developing  the mindset and behavioural changes needed to create values driven organisations, high performing cultures & leaders, as well as aligned executive teams in ways that are ethical, sustainable and enduring.

Some of her recent clients she has closely worked with as Compass Learning, include AAPT, Macquarie Bank, TMLC and the NSW Department of Housing.  

Her mission is to continue:

• Building Janet Sernack as a global brand; sustainability consultant, transformational facilitator, leadership retreat leader and executive coach www.thegloballeadershipretreat.com
• Collaborating with the Brahma Kumaris to build models and processes for shifting power structures & developing leadership consciousness
• Further developing global alliances using the U process to shift systems, shift power structures and build sustainability
  
• Building The Global Leadership Retreat as a global business based in Israel
  
• Working through Compass Learning through building non prescriptive customized learning journeys that deliver what they promise
• Offering tailored and targeted executive long term coaching programs
  
  

As for Janet’s professional qualifications, she is:

• An Associate Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management
• A Member of SOL (Society for Organisational Learning)
• Qualified in the Educational Applications of Generative Learning and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
• Certified NLP Practitioner and Executive Coach
• Holds tertiary qualifications in Marketing and Workplace Assessment and Training.

She has also completed the Training to Train and Goal Achiever Programs with Dr Stephanie Burns.

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Janet recently attended the Presencing Leadership for Profound Innovation and Change Workshop at MIT, in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is part of an emerging global team of U Process practitioners who focus on building and implementing systemic change in large corporations based on the work of Peter Senge, C.Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers. As a result of this work, Janet has recently launched, in collaboration with the Brahma Kumaris, the www.thegloballeadershipretreat, which is a portal for leaders and senior teams to engage with deep processes that invoke fresh personal insight, expand consciousness, and awaken a nobility of spirit that leads to a wholly new level of perception and action.

The Global Leadership Retreat creates the space that elicits and allows people to become global leaders by:

• Recognising their innate wisdom
• Igniting their innate passion for contribution to the ‘common good’
• Fully expressing their inner aspiration of who they are
• Deeply knowing they are the cause of an enlightened global future

Janet is licensed to administer MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) through Australian Psychologists Press, DiSC through Integro Learning, and LSI (Lifestyles Inventory) LI (Leadership Impact) GSI (Group Styles Inventory) OCI (Organisational Cultural Inventory) OEI (Oragnisational Effectiveness Inventory) through Human Synergistics and the Corporate Transformation Tools through Richard Barrett and Associates.

On a personal level Janet is happily married to Barry Aarons and the close friend and mentor to three grown up stepchildren, as well as two aged parents. Janet also works with the Department of Community Services, and other community organisations in providing short term foster care to children in need. When she has a moment to herself, she is a keen swimmer, a prolific reader, learner and enthusiastic yoga and meditation devotee. Janet sees the world as a place of unlimited possibility and abundance.