About Janet Sernack

Janet Sernack aspires to be a person of possibility, integrity, generosity and responsibility. Her inspirational and compassionate nature sets her apart as an excellent coach, educator and facilitator. Her skills have helped shape superior 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, creativity and adaptiveness to life’s many unpredictability’s. 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 traveling 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.

back to top

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.

back to top

She then started Compass Learning which focuses on developing performance cultures and top teams through building non prescriptive customized and experiential learning journeys that deliver what they promise. Some of her recent clients she has closely worked with as Compass Learning, include AAPT, Macquarie Bank and the NSW Department of Housing.

Her mission is to continue:

• Building Janet Sernack as a global brand; sustainability consultant, transformational facilitator and executive coach
  
• Building Compass Learning as a leading edge corporate learning and development company
  
• Further developing her range of global alliances to shift systems and build sustainable organisations
  
• Working in collaboration with her range of strategic alliance partners to effect sustainable change in targeted organisations
  Offering tailored and targeted executive long term coaching services

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; and 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.

back to top

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.

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 (Organisational 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. Barry has a professional history in Industrial Chemical Research working with polymers: plastics and composite materials. He has worked on research projects that included polymer films for the Space Shuttle, food packaging, and composite materials for the construction industry. His current business is in commercial interior and graphic design. Barry’s passions include interior design and motorcycles, and he dreams of racing on both track and drag strip.

Janet is also the close friend 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.