STUART SNELL, FOUNDER OF TLC CONSULTANCY

As an independent consultant, Stuart provides the full level of services as outlined on this website. And, when needed, he collaborates with a range of other service providers and consultants to ensure all strategy and communications needs can be met for large and complex projects.

Background

Stuart has deep experience in business strategy, reputation management, government and stakeholder relations, and media and communications. A former journalist, he has worked extensively as a strategy, business, and communications and PR/media professional for large government agencies and commercial organisations, mainly in the financial services sector, and as a consultant across a range of sectors but mostly in the technology and R&D sectors. 

Partnering with CEOs and business leaders, Stuart helps lift company and brand revenues and profiles, builds and protects corporate and leader reputation, enhances customer and consumer awareness, and lifts perceived increase in the value of products and services to help achieve organisational strategy (see Clients and Results). He is working as an independent consultant since 2018, after various senior corporate leadership roles including as Executive Manager, Public Affairs and Communications at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia; leading the corporate affairs function of Australia’s largest life insurance company, TAL Life; and as Head of Public Affairs from 2005 - 2010 at APRA, Australia’s paramount financial services regulator. 

He is also a non executive director (NED) with extensive governance,  finance, audit and risk leadership experience. His NED experience runs across six ‘for purpose’ companies limited by guarantee operating in commecial aned NFP markets, over numerous years. Stuart has been Board Chair, chair of committees, and been instrumental in overseeing and developing business growth, governance, risk, finance, compliance and renewed organisational strategy leading to new business models and partnerships. Two of these businesses have been fee-for-service firms operating in commercial markets, and two have been charity-based companies offering fee and non-fee paying services. Another, Direct Selling Australia, is an industry body representing a billion dollar a year revenue commercial market for whose board he is currently a designated independent director, and another current one is Powering Skills Organisation - a Commonwealth Government-funded company as part of the bipartisan Jobs Skills Councils initiative - to which Stuart was elected an independent NED and Board Chair in early 2025 following a recruitment process to appoint a new independent chair for the organisation's next important phase. PSO is contractually responsible for the training framework and workforce planning that underpins the energy sectors.

Stuart currently sits on four finance, audit and risk board committees and is Chair of three of these. As a NED, he played an instrumental role in the development of a governance framework and business growth strategy for Road Sense Australia during his three-year term to 2019, and at the Arrow Bone Marrow Transplant Foundation (currently there since 2021) and at large care provider Your Side Australia (retired Oct 2025 after serving max. terms since 2016, when annual revenue was about $5m with 28 staff, rising in 2024 to $30m and over 130 staff). At Your Side, he was Chair of the Board overseeing 40% year-on-year revenue growth from 2019-2021, achieved as a result of strategic renewal and business transformation, which Stuart led as Chair including the development of the  subsequent 2021-2024 Strategic Plan.

Prior to his consultancy and corporate work, Stuart worked as a senior media and communications leader for the NSW Government over a number of years after working as a newspaper journalist for 13 years, spending those last years as a senior journalist and sub-editor at Sydney’s The Sunday Telegraph.

Qualifications

Graduate Certificate, Business in Finance, UTS

Bachelor of Social Science (Communications), UTS

Advanced Governance NFP, AICD

Fellow, Governance Institute of Australia (FGIA) 

Member, Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD)

Member, Institute of Community Directors Australia (MICDA) 

Media Law for Journalists, UNSW

More

• LinkedIn profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartsnell1/

• Twitter https://twitter.com/SnellStuart 

• Listen to and read some of Stuart's property investment story at Smart Property Investment https://www.smartpropertyinvestment.com.au/advice/investor-stories/22-general/20659-don-t-plan-too-far-ahead-with-owner-occupied-investments 

• 2010 travel blog http://snellsaroundoz.blogspot.com.au/ documenting a 23,000km family caravan trip around Australia for nearly six months