Our People

Lou Martini – CEO and Founder, Principal Consultant

B.Econ, G.Cert in Asian Business, M.Tropical Env. Mgt

Lou is the founding CEO and Director of Jackadder International. With over 30 years experience in senior ICT management roles, in both the government and commercial sectors, Lou brings a wealth of practical business and technology experience to client engagements. 

His active involvement in the ICT industry, including as a Director on the national board of the Australian Information Industry Association, has also given Lou a deep insight and understanding of the opportunities and challenges faced by the industry. 

Karen Folkers – Manager People and Capability

Karen Folkers is a seasoned HR professional with an impressive background in strategic workforce planning, project management, and general management. Her career showcases a wealth of experience in both government and the private sector, highlighting her versatile expertise in aligning workforce strategies with business success.

Notably, her previous role as a General Manager at a prominent recruitment company underscores her ability to connect the intrinsic value of the workforce to overarching business objectives. Karens adept use of data and analysis, coupled with a holistic perspective on workforce dynamics, make her an invaluable asset in the realm of strategic workforce planning and human resources.

Michael Durrant – Principal Consultant Architecture and Development

Michael has 20+ years of experience in Project and Program leadership across Australia, UK, and USA. He has worked with both business and technology stakeholders to ensure timely, budget-friendly, and high-quality solutions. He is skilled in Enterprise Architecture and Solution Architecture and has led teams to tackle complex business challenges with effective business and technology solutions.

Michael is well-versed in all phases of program delivery, including strategy development, program/initiative shaping, delivery, project closeout, and transition to operations. He excels at stakeholder engagement in complex environments and has delivered high-risk, high-availability internet solutions and associated cybersecurity technologies, such as internet banking, eCommerce, third-party gateways, and payment gateways.

Mark Ashcroft – Principal Consultant Enterprise Architecture

BSc, TOGAF, Archimate

With over 25 years of experience in technology architecture, delivery, and management across Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, Mark is a seasoned professional in digital transformation. His expertise spans legacy system modernization, custom software development, and SaaS solution integration. Mark remains at the forefront of innovation, leveraging modern cloud platforms, enterprise-grade low-code technologies, and generative AI to drive business value.

Mark is committed to a collaborative approach, working closely with both business and technology stakeholders to deliver pragmatic solutions aligned with business needs and customer expectations. He excels at leveraging existing technology investments and designing adaptable architectures to mitigate transitional risk.

Having led a wide variety of projects across commercial and government sectors, Mark seamlessly adapts to diverse environments. His broad industry exposure enables him to bring valuable cross-sector insights to every engagement, ensuring innovative yet practical solutions tailored to each client’s unique challenges.

Hans Willink – Principal Consultant Project Assurance

MBA, Grad Dip (Computing), BA (Military Studies)

Following a 20-year career in Army logistics and project management, Hans was appointed Chief Information Officer of the Tasmanian Department of Police and Emergency Services. In this role he was responsible for all agency ICT resources, strategic planning, and information management during a decade of transformational change.  Since leaving Police Hans has conducted project assurance and stage gate reviews on large and complex Government projects, tailored project management frameworks and conducted a range of specialist ICT research tasks.

Hans excels at stakeholder engagement in complex and ambiguous environments, translating complex technical language into plain English, providing pragmatic advice to resource constrained organisations and thinking “out of the square” to identify innovative solutions to business problems.

Nancy Libien – Principal Consultant Business Change Management

B.Comm, Prince2, APMG Change Management, Lean Fundamentals

Nancy has a strong record of delivering transformational complex projects, specialising in program and organisational change management. Nancy’s skills and experience also include stakeholder management and engagement, business analysis and process improvement and risk consulting across both ICT and business operations for NT and Federal Government agencies.

These programs/ projects include software development/ configuration and implementation, ICT infrastructure transformation, organisational enterprise and functional reviews, program evaluation, security reviews and baselining system performance.

Barbara White – Principal Consultant User Experience

(Phd, M Ed, B Ed, Dip Teach) 

Barbara is a strong advocate for the importance of incorporating human capabilities into software development. She believes that successful and stress-free interaction is the key to creating successful software products in the 21st century, regardless of whether they are used on a desktop, in enterprise business systems or mobile devices.

Barbara has made significant contributions to STEAM across her broad work experience. From creating multimedia learning materials for remote Indigenous communities in North Queensland to teaching Human Computer Interaction at CDU. Barbara’s passion lies in ensuring that technology is accessible, user-friendly, and relevant to everyone.

Barbara’s commitment to supporting and promoting STEAM is reflected in her impressive track record of supervising Master’s Thesis projects and Software Engineering Honors. Additionally, she co-founded the CDU Code Fair in 2014 with three IT colleagues, support IT internships and continues to be a valued member of the Jackadder Professional Mentoring program. Her efforts have been recognized and celebrated, most recently at the NT Digital Excellence awards, where she received the DCDD Digital Futures Inspiring Women Award and the prestigious Minister’s NT Digital Excellence Gold Award.

During her recent work for the Northern Territory Government in the last four years, Barbara has introduced a human centred design focus into many digital projects especially where there are public facing digital services.

Cathryn Hutton – Principal Consultant, Solutions and Strategy

As a seasoned consultant with over 30 years of experience in both the government and private sector, Cathryn has a deep understanding of strategy and solutions. With a wealth of cross-government experience, she has provided strategic direction to organisations in the areas of governance, strategy, and ICT. 

Cathryn is a skilled stakeholder engagement specialist, who excels in navigating complex and ambiguous environments. She has a proven track record of analyzing and articulating complex business problems and identifying innovative solutions to address them.

Recently, Cathryn has focused on developing strategic investment proposals for digital transformation projects across NTG, including Treasury, Electoral Commission, Education, and Territory Families. Her expertise as a CEO and CIO has given her a strong governance background, and she provides consulting and mentoring services to a range of boards and committees.

Bernard Wright – Chief Technology Officer

Bernard has a strong track record of using innovative technology to accelerate digital transformation and create sophisticated and secure ICT environments that enable organisations to scale and evolve. This includes driving innovative and strategic ICT, strategic business and transformational change initiatives for government agencies. Critically, Bernard ensures technology solutions create value by aligning with business need in the most efficient, cost-effective way possible. 

Drawing on an early career working in Silicon Valley, Bernard brings experience working at the forefront of technology innovation, enabling him to deliver industry-leading ICT initiatives. Underpinned by a core strength in enterprise ICT infrastructure, he knows how technologies are best deployed to enhance organisational effectiveness. This has included establishing cybersecurity best practice for a central government agency through policy and governance changes and breaking new ground using behavioural analytics software to protect user data and mitigate risk. 

Kat Beech – Principal HR Consultant

Kat brings over eight years of HR Business partnering experience, across both public and private sectors. With a strong business acumen, Kat provides a high level of proficiency in evaluating and developing leadership and people management practices, problem solving and process improvements and team or individual personal/professional development.

Kat has a thorough understanding of the IT project work environment, having previously worked with enterprise-wide programs in regard to their human resourcing structures, requirements and management.