AboutLiesaNEWLAND
I spent thirty years inside corporate Australia. Then I burned out. What I did next became my life's work.
I spent thirty years inside corporate Australia, leading teams through media, marketing and technology at some of Australia's most significant companies.
I co-founded a company that listed publicly and scaled past $100 million. I knew what it was to carry a team, to hold a strategy, to be the person others looked to for certainty. And then I hit the wall that most high performers hit eventually. Still delivering, still capable but running on empty in a way nobody around me could see. Stuck in a pattern I couldn't name. Feeling overwhelmed, but unsure why.
What followed was the most important thing I've ever done professionally. I went back to study the science of what actually happens to humans under sustained pressure, and completed a Master's to understand the neuroscience behind it. I finally understood what had happened to me, and why the usual advice had never touched it.
That moment, when the pattern finally has a name, is what clients call the penny drop moment. It is where FearLess Change begins.
FearLess Change was built on that understanding. It is the work I wish someone had offered me when I was in that room.
The clinical foundation of this understanding was built through years of one-on-one work with leaders and individuals navigating the same patterns. The same three words kept coming up. Stuck. Overwhelmed. Scared. The practice that became FearLess Change grew from what those conversations revealed.
I work with where the pattern actually lives, not just the thinking about it, but what's happening underneath it. When that changes, your behaviour changes with it. You don't need someone holding you accountable. The old pattern simply stops being the automatic response. You don't just know what to do differently. You actually do it.
+ Bachelor of Business
Beneath behaviour, where the patterns actually live.
Most leadership development works on behaviour. FearLess Change works on the nervous system state that is generating the behaviour, which is a different thing entirely. A leader can understand intellectually that they over-control under pressure. They can name it, acknowledge it, commit to changing it. And then the next high-stakes moment arrives and the nervous system does exactly what it always did, because insight alone doesn't change a physiological pattern. The body has to shift too.
This is where neuroscience changes what's possible. Most leaders know what their patterns are. The feeling before the difficult conversation. The reactive response that comes out before the considered one. The version of themselves that shows up under pressure that isn't the version they want to be. The problem has never been awareness. It's that the nervous system moves faster than the intention, and until it changes, the pattern doesn't either. That is what rewiring means. Not learning something new. Changing what happens automatically before the mind has caught up.
"I came in carrying something I couldn't name, and left feeling lighter than I had in years. For the first time, I felt able to lead from my own voice, with more clarity, calm and confidence."
What I believe
- .The world doesn't need leaders who are fearless.
It needs leaders who fear less. - .You cannot manage your way out of a stress response.
You can rewire it. - .The shift doesn't take years.
When the pattern is right, it can begin in the first session.
If any of this landed, let's talk.
Whether it's for your leadership team or for you privately, the first step is the same, a real conversation.
Book a conversationDymocks Building
Level 7, Suite 14
428 George Street, Sydney CBD NSW 2000