Miranda is an organisational psychologist with more than twenty-five years’ experience across executive public sector, consultancy, and academic roles, with expertise is in organisational psychology, organisational development, and strategic human resource management. She has a track record of devising strategic solutions to complex organisational concerns, implementing practical interventions and sustainable solutions to deliver employee and business outcomes. This includes in the areas of organisational culture, recruitment and selection, employee engagement, change management, learning and development, restructures, leadership and team development, succession and career planning, performance management, evaluation, research design and analysis.

Through her time with Merit Solutions since 2016, Miranda has undertaken a wide range of consulting projects with a particular focus on organisational development, culture and organisational change, with a particular focus on driving sustainable culture change, enhancing recruitment and selection and optimising employee experience. Miranda has also designed and facilitated the Merit Solutions learning and development program of high-quality workshops for panel members, delegates and job applicants as well as facilitating a diverse range of leadership programs, graduate programs, capability development and coaching assignments. Miranda has extensive experience consulting to and partnering with Commonwealth and state government and not-for-profit organisations, in which her ability to understand and deliver on clients’ needs and to drive sustained improvement and deliver business outcomes is widely acknowledged.

With over 13 years in executive leadership roles, Miranda held a range of executive positions in the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) including Director Organisational Development, Director Culture, Director Workforce Design and Strategy, Director Corporate Research and Director Workforce Planning. Over this time, she successfully led, and advised executive groups on high priority people focused strategies and initiatives.

In addition to holding sessional academic teaching positions across Applied Psychology, Commerce, and Behavioural Science faculties at Griffith University, Miranda has supervised provisional psychologists in the Master of Organisational Psychology and other programs at Griffith University and guest lectured at University of Queensland. She is well positioned at the cutting edge of contemporary research and practice

Throughout her government and consulting experience, Miranda has successfully delivered and advised on wide ranging organisational change and development work, from targeted interventions to national, organisational wide agendas. Recent work with Merit Solutions has involved work with Queensland and Australian Government clients focussed on organisational culture, organisational design, alignment of organisational strategy, improving  recruitment and selection, reviews, and audits of organisational practices.

Prior to joining Merit, Miranda drove the design of the ATO’s Culture Strategy which was the foundation for cultural transformation in the ‘Reinventing the ATO’ (2013-2020) strategic change agenda, positioning its ongoing implementation to 2020. Miranda designed the ATO Employee engagement strategy, overseeing targeted interventions to systemically improve engagement, which resulted in year-on-year improvement in key measures. Miranda also led a National Site Leadership function where she designed an innovative leadership approach that connected 23 geographically dispersed workplaces to build social cohesion, business connection and drive cultural change and leading the Corporate Research Unit deliver an evidence-based client-focused research program to inform the ATO’s strategic intent and support performance improvement.

As National Director from 2009 to 2015, Miranda successfully led the ATO’s Organisational Development function to improve performance, engagement, and capability across an organisation of over 23000 employees. Leading a national team, she delivered tailored solutions to achieve sustainable business outcomes. 

Spanning the entire organisational development field, Miranda’s experience includes designing employee engagement programs, culture change strategies, performance management systems, leadership and succession planning strategies and organisational restructures. She has also been pivotal in enabling and supporting workforces through organisational change, drawing upon her expertise in stakeholder engagement, communication, and application of psychological approaches to implement change programs.

Miranda has deep experience as a subject matter expert, panel and committee member for cross agency selection and review panels and is a seasoned interviewer and selection panel chair. With practical experience as a senior leader within Commonwealth government and more than seven years as Executive Consultant with Merit Solutions, she combines an appreciation of the realities of organisational requirements with a robust understanding of effective selection strategy and assessment methods to deliver positive outcomes.   She is proficient in recruitment and selection across all levels and work types, including experience across Senior Executive Service (SES) positions. She has designed and conducted executive and high-risk processes, specialist and large-scale nation-wide recruitment campaigns and graduate recruitment and development programs. Miranda’s strength in complex stakeholder management and ability to leverage recruitment and selection to align with organisational strategy uniquely positions her to achieve strong positive organisational outcomes.

With Merit Solutions, Miranda has designed and facilitated bespoke learning and development programs to  enable capability development in best practice recruitment and selection across Commonwealth public sector, Queensland, and Victorian public sector agencies. She is highly sought after for career and executive coaching and has provided job applicant support to thousands of employees and candidates across public sector agencies. Miranda has delivered customised outplacement, career transition and job search services to support redundancy, redeployment, and organisational change programs.

Managing Organisational Development and People & Culture functions in the Commonwealth public service, Miranda led the design and implementation of practices / strategies to improve performance and build capability. Her extensive experience with psychometric assessment to deliver demonstrable improvement in selection and performance outcomes includes introducing psychometric assessment to the methodology for the selection of over 1500 front line call centre staff nationally, with national longitudinal data demonstrating a 36% improvement in QA results and 23% increase in ‘progression ready’ within 12 months in comparison to previous approaches. In addition to her government experience, Miranda’s early career included work as a Test Administrator and assessor for Saville and Holdsworth (SHL) and psychological assessment for executive candidates with Price Waterhouse Urwick.

Miranda has extensive experience designing and facilitating bespoke learning and development programs, providing coaching services and professional supervision. She is a skilled facilitator with experience in face-to-face group facilitation, as well as virtual delivery.  Miranda’s experience spans the full spectrum of organisational development and HR practice, including best practice recruitment and selection, leadership, job applicant and career guidance, performance management, communication, and project management. Drawing on her expertise as an organisational psychologist, Miranda enjoys enabling sustained individual and organisational capability development across all levels and disciplines.

Miranda also has extensive experience with psychometric, ability and behavioural assessment, delivering demonstrable improvement in selection outcomes. In addition to her government experience, Miranda’s early career included work as a Test Administrator and assessor for Saville and Holdsworth (SHL) and psychological assessment for executive candidates with Price Waterhouse Urwick. Miranda has led the design and implementation of people and business practices / strategies to improve performance and build capability across Commonwealth and state government jurisdictions. Her introduction of psychometric assessment to the methodology for the recruitment and selection of over 1500 front line call centre staff nationally, led to a 36% improvement in QA results nationally and 23% increase in ‘progression ready’ within 12 months, in comparison to previous approaches.

Miranda’s expertise in qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, research design, data-gathering approaches (e.g. surveys, structured and convergent interviewing and focus groups, and data analysis) has been used with clients to guide decision making, evaluate interventions and practices, establish KPIs, measure performance and identify priorities for change. She has led an evidence-based user experience research program to improve business and service delivery and support measurement and evaluation of performance. Miranda advised executive committees on client and community perceptions/trends/behaviour and interventions to mitigate risk areas and drive improvement in business and service delivery.

During her Commonwealth public sector experience, Miranda was recognised with various group and organisational level awards for outstanding practice and business achievement for “innovative practices in recruitment and selection”, the design and implementation of National Site Leadership strategy, and the development and implementation of a national employee engagement program.