Gayle Avery

Gayle Avery is a Professor of Management at Macquarie Graduate School of Management where she specialises in leadership and management development and teaches a unit entitled Leadership & Motivation. Each year she leads a study tour to Europe for the school and this focuses on leadership in cutting-edge international enterprises. She also explores leadership and management in "virtual" as well as "real" organisations in the core Organisational Behaviour unit she teaches.

Gayle has had extensive international experience, including 12 years spent working in Germany and the USA. In Germany, she headed the Institute for International Business Studies for five years, coordinating international academic programs awarded by leading universities from the USA and UK, with a focus on leadership. Prior to this, she was Director of International Management with the German Finance Academy, when she "Germanised" the leadership development programs for the Center for Creative Leadership in North Carolina (cited as best practice in the "Karpin report"). She initiated and designed extensive training and management development programs for eastern Germany at the time the Berlin wall fell, resulting in enormous growth for the Finance Academy.

Apart from wide experience as both employee and consultant in both private enterprise and the NSW public service, Gayle has been involved in designing and delivering leadership and management development programs for major organisations, including Aussie Home Loans, Deutsche Bank, McDonald's, MMI, MRA, Munich Reinsurance, NSW Sport and Recreation, Pfizer, Qantas, Siemens, Thomson's Asia Pacific, and Westpac.

Academically qualified with a doctorate in psychology (Monash University) Gayle is the primary author of Psychology at Work and Understanding Leadership: Paradigms and Cases, and numerous journal articles and reports. Her current research interests include global and sustainable leadership.