Our Experts

Roger Cowan

For 40 years, Roger Cowan was the CEO at Panthers Entertainment Group. During his term, the Club grew from a small club with 800 members to a giant organisation consisting of 14 sites with 160,000 members and a turnover in excess of $150M per annum.

He is an accredited NLP Master Practitioner and has been President of Registered Clubs and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management. In recognition of his services to the Club Industry he was awarded an OAM.

In the late 80’s Panthers went through a period of rapid growth and started being a victim of its own success. Leadership of Panthers became a challenge focused on change and education. It became a flat, team-based structure.

A large number of personnel shared in strategic planning, developing productive culture, TQM, marketing strategies, identifying the most appropriate styles of management for given situations, managing change and many other associated studies.

More than 25 CEOs of NSW Clubs came through the Panthers’ ranks.

Steve van Zwieten, a former manager at Panthers remembers: “The learning environment at Panthers was life changing for me in both career and my personal development. There was a constant drive towards exploring new information about management and leadership. I found the education to be highly motivating.”

Firsthand observations of corporations with responsibility for millions of dollars of shareholder investments convinced Roger that there is a lack of understanding of the main principles of marketing, planning and organisational change. As the driver of the development of a learning culture, he had seen much evidence of what worked and what was a waste of resources.

It was only when he came across Distil that he was confident that he had found an organisation and a set of programs and values that would be the catalyst for successful innovation and change for clubs — programs that could capitalise on the wealth of knowledge, skills and talent that are underutilised in most organisations.

Joe Bowers

Joe is the original founder of Distil and his clients have included hundreds of small and large organisations, some of the bigger names of which have included IAG, Golf Club Management of Australia, City of Sydney, Australian Museum and Macquarie University (see more testimonials).

Joe is also the founder of the Australian Future Search Network, the only international affiliate of the US based Future Search Network.

He was the first Australian authorised coach of Duct Tape Marketing, an approach emerging out of the US which has received rave reviews from the likes of Harvard Business Review, Forbes Magazine, US Chamber of Commerce, Microsoft, Dell, HP and Michael Gerber.

In earlier years, Joe was a part time teacher in leadership, management and law, and completed a counselling skills and teacher training courses.

He was the partner in charge of the Sydney Indirect Tax Practice at Coopers & Lybrand where his larger clients included the likes of Boral, Channel 7, GIO, QBE, Southcorp and Transfield. Over 2 years, the practice doubled in size to 45 people and $10M turnover, before he left to set up his own business.

Dr. Helen Bryden CPA, FTIA.

Helen is an International Management Consultant and Australian Taxation Specialist with a PhD in Education.

She formerly taught and developed curriculum at the International College of Management, Sydney (including Hospitality, Tourism, Property and Retail) and had a major role in developing the curriculum for the new world-class Sports Management Program at Macquarie University.

Lana Walker

Lana is a US based award-winning business and marketing communications specialist based in the US. She has worked in a variety of industries and fields, including gaming, hospitality, restaurant, training, education, wellness, and nonprofit.

David Lee

David has been working in cross-cultural and international marketing and advertising for more than 20 years. With multinational agencies in both China and Australia, David worked on some of the biggest blue-chip companies,including Telstra, National Australia Bank, Singapore Airlines, AMP, RTA, NRMA, Unilever, Compaq, Microsoft, Epson, American Express, HSBC and many Federal and State Government departments.

David was a key member of the team that successfully launched Australia’s first 3G mobile network to the multicultural market and was the International Business Manager with Panthers Entertainment Group.

Educated in both China and Australia, David has a MBA degree majoring in International Management and is also a qualified professional translator.

Karen Riley

Karen is Distilled Club's internal expert dealing in marketing, telemarketing and advertising.

John Bowers

John has over 30 years experience in teaching management accounting at MBA, University and TAFE levels.

He is an International Management Accounting Consultant and as part of Bowers Bryden & Associates, John worked for the Commonwealth Secretariat for 10 years developing and running small business workshops in seven countries of Oceania.

Our Partners

Teaching Sells – a preeminent international organisation focused on creating and delivering elearning

ECampus – arguably Australia's best commercial providers of learning management systems

Articulate – an international organisation that provides elearning authoring tools

Future Search Network – an international network that is focused on fostering an approach with worldwide acclaim called Future Search, used for strategic planning and change management.

Duct Tape Marketing – a systematic approach to marketing that is emerging out of the US and has acclaim from the likes of Harvard Business Review, Forbes Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, US Chamber of Commerce, Dell, HP and Microsoft. Our Joe Bowers was the first Australian authorised coach of this approach

Getting Things Done – our favoured approach to Personal Stress Free Productivity

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