Rhyll Gardner

Rhyll joined Clairfield Australia in 2017. Before that, she had a 30-year banking and financial services career at St. George Bank, Westpac, Suncorp, and the Bank of Queensland. Her areas of expertise include financial services and institutions, funds management, the not-for-profit, and the arts and education sector.

Most recently, she orchestrated a turnaround of Foresters Group, a not-for-profit finance company. Her value added to clients is through deep finance and financial expertise and broad experience across governance, risk management, strategy, M&A, digitisation, people, and culture. Over her long career in ASX-listed banks, Rhyll filled executive and general management roles in treasury, risk and compliance, marketing, corporate banking, retail banking and group strategy. She played a key role in St. George’s considerable growth and achievements as a business bank and extended this expertise to encompass retail banking, increasing performance and profitability, customer satisfaction and employee engagement.

As Queensland’s managing director, Rhyll presided over St George’s successful expansion into a challenging new market, building growth and brand awareness across all channels across the retail, business, and wealth management sectors. As general manager of group strategy for St. George, she drove strategic development, and as head of group strategy at the Bank of Queensland, she led the $440 million acquisition of Investec.

Rhyll is a Fellow of Finsia, and a graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Rhyll is also managing director of Foresters Group and non-executive director of Innovation and Business Skills Australia, and of the Expressions Dance Company.

Rhyll holds a degree in commerce and a degree in economics from the University of Queensland, a masters in applied finance from Macquarie University, and an MBA from Insead.