Neil Béchervaise

Dr Neil Béchervaise

From Health to Education, Aged Care to Brand Capital and Project Management to Policy Development, Dr Neil Béchervaise has worked as a trainer, coach, mentor, instructional designer and workplace change consultant.

Whether mentoring the CEO, writing grant applications, training staff to work smarter or developing e-learning resources, he collaborates closely with his clients to challenge, cajole, encourage and inspire them beyond their previous personal best.

Training strategies become platforms for organisational change; workplace culture becomes a springboard for innovation; management structure becomes an opportunity for reflective practice when Neil joins you in the workplace to identify needs, assess risks and develop unique solutions that incorporate the latest in training and research discoveries.

From Canada and New Zealand to Sri Lanka and Australia, Neil has supported innovation, developed training programmes and trained senior executive staff. Clients have included: Taltarni Wineries, Statistics New Zealand, Flextank International, Austin Hospital, Australian Physiotherapists and Australian Computing Associations, Retail Institute (NZ), Swinburne University, University of British Columbia and The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand. His latest appointment as Adjunct Professor to mentor the President of a University in Papua New Guinea demonstrates the on-going commitment of NB Consulting to transformational change implementation.

When solutions that work become smarter than right answers, Dr Béchervaise has a range of approaches that work when organisations partner for effective change.

Specialties

Leading reflective change through executive mentoring
Developing activity-based training development strategies and blended resources for on-line and in-house delivery

Academic background

Dr Béchervaise was appointed Adjunct Professor in the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship at Swinburne University of Technology in 2002, a position he held until he moved to New Zealand. He was formerly Director of Doctoral Research lecturing in Organisational Management and Research. Until 2001, Dr Béchervaise was Dean of Research at The University of Sydney, a Senior Lecturer in English Education for the Faculty of Education and three times visiting professor at University of British Columbia in Vancouver. From 1989 until 1992, he was a foundation lecturer in post-graduate Education at James Cook University in Townsville.

Dr Béchervaise has established substantial experience as a strategic change consultant in small to medium-sized enterprises. Through consultancy with companies in Australia, Canada, Sri Lanka, Japan and China, he has developed significant expertise in negotiating and delivering specific services with tight deadlines.

Dr Béchervaise has held consultancy links with Deakin University, Swinburne University of Technology, the Yooroang Goorang Centre for Indigenous Health, the Australian Funeral Directors Association and the Austin & Repatriation Hospital Nursing Education and Research Centre. In earlier times he has written for and acted as a consultant in the fields of visual literacy, early reading development and adolescent fiction with major publishers including Harper Collins, Random House and Nelson ITP .

With acknowledged expertise in Change Management, Strategic Development and Project Management, Dr Béchervaise is also an internationally recognised authority on Multicultural Learning, Gifted Education and Early Childhood Reading Development. His high profile in each of these fields is evidenced by invitations to present to international conferences in United States, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, Turkey, India and Australia. He maintains full teaching registration in both Victoria, Australia and New Zealand.

A prolific author, Dr Béchervaise has published 18 books, including collections of his own poetry, numerous academic papers and several widely used senior English, Communications and Film textbooks based on his 26 years teaching Math, Sciences, English and Drama in Canada and Australia.

Shakespeare on Celluloid was shortlisted as text of the year by Australian Book Publishers Association in 2000, published in North America as Shakespeare on Screen and re-published in expanded form in Australia as Constructing Shakespeare on Screen in 2003.

Initially trained as an industrial chemist, he has had an extensive career as a poet, drama educator and textbook writer, as a high school teacher, and as a family reading theorist researching multicultural influences in reading development.

From 1996 to 1998, Dr Béchervaise represented the tertiary sector on the Syllabus Advisory Committee for the NSW Board of Studies. Between 1995 and 1999, he acted as a senior HSC examiner in Contemporary English and General Studies for New South Wales. In a consulting capacity, he was involved in the development of the HSC English curriculum and assessment program implemented in 2000.

Dr Neil Béchervaise can be contacted on neil@bechervaise.com