Janelle

Janelle was born and raised in Wangaratta and after moving away for over a decade, returned to North East Victoria in 2002.

Janelle has extensive experience in navigating complex business decisions with an honest and upfront approach. Having worked with SME, family businesses, Local, State, Federal Government organisations and within Global consulting space, Janelle loves assisting families and organisations identify, create and deliver success. Janelle has been running her own businesses for over 20 years and has navigated disasters both financially, personally and environmentally and knows how important it is to have a nimble and honest approach to business problem solving. Janelle is exceptional at navigating tough conversations, asking and drawing out the tricky questions and answers and has been told she is the ‘business whisperer’. She has skills in Governance, corporate structures, marketing, infrastructure and property, change management and family business transition.

Janelle has maintained a vibrant consulting business since 2000 while maintaining active social charity roles and executive and non executive board roles. Janelle has Chaired the Federal Regional Development Australia board, Tourism Victoria, the Ministers Victorian Food and Wine tourism council, Agriculture minister advisory council and has chaired and driven the Mount Buffalo Chalet advisory council just to name a few.

Janelle loves the blend of corporate and private business, city and country lifestyle , motherhood and an active social and business network. The decision to establish Gumboots was to create a hands on, boots in approach to assisting businesses – we are no stand off report writing consultants.

Mel

Mel, born and bred in Adelaide, comes with a strong hospitality background from management roles within international hotel chains to starting, growing and selling her successful catering business. Mel moved to the Northeast of Victoria 5 years ago for a position at Feathertop winery and since then has worn different hats within the organisation from web design to marketing, HR & management to name a few.

While also consulting to a not for profit and as a team alongside Janelle, Mel drove the 2020 High Country Comeback on the back of bushfires for the region which bought back $2 million of much needed tourism to a region brought to its knees by natural disaster.

Also holding roles consulting to Australian based companies expanding to China, it seemed a natural progression to offer this "hands on" "can do" approach to giving businesses the opportunity to do things differently, scale up or down and bring efficiencies to a more productive workplace. Her further studies in project management bring a pragmatic approach to getting things done.