Testimonials
It is always a pleasure to work with Warren given his cheerful and optimistic outlook. He is conscientious and reliable with sound judgement, maturity and provides balanced and seasoned advice. Warren is a professional and takes his governance roles and responsibilities seriously with total commitment. He is both a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Fellow of the Institute of Directors, and well versed in the Four Pillars and Code of Ethics of the IoD. He enjoys and takes a keen interest in keeping up to date with latest governance thinking. Warren is very adaptable and can either lead or support projects. He demonstrated this ably in his role as Councillor at the IoD with HR Committee, Professional Committee and various projects, for example, leading the Inaugural Emerging Director Award for the Auckland Branch. He is socially confident, articulate in his communications and enjoys being with people. He was a tremendous support in my prior role as Auckland Branch Chair. Warren stands out being well read with a depth of experience across a broad range of topics and industries gained over many years.
Liz Coutts ONZM, President of Institute of Directors
Over 17 years, Warren provided a breadth of valuable advice to McDell Marine Limited, international boat builders. During these years, we built an organization and competency of wide repute in our industry - our people are today applying their skills in boatyards globally. Warren was alongside us through most of our commercial and manufacturing challenges, performance improvement projects and difficult strategic calls. His contributions included advice and implementation support in global partnering (with Toyota and Oyster), analysis and costing, organization development, management systems, forecasting and supply planning, Lean Manufacturing, and leadership coaching. Of enormous impact was his facilitation of our two greatest decisions of the period - to move from own-brand design to contract manufacturing, and to determine our exit strategy.
Kim McDell, Founder and former Managing Director, McDell Marine Limited.
Warren is a director of Trade Tools Limited and also acts as a business advisory consultant to the company. In that role he provides general guidance and mentoring to the managing director as well as providing specialist services from time to time. Both as a director and as an advisor, Warren has at all times displayed a high level of competence and professionalism. His experience as an executive, a management consultant, an investment banker and a director enable him to provide both skilled specific advice across a range of disciplines and sound general guidance on business and strategic issues. Warren also follows closely the economic environment in which businesses operate and has a sound grasp of economic matters generally. He has a good understanding of the respective roles of board and management and displays a strong sensitivity to the function of the board in the context of a family-owned company with outside directors. His extensive business history equips him well to address the many and varied issues that come before boards. Warren clearly has the depth and breadth of experience and expertise to act successfully as a director for a wide range of companies
Keith Familton, Chairman 2002 – 2013, (former Chairman, Bell Gully)
Your management of our Committee over those 24 hours [of our Retreat] was masterful... It requires a special blend of skills to work with the articulate and strong-minded group we have on the Northern Club committee. I believe I speak for everyone when I record how impressed we all were with your ability to tease out, in such a collaborative way, the discussions which resulted in the very significant conclusions we reached. That we managed to reach that point without rancour and in such a universally constructive way speaks volumes for your skills as a facilitator.
Hon. SJ Eisdell Moore, former President. (High Court Judge)