// Portfolio — 2026

Kartini Cooper

Program & Transformation Specialist — Melbourne, AU

Structure for the complex. Clarity for what matters.

I'm a senior program and transformation specialist — over a decade of experience across financial services, technology, FMCG, government, and higher education. Available now for transformation leadership, program delivery, PMO, operations, and strategy roles. Melbourne, hybrid and remote.

Days from idea to working prototype

Ellyn.ai · Board Narrative Builder · Self-initiated · 2026 · Currently building ↓

50+

Initiatives prioritised

Continuous Improvement Centre of Excellence · PMO Governance & Delivery Methodology · In first 6 months ↓

Atlassian◆ Nasdaq◆ Telstra◆ Commonwealth Bank of Australia◆ NAB◆ Qantas◆ BGC Partners◆ BigPond◆ University of Technology Sydney◆ 86400◆ Lloyds Bank◆ Boots◆ Roads & Maritime NSW◆

01 —

About

Melbourne, AU

Structure for
the complex.
Clarity for
what matters.

I turn complexity into clarity — building the governance, rhythms, and delivery structures that help organisations move faster with confidence as AI reshapes how work gets done.

"The organisations that get the most from AI are the ones who first understand the human problem they're solving. Technology is a tool, not an answer."

I'm returning to the market in 2026 after a deliberate break. Travelled. Finished my MBA at the University of Sydney. Went deep on AI — check out my first build is in section 04.

Tech Financial Services Banking Government FMCG Startup Education

// Certifications & qualifications

Education

MBAThe University of Sydney · 2021–26
Grad. Cert. Business AdministrationUTS · 2020

Programme & Delivery

PRINCE2 Practitioner2015
ITIL Foundation2016

Agile

Certified Scrum Master (SMC)Scrum Alliance · 2021
Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)Scrum Alliance · 2023
Certified Agile Leadership (CAL)2022

Analysis & Process

Business Analysis in Practice (BABOK)PM Partners · 2024
Process Thinking & Improvement (BPMN)Univ. of Melbourne · 2023

AI & Design

AI Fluency SprintThe University of Sydney · 2022
Foundations in Design ThinkingIDEO U · 2025
UX FundamentalsGeneral Assembly · 2018

Leadership & Ventures

Executive Presence & StorytellingUniv. of Melbourne · 2024
Start-Up Pre-AcceleratorPress Play Ventures · 2025

02 —

Selected Work

5 case studies

Project 012021–22

Enterprise Platform Design Workflow Automation

Procurement Intake Platform

Atlassian · 2021–2022

75%

customer satisfaction
after launch

The problem

Procurement operated across fragmented channels — sourcing, supplier risk, contracting, and operations all in separate workflows. No single source of truth. Teams frustrated, turnaround slow, visibility near zero.

Approach

Co-designed and launched a unified intake platform consolidating four workflows — centring the design process on customer pain points first, before touching any tooling.

What changed

CSAT jumped to 75%. Operational turnaround significantly faster. Teams had visibility they'd never had. The platform became the model for how procurement could drive continuous improvements for customers.

75%CSAT improvement

4 → 1Workflows consolidated

↑Turnaround speed

Project 022023–24

Strategy Governance Operational Excellence

Continuous Improvement Centre of Excellence

Atlassian · 2023–2024

50+

prioritised initiatives
in 6 months

The problem

Improvement ideas scattered across teams with no way to capture, evaluate, or prioritise. Leaders had no visibility of where effort was going. High-impact work competed with low-value busywork.

Approach

I designed a fit-for-purpose intake and governance framework — structured and lightweight, aligned to how the org actually worked. Effort-impact scoring and a review cadence gave leaders visibility without overhead.

What changed

50+ prioritised initiatives active within 6 months. Leaders could finally see what was worth doing next — and resources flowed toward the highest-value work rather than the loudest requests.

50+Initiatives

6 wksTo operationalise

↑Strategic alignment

Project 032022

Innovation Cross-Functional Change Management

Cross-Functional Ways of Working

Atlassian · 2022 · 12-week experiment

30%

reduction in
meeting overhead

The problem

Procurement and Facilities teams operating in silos. Decisions slow, accountability blurry, too much time in meetings not driving outcomes. Adding more process risked making things worse, not better.

Approach

I led a 12-week experiment testing lightweight interventions before committing. Intentional operating rhythms, async delivery, and clearer accountability — focused on decision velocity, not coordination overhead.

What changed

Meeting time dropped 30% — not because we mandated fewer meetings, but because people had better ways to stay aligned. Cross-team engagement strengthened. The experiment became a model for other teams.

30%Fewer meetings

12 wkExperiment

↑Decision velocity

Project 042019

Stakeholder Alignment Choice Architecture Higher Education

Mobile Hardware Rationalisation

University of Technology Sydney · 2019

$330K

savings

The problem

The mobile hardware catalogue had two options — cheap and expensive — and almost everyone chose the expensive one. IT wanted the catalogue rationalised. Finance wanted spend down. Staff saw their work phone as a perk and would have resisted a top-down restriction. Procurement had already tried removing the expensive option, without success.

Approach

I talked to each group separately. The insight: people weren't attached to the expensive phone — they were attached to not being given the cheap one. With only two options, the expensive phone was the rational default. I proposed an experiment, not a policy change — anchoring a new low tier, keeping the existing top tier, and introducing a middle option that genuinely met most needs. The top tier stayed available, but with additional approvals — friction, not a ban.

What changed

Most people moved to the middle option voluntarily. Hardware spend came down by $330K. The top tier stayed available for staff who needed it, which removed the political resistance a ban would have triggered.

"Stakeholder alignment isn't always a negotiation over the same scarce thing. Sometimes it's reshaping the choice so the trade-offs disappear."

2 → 3Tiers redesigned

VoluntaryUptake · no mandate

↓Hardware spend

Project 052017–18

Product Development Agile Delivery Startup Scale-Up

Neobank Mobilisation — Project Sparkle

86400 (Cuscal, acquired by NAB) · 2017–2018

scrum teams
regulated environment

The problem

Australia's first fully digital neobank needed startup speed inside the compliance requirements of a regulated financial institution. A complex multi-squad program with no playbook — speed and precision both non-negotiable.

Approach

I joined early to build delivery infrastructure from scratch — agile rituals across quarterly PI planning and two-week sprints, spanning product, engineering, and compliance simultaneously.

What changed

The neobank launched and scaled. Board reporting gave Cuscal's leadership clear visibility of progress, risks, and investment decisions as the organisation moved at pace.

"Speed and compliance aren't opposites. With the right delivery architecture, you can move fast and stay safe. The governance enables the velocity."

4Agile scrum teams

✓Regulatory compliance

↑Board visibility

03 —

Expertise

6 competencies

0101 / 06

Program & Portfolio Management

Agile, Waterfall, and Hybrid delivery across multi-team environments. Full lifecycle from mobilisation to benefits realisation.

PRINCE2 CSPO Scrum Master CAL

0202 / 06

AI-Enabled Delivery

Hands-on AI prototyping at the senior-leader layer. Built Ellyn — a board narrative builder — in 8 days to pressure-test where the technology genuinely helps, and where it doesn't.

AI Fluency Vibe Coding Prototyping Design Thinking

0303 / 06

Governance & PMO Design

Intake frameworks, prioritisation models, and reporting structures that are fit-for-purpose. Governance that enables visibility and velocity.

BABOK BPMN ITIL

0404 / 06

Transformation

End-to-end change across people, process, and technology. From neobank mobilisation to enterprise platform design.

UX Fundamentals Pre-Accelerator

0505 / 06

Stakeholder & Executive Engagement

Board and executive communication. Building trust across technical, commercial, and operational audiences.

Executive Storytelling MBA

0606 / 06

Strategic Operations

Translating strategy into delivery rhythms and operating models that stick. MBA-grounded, practitioner-tested across multiple industries.

MBA · USyd

04 —

Currently Building

● Building publicly

Project 062026

Live Prototype Vibe Coded AI Senior Leaders

Ellyn — Board Narrative Builder

Self-initiated · 2026 · Built in 8 days · ongoing

days from idea
to working prototype

The problem

Senior transformation leaders spend 3–4 hours before every board meeting doing one thing: translating. Sprint velocities become delivery confidence. Dependency blockers become escalation requests. Every stakeholder needs to hear it differently — the CFO wants ROI, the CRO wants risk, the HoHR wants people impact.

Approach

I built Ellyn in 8 days using Claude as the AI layer. It reads a Jira backlog export, takes structured programme health inputs, and adds a private candour layer for the context that lives in a senior leader's head. It produces four narrative beats tailored per stakeholder, a hybrid delivery timeline, and a question bank.

What I learned

A clear-eyed view of where AI genuinely helps senior leaders — and where it doesn't. The candour layer is the feature users never see. The financial input layer was rebuilt from scratch after the model hallucinated a $79K figure.

"AI is exceptional at translation and scale. More important is knowing where it stops — and where judgment begins."

8 daysIdea to prototype

$79KHallucination caught · rebuilt

● IteratingUser interviews complete

Project 072026

Coming next Multi-Agent Delivery Product Non-PMs

A workflow product for non-project managers

Self-initiated · 2026 · Building publicly

multi-agent
developer team

The problem

A lot of non-PM professionals — managers, team leads, individual contributors — end up doing project management work without the methodology or tools that make it tractable. They lose hours to coordination overhead, and the work itself is invisible to anyone who didn't ask them to do it.

Approach

I'm experimenting with a multi-agent developer team — the swarm architecture Ellyn's user interviews pointed toward — to build a workflow product that gives non-PMs the structure of project management without asking them to become project managers.

What it tests

Where multi-agent delivery actually accelerates real product work, and where the seams break. The same discipline Ellyn taught: where AI genuinely helps, and where judgment still belongs to a person.

Multi-agentDeveloper team architecture

Non-PMsThe intended audience

● ComingBuilding publicly

05 —

Knowledge base

2 sets · stand-alone playbooks · field-tested

Every playbook, one place.

Field-tested playbooks for the work of adopting AI — from individual tool craft to the decisions a leadership team makes before the programme starts. Some are grouped into sets; most stand alone. Browse them all, filter by who they're for, and start with the one that matches the problem in front of you. Browse the full knowledge base →

Set6

● Sequenced set

Transformation Methodology For Transformation Leads

Transformation in the AI era.

Six playbooks · read in order · Halcyon Financial worked example throughout

The methodology — taking an organisation from honest diagnosis to landed change. Diagnose. Design. Deliver. Embed. Six weeks each, four phases each, one worked example throughout. Read together, the six take a position on what's actually being transformed and who does the transforming.

6 playbooks

Sequenced · in order

Halcyon worked example

Open the set

Set8

● Stand-alone series

Using AI Upskilling For Individuals

How to use Claude well.

Eight-part series · plain English, no code · each part stands alone

A practical series for individuals upskilling on AI. Plain English, no code, field-tested. Told through real use cases, from first prompts to running a small agent team. Read in order, or pick the one that matches the task in front of you.

~15 min each

AI Governance Risk For Leaders

The four layers of AI guardrails.

Stand-alone playbook · for leadership teams · AI governance & risk

Putting guardrails around enterprise AI in four layers — governance, operating model, process, system — so teams move fast without the programme becoming the thing that goes wrong. First of a forming set of leadership-altitude AI decisions; four more in build.

4 layers

13 deliverables

Halcyon worked example

Open playbook

06 —