Who is Navii
Navii is an Australian Government-backed, independent community of small business owners, industry and digital experts doing what they can to help businesses use digital tools and systems to operate more efficiently.
Navii is relentlessly committed to helping small business owners stay up-to-date with transformative technology and business opportunities brought by changing markets. We aim to help businesses to leverage these new opportunities in the most time and cost-effective manner.
The Navii platform is built leveraging interconnected free cloud platforms available to anyone, from anywhere, to deliver cost-effective training and the ability for any business, independently of their location, to share best practices without reinventing the wheel.
The team behind Navii
Liz Ward
Founder & CEO
Liz is a committed advocate for innovation in marketing and distribution and recognised expert in strategy with more than 20 years experience specialising in travel and tourism.
Liz has pioneered many first-time digital transformation initiatives that have had lasting impacts including starting up the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) and being its CEO for over ten years.
Fabienne Wintle
Founder & CIO
Fab - or Fabie (but she responds to pretty much anything) is an advocate for digital self-sufficiency and her hands-on approach has enabled thousands of small and large business owners with the tools and knowledge to make a living.
She's now bottled her special blend of digital know-how, business knowledge, training and coaching skills into the veins of the Navii platform which allows us to reach and help more Australian small businesses with the tools and knowledge to 'do digital'.
Despina Karatzias
Chief Navigator & GM
Desi has incredible business expertise and unsurpassed experience in all aspects of running and growing a successful business and her passion transpires across everything she does.
Despina loves to work with the small to medium business owner or manager who struggles to figure out cost-effective ways to maximise and grow their business through digital, social media, distribution and partnership marketing.
Amanda Hinton
Business Development Manager
Amanda was was the GM of Australian Award winning Capricorn Caves and on the board of many industry associations.
Having run through the Navii programs during her tenure at the Caves, she wanted to join the team to spread the word on how simple changes can help business save time and run more efficiently.
Claire McCollum
Coach & Strategist
You're likely to meet Claire in Zoom as she's our lead coach and small business strategist. Claire's ability to explain things simply and make your motivational juices flow to reach your goals is why our coaching track record is so good.
Claire also manages our Digital Health Check product and our team of Assessors.
Hannah Conroy
Content Manager
Hannah works on researching, collating and creating much of our course content, video content and visual content. Her job is to make sure that the courses and tools developed by Navii’s expert team are presented in a way that is digestible and accessible for small businesses.
Hannah’s other interests include graphic design and has been instrumental in the Navii branding and manages our social media presence.
Julia Retson
Digital Engineer
"JR" is Navii’s digital engineer, creating and connecting Navii’s digital systems across a range of technologies. With her unique background in rocket science, visual effects and teaching, she can build you the most aesthetically pleasing space-shuttle-like automation and then teach you how to use it in plain English.
. Her and Fab also share an odd passion for Google Sheets formulas which they find oddly relaxing.
Emily Barry
Marketing & Project Assistant
You may have met Em through our socials as well as in person at a workshop or in our coaching sessions.
Emily focuses on the coordination of all social media channels and the development of our and our clients marketing assets.
Rochelle Ryan
Executive Assistant
Rochelle is Liz's Executive assistant, and catches all the balls that we throw at her, puts them in her structured to do list and keeps us to task.
. She's the better version of Siri, Alexa and Hey Google combined.
How Navii came about (the Official)
The Empowering Business to Go Digital program is a key outcome of Australia’s Federal Government’s Small Business Digital Taskforce report.
Navii was the outcome of this grant which aims to future-proof small businesses as they navigate the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, with new online tools to help them go digital and bounce back stronger than ever. Read Minister Andrew’s media release here.
The Real Story (the Unofficial)
2.1 million small businesses power the Australian economy yet the current ecosystem which is supposed to support them with information and advice to be smarter with digital is disjoined.
There are a lot of programs, a lot of courses, but where do you start when you are not even sure what you need?
✋ Meet Navii.
Born from the rather unusual union ~ we’re told it’s a first ~ of two passionate, small biz techies and a team of visionary founding fathers in Canberra who have followed the recommendations of the Small Business Digital Taskforce, Navii is an independent NGO being raised with one objective: to provide small businesses who don’t have the luxury of having a digital whizz on their team with the best possible resources and advice to take the next digital step.
“As we’re 100% independant (we’re a small business ourselves), we have free range in building the ultimate tools and resources as we see fit. However, thanks to the federal government having our back, an array of doors have opened for us to take your struggles to the table of the big players.”
