Nikola is a highly regarded executive, lawyer, regulator, governance professional, NED and change agent with a passion for bringing about demonstrable, meaningful and sustainable cultural and organisational change in a diverse array of situations and settings.

With a strong and ethical ‘people focus’, she can unpack and rebuild work-place cultures to create an environment where staff feel valued and supported; services to clients, customers, and external stakeholders are better and fairer; and future visions are planned and realised whilst achieving KPIs and ensuring financial sustainability.

Equipped with a multi-disciplinary background, she is an experienced NED, executive, project manager, researcher, and reviewer of systems. She has led projects and reforms at local, State, and National levels including in development, infrastructure, planning, integrity, health, research ethics, regulation, and governance.

In her current role as a senior executive in local government, Nikola’s day-to-day work combines her passion for construction and infrastructure development with management of a highly-skilled, committed team that has responsibility for economic development, infrastructure planning, strategic and development planning, and development regulation.

In her most recent past role as Queensland Integrity Commissioner, Nikola was the primary ethics and integrity advisor to elected officials at state and local government level, chief executives of government departments, statutory office holders, and the more than 300 government boards and bodies among other advisees. With her ethics and public law knowledge, she set leading standards on a range of complex ethics, integrity, and interest issues; and her work has been widely cited including in administrative tribunal decisions. In that role she was also the regulator of lobbying in Queensland and, together with her team, she introduced lobbying reforms and initiatives that have led to greater scrutiny of the sector and meaningful change, in the public interest.

Nikola has a history of community volunteerism spanning more than three decades and sits on a number of boards and committees; works with boards and organisations in a private capacity on request through her small business Liminality & Co., and continues with academic work including supervising PhD students and publishing in peer-reviewed journals on a range of governance, ethics, and law topics.