Director, Exploration

The Organisation

Playing a pivotal role in saving lives, this critical organisation delivers world-class research, diagnostics, and clinical services across Australia. 

Responding to evolving customer expectations and public health needs, they are investing in the leadership, innovation, research and development, technologies and ways of working that will enable meaningful health outcomes now and into the future. 

The Opportunity

This new role will lead enterprise exploration and identify, test and advance new ideas, technologies, equipment, products and business models. The Director Exploration will also create space for experimentation, accelerating promising concepts, and building pathways to scale innovation that adds value to donors, recipients, employees, and the broader Australian health system.

Key accountabilities will include:

• Purposeful Leadership: Inspiring, leading, engaging, developing and evolving a curious and high-performing team of 50 + people with innovation, HCD, experience design, product design, digital, SME and delivery expertise.
• Championing Culture: Modelling and promoting progressive mindsets and behaviours. Championing trust and shared accountability, simplicity over unnecessary bureaucracy, and embracing constructive risk-taking.
• Exploration Pipeline: Managing a portfolio of early-stage ideas through discovery, prototyping, and validation, including building frameworks for intake and acceleration.
• Culture of Exploration: Championing curiosity and experimentation, including leading internal challenge campaigns, capability uplift programs and reward/recognition.
• Co-design and Insight: Embedding human-centred design in all innovation processes and partnering with customers, donors, and employees to co-create new solutions, products and services and technology.
• Partnerships: Building strategic partnerships with start-ups, universities, and innovation hubs and brokering access to capabilities and thinking.
• Leading Transition to Delivery: Working closely with Transformation and Delivery teams to transition successful pilots into scalable solutions.

The Right Fit

We are seeking an inspiring, creative and empowering leader who will foster a culture of curiosity, bold thinking, and safe-to-fail experimentation. Someone who will also bring together diverse voices through co-design and challenge assumptions to unlock new value.

Essential capabilities to ensure impact Include:

• Leadership experience in innovation, service design, or venture development.
• Experience in building innovation pipelines, incubating ideas, and managing experimentation.
• Strong facilitation and human-centred design capability.
• Experience in product development and evaluation of novel technologies / equipment.
• Knowledge of design thinking, lean startup, or agile innovation methodologies.
• Track record of enabling innovation culture and mindsets in large organisations.

The Benefits

This is a rare opportunity to make an impact in a leadership role that will better health outcomes across Australia at a critical time. If successful you will enjoy:

• Working with a purpose and values-driven leadership team who is committed to building a future-ready organisation.
• Leading strategy and research that will drive product and service innovation, new biological solutions, and enhanced clinical and customer experiences.
• Acting as a central integration point, connecting strategic initiatives across business units to reduce duplication, surface synergies and ensure enterprise-wide clarity on what matters most.
• Leading organisational transformation initiatives that drive enterprise impact.
• Streamlining end-to-end processes to enhance efficiency, reduce waste, and improve customer or operational outcomes.
• Hybrid working model, including flexible at-home and in-office collaboration.

Interested? For prompt consideration, click apply now. For a confidential discussion, please contact Ainsley Johnstone at Think Talent on