Executive Summary
Alongside a professional career in the WA resources sector, Callum has sustained more than a decade of genuine volunteer leadership across three distinct community settings. As Director, Treasurer and Company Secretary of the Formation Evaluation Society of Australia (FES Aus) from 2014 to 2019, he held formal fiduciary responsibility for a volunteer-governed professional society — managing approximately $100,000 in member funds, a committee of up to fifteen volunteers, and the delivery of more than fifty technical events. When the collapse of the WA oil and gas services market in 2015 threatened the organisation’s financial viability, he designed and implemented a restructure that moved it from negative cash burn to break-even. In parallel, he founded and directed Ministry of Data, a not-for-profit that built structured partnerships between Western Australian government agencies and local technical talent. Earlier in his career, as a Curtin University student, he volunteered in — and ultimately led — an Indigenous literacy program at Clontarf Aboriginal College, coordinating a team of university volunteers working with young men from regional and remote WA.
Governance and Community Contribution
Formation Evaluation Society of Australia (FES Aus)
Director · Treasurer · Company Secretary | July 2014 – September 2019 · 5 years 3 months
About FES Aus
FES Aus is the Australian chapter of the Society of Petrophysicists and Well Log Analysts (SPWLA), an international non-profit dedicated to the advancement of petrophysics and formation evaluation. The chapter serves geoscientists and formation evaluation professionals working primarily in WA’s oil and gas sector, providing a monthly technical forum, knowledge-sharing and professional networking — including within the SME sector that forms a significant part of the state’s oil and gas services community.
The Challenge
When Callum joined the FES Aus committee in 2014, the WA oil and gas services sector was entering a severe contraction. From 2015, a collapse in global oil prices drove deep cuts to exploration and production expenditure — with corporate discretionary spending, including professional society sponsorship and membership activity, contracting sharply as companies reduced costs and retrenched staff. FES Aus moved into negative cash burn: the organisation’s existing cost structure, which included paid service arrangements on monthly retainers, could no longer be supported by declining revenue.
The risk was structural, not cyclical. Without intervention, the organisation would deplete its reserves and be unable to continue serving its professional community.
Callum’s Role
Callum served initially as a committee member, then took on the roles of Director and Treasurer — holding the Company Secretary role concurrently for a period — on a four-person board overseeing a committee of ten to fifteen volunteers. As Treasurer, he held formal fiduciary responsibility for approximately $100,000 in member funds, was accountable to the membership, and managed ATO and ASIC reporting obligations. He led and implemented the financial restructure described below, in addition to contributing to the board’s broader governance and strategic responsibilities across more than fifty events over five years.
What He Did
Cost structure
Callum converted existing paid service roles from monthly retainers to hours-at-market-rate arrangements. This removed the fixed cost base that was driving the negative cash position and aligned costs directly to activity — immediately improving the organisation’s financial position without compromising service delivery.
Cash management
He moved member funds from a holding account into a business account and fixed-term interest-bearing accounts with quarterly access — improving both the visibility of the organisation’s cash position and the return on reserves that had previously been sitting idle.
Revenue and event model
Working with the committee, he supported a restructure of the event program: replacing more frequent smaller meetings with two larger full-day biannual events. This significantly increased per-event revenue, reduced the operational burden on volunteer committee members, and created a program that could reach minor profitability on event fees alone — without relying on sponsorship. Sponsorship income, which had been a dependency, was repositioned as upside. Callum also renegotiated venue and provider agreements to underpin the revised model.
Financial outcome and recovery positioning
The combined effect was an immediate shift from negative cash burn to break-even. The restructure was designed for recovery: once the oil and gas market stabilised and corporate sponsorship returned, the organisation would be positioned to return to profitability and reinvest in its community purpose. This was achieved while maintaining full delivery of the society’s technical program throughout the restructure period.
What this governance story demonstrates
The FES Aus restructure is a governance and financial stewardship case study in miniature. The organisation was solvent, community-focused and staffed entirely by volunteers with no personal financial interest in the outcome. The restructure required Callum to exercise genuine fiduciary judgement under stress — diagnosing a structural problem, designing a multi-lever fix, and implementing it across cost, cash and revenue simultaneously, within the constraints of a volunteer committee and a membership-accountable governance structure. These are precisely the skills required to manage public governance responsibly when operating conditions change.
Ministry of Data (MoD)
Founder & Director | 2017–2022
Callum founded Ministry of Data in 2017 as a not-for-profit initiative — with no paid directors — to close a gap he had identified between Western Australian government agencies holding real operational problems, and local developers, start-ups and technical talent who lacked structured access to government problem statements or procurement pathways.
Over five years, MoD delivered four public hackathons funded directly through the budgets of participating government agencies, engaging state and Commonwealth partners including the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD), the Department of Transport, Main Roads WA, the Public Transport Authority, and the Commonwealth Department of the Environment and Energy. Events drew ministerial participation from the WA government and extended beyond Perth with a regional satellite event in Geraldton. Winning solutions were connected to recognised accelerator and mentoring programs, including the Plus Eight Accelerator and the Combine AgTech Hub.
Callum owned the end-to-end operation: agency funding negotiations, event design, marketing, operations, and post-event stakeholder engagement. The initiative operated as a genuine community-purpose body throughout; a potential commercial consultancy pathway was considered for the future but never pursued.
The fuller profile for Ministry of Data is published separately on the Nausicaa Consulting project board, including full source references and agency detail.
Curtin Volunteers! — Indigenous Literacy Program
Program Coordinator & Volunteer | Clontarf Aboriginal College, Perth | June 2010 – November 2011
While completing his undergraduate degrees at Curtin University, Callum volunteered in the Curtin Volunteers! (CV!) literacy program at Clontarf Aboriginal College, Perth — an Indigenous residential boarding college where predominantly young men from regional and remote Western Australia, many from the state’s north-west, were working toward high school graduation. Students typically presented with reading levels well below their year level, commonly Grade 3 to 5.
The program delivered structured in-class literacy support alongside teacher supervision, with volunteers working with individual students and small groups. Callum began as a participating volunteer. In his final year with CV!, he took on the coordination and leadership of the program for Clontarf — responsible for recruiting volunteers from Curtin University, scheduling, coordination and program delivery across a team of approximately five to ten volunteers working with around twenty students per session.
Concurrently, Callum held a student mentoring role within the Curtin University ecosystem, supporting students new to university life through the early stages of their studies.
This was early, direct engagement with the challenges facing young people from regional and remote WA — and with the practical work of building a capable, coordinated volunteer team to serve them.
Outcomes Across Three Strands
- ✓Immediate financial stabilisation of FES Aus — restructure moved the organisation from negative cash burn to break-even, preserving approximately $100K in member funds and the organisation’s ongoing viability.
- ✓More than 50 technical events delivered across five years of FES Aus directorship, maintaining full community service delivery throughout a period of severe market contraction.
- ✓ATO and ASIC compliance maintained throughout Callum’s tenure as Company Secretary and Treasurer.
- ✓Four government-innovation hackathons delivered via Ministry of Data, engaging five-plus state and Commonwealth agencies, drawing ministerial participation, and connecting winning solutions to recognised accelerator pathways.
- ✓Regional reach extended via a Geraldton satellite hackathon — demonstrating the capacity to design and deliver programs outside Perth for regional communities and businesses.
- ✓Indigenous literacy program led at Clontarf Aboriginal College, coordinating a university volunteer team to deliver structured literacy support to young men from regional and remote WA working toward high school graduation.
Why It Matters
This profile answers a question that a conventional CV cannot: what does a candidate do when no one is watching, when there is no salary at stake, and when the beneficiaries are a professional community, a government agency, or a group of young men from the north-west of WA who are trying to finish high school?
The FES Aus directorship shows formal governance capability — fiduciary responsibility, financial restructuring under stress, ATO and ASIC accountability — exercised in a volunteer-governed organisation where the only accountability is to the members. Ministry of Data shows the capacity to build working relationships across government and industry, structure a program that delivers against real public-sector problems, and extend that reach into regional WA. The Clontarf literacy program shows personal commitment to educational equity and the capability of Indigenous young people from regional and remote Australia — and the practical leadership skill to build and coordinate a team to serve them.
Taken together, these three strands demonstrate a sustained, consistent pattern of community contribution that pre-dates, runs alongside, and reinforces Callum’s professional leadership: a person who understands regional WA not as a geography on a map, but as a set of communities he has personally invested in over more than a decade.
Capabilities Demonstrated
All three engagements were undertaken voluntarily, outside Callum’s substantive paid employment at the time. None of the activities described above were undertaken on behalf of any employer, and none should be attributed to Nausicaa Consulting. Callum’s contribution in each case is presented on the authority of his own account. The organisational context for FES Aus and Curtin Volunteers! is independently verifiable at the sources listed below.
Sources
Public sources establish organisational context and program structure. They do not independently verify Callum’s personal contribution, which is presented on the authority of his own account and his LinkedIn volunteer experience record.
- PublicFES Aus — Homepage: About FES Aus. fesaus.org — Organisation description, mission, SPWLA chapter identity, Perth location.
- PublicFES Aus — 2026 Committee. fesaus.org/committee — Governance structure: President, VP, Treasurer, Secretary and committee roles.
- PublicSPWLA — How to Form a Chapter: By-laws. spwla.org — Chapter officer structure; combined Secretary/Treasurer role permitted under SPWLA by-laws.
- PublicCurtin University / Centre for Aboriginal Studies — Student Experiences. karda.curtin.edu.au — Clontarf Literacy Buddies program description.
- PublicCurtin University — Three volunteer opportunities, National Student Volunteer Week. curtin.edu.au — CV! literacy program structure.
- PublicLawyers Weekly — The art of survival in the wild west (March 2015). lawyersweekly.com.au — WA resources sector spending contraction 2014–15.
- PublicAIChE / ChEnected — Budget-Cutting Pain Hits Oil Services (July 2015). chenected.aiche.org — Global oil price collapse and oil services CAPEX cuts, 2015.
- Callum-suppliedLinkedIn volunteer experience record — FES Aus directorship dates (Jul 2014–Sep 2019), fund management (~$100K), committee size (10–15), events delivered (50+), ATO and ASIC reporting. Curtin Volunteers! dates (Jun 2010–Nov 2011), coordination role.
Ministry of Data sources are listed in the standalone Ministry of Data project profile on the Nausicaa Consulting project board.