Design Declares Australia

Chairperson

RENY®

We are in the business of creative exploration, pioneering transformation for organisations & brands focused on designing better outcomes for humanity.

Co-Founder / Managing Partner

Co-Founder / Design Director

Surfrider Foundation Australia

Advisory Board Member

Chumpy Pullin Foundation

Member Board of Directors

Skin Check Champions

Advisory Board

ELECTRIC ⚡️

Partner

Eon Labs

Mr Simple - Sidelife

mwah. making work absolutely human

Luxottica Group

General Manager Wholesale

Oakley Asia Pacific

General Manager - Arnette Sunglasses ANZ

Sales Director

CEO / Partner @ RENY®Studio | B Corp

As a co-founder and managing partner at Reny ®, I have the amazing opportunity to help transform companies through Orbital Design (picking up where Human-Centred Design left off, giving Mother Nature a seat at the design table, leading to social and climate impact). 

I am an award-winning writer for my publication Uncluttered White Spaces (2009-16), and my new book, Lessons in Creativity, will be available in all good bookstores from May 2025 through Wiley Publishing.

As a certified B Corp, we design creative solutions, products, and brands that impact the community, climate, and humanities.

I have experience working with driven leaders, obsessive designers, genius engineers, demanding CEOs, ambitious CMOs, hard-driving founders, eager investors, observant writers, precise technologists, insightful artists, visionary directors, gifted misfits, hopeful students and passionate up-and-comers.

Client/Project experience: Patagonia, Google, K-Mart, Canon, Nike, Adidas, American Apparel, Dolce & Gabbana, Ray-Ban, Chanel, Prada, City of Sydney, City of Melbourne, Tourism Australia, Cancer Council, Heart Foundation, Mr Simple, Herschel, ProBuild, Stone Island, CP Company, Boxfresh, Giro, Oakley, Electric, Luxottica, Bank of SA, Westpac Bank, St George Bank, Australia Post, Land Rover, Boody, Re-Design, Vandal, Warner, Carryology, IMG.

I have advised senior executives and boards and worked with some of the world's most important brands. I currently serve as Chair for Design Declares, the advisory board for the Surfrider Foundation, and I was the founding board member for The Chumpy Pullin Foundation. 

My insights and writing have been featured in Fast Company, ABC, Inc. Magazine, and other prominent publications, earning me recognition as an awarded writer. My new book, Lessons in Creativity, will be available in May 2025.

I frequently speak on the value of Orbital Design (For Impact), creativity, and technology through platforms like TEDx and Vivid Sydney. I was also invited to speak at Parliament House with the Prime Minister and government officials on the role of creativity and design in shifting our future.

Ben Rennie

Michele’s clarity and interpretations of our thinking has certainly helped me reform my own clarity on our talk. I love how Michele broke this down in the best possible way. I will be printing this off and putting it on my wall as a reference.

I always try to remind people when I am presenting on a stage to an audience, I am not there as a success story (quite the opposite actually), I am there to remind them how hard it is, that it’s always hard and that getting comfortable with the idea of hard is where we find our creativity, in the space where fear and curiosity exist together.

Thanks Michele. Love this.

Founder at Reny® | Chair at Design Declares AUS | Author of Lessons in Creativity |

Creative Technologist • Entrepreneur • Science Communicator • Host and producer of STEAM Powered and NepoPod

My notes from How to Kick the Shit Out of Plan B with Ben Rennie and Miff Rennie at SXSW Sydney. Great perspectives on their personal journeys when Plan A goes out the window.

Some similarities here with Maggie Jackson's session on uncertainty, my notes here: https://lnkd.in/dZD3nSJ4

It also reminded me of Tim Minchin's "Play It Safe" created for the Sydney Opera House 50th Anniversary, check it out: https://lnkd.in/dpjTyBRc which he spoke about in his panel with Suzie Miller, Josh Niland, and Jonathan Kneebone at SXSW Sydney last year (brilliant session).

#sxswsydney2025

How to Kick the Shit Out of Plan B

Coaching Australia

Senior Associate

Vashti Whitfield (previously Maybe Mqueen)

Over the last twenty years Vashti has lived, worked and breathed a life driven by her passion to provoke, inspire and facilitate the transformation and development of human potential.

Vashti combines over nineteen years professional experience, as a highly sort after international executive coach, mentor, trainer and facilitator; along with her vast expertise in designing and delivering transformational coaching programs within organisations, agencies and businesses.

As fervent an advocate for self directed learning, as she is for inspiring the importance of leading by example, Vashti is also more widely known for her part in managing her late husband’s career, from shy Engineer to Hollywood heart throb; when he shot to stardom at the late age of 38, winning the lead role of Spartacus.

However in 2012 Vashti Whitfield powerfully and passionately chose to honour her inspiring husband in a very different way, after he unexpectedly passed away. Where she diligently and candidly began her courageous and compelling work in the area of legacy; as she utilised her own personal loss as a powerful catalyst to inspire thousands upon thousands of people around the world; through her writing, speaking and recently released feature film documentary, Be Here Now and her recently released book Spartacus and Me.

Her unique client base; which ranges from senior level executives to high profile personalities; from street level to suite level, from Australia to North America, personifies Vashti’s unique capacity to work, collaborate and facilitate in almost any arena.

Vashti is also a highly active international speaker, MC and presenter, published author and has been profiled, interviewed and quoted in wide ranging major international television, radio, print and blog press including Good Morning America, Access Hollywood, AOL Build, Sirius Radio, The Daily Mail, US Magazine, Associated Press,People.com, Fox.com, DailyMail.com and HuffPost.com.

Founder and Director

The School of Life Australia

Faculty Member

Inkling Women

Senior Facilitator and Executive Coach

Vashti Whitfield is an internationally recognised executive coach, transformation facilitator, speaker, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary Be Here Now.

With over 25 years of experience across boardrooms, creative industries and major life crossroads, Vashti works with high-performing founders, senior executives and creatives who find themselves at pivotal moments. These often involve identity shifts, complex decisions, renewed purpose or significant transitions. Her work spans one-on-one coaching, transformational facilitation and bespoke programs for businesses.

Vashti brings a rare combination of radical honesty, catalytic presence and deep emotional intelligence to every room she enters.

She currently serves on the Advisory Boards for Coaching Australia and Coach Global, is a faculty member at The School of Life, and a senior associate with Performance Consultants International.

Her work is profoundly informed by lived experience. From the red carpet to the chemo ward, Vashti has personally navigated the extremes of visibility, loss and legacy. Be Here Now documents the final year of her late husband Andy Whitfield’s life, chronicling their journey from global success to terminal illness and the courageous choice to live, love and lead with intention through it all. This reckoning with mortality continues to shape how she works — with depth, rigour and an unwavering ability to hold space for what really matters.

Also a published author and creative mentor, Vashti supports her clients in shaping and sharing their own stories, whether that’s writing a book, launching a body of work, or finding an authentic voice through speaking, podcasting or leadership. She hosts The Radical Reframe, a podcast dedicated to personal evolution, creative bravery and legacy-led living.

Her coaching is as direct as it is human. It’s designed to cut through noise, interrupt patterns and get clear on what’s next. Clients describe her as confronting, compassionate, wildly funny and deeply real — the kind of coach who makes you laugh and cry, often in the same session.

When she’s not facilitating transformation, you’ll find her raising two magnificent young adults, writing before sunrise or soft-sand running beside the ocean. Grit and grace, in motion.

Vashti Whitfield

taplio

The Battle

Ben Rennie

Vashti Whitfield

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreBen Rennie's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Ben Rennie

Vashti Whitfield

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Ben Rennie's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreBen Rennie's LinkedIn Performance