Alison Merner

Alison has deep retail and human resources experience which is grounded in strong workplace relations having started her career in the union environment. Her formative years were spent dealing with complex investigations through which she developed critical problem solving, stakeholder management and negotiation skills. Since 2014, Alison’s experience has been focused on transforming the Group People, BIG W and Endeavour Drinks functions at Woolworths Group. In March 2021, Alison was appointed Chief People Officer of Endeavour Group, which demerged from Woolworths Group and is now an ASX50 organisation. Throughout these various senior roles Alison has demonstrated an ability to understand the respective businesses and challenges to develop inclusive People strategies to deliver transformation and achieve business outcomes. Alison has gained a valuable amount of commercial and functional breadth across both the retail and hospitality industries. Alison’s greatest strength is her ability to understand and relate to people in any organisation. Her empathetic style enables honest feedback and ensures value is delivered through teams especially during large and complex change. Alison’s strategic capability has seen her contribute to the future vision of an organisation and then deliver practical people outcomes which strengthen cultures, including ongoing improvements in gender equity and women in leadership, and business success. Her resourcefulness and adaptive nature has ensured a clear focus on what needs to be done, understanding capabilities that need to be developed and successfully managing the impact of significant change through ongoing transformation.