Adam Powick
Independent Director
Before important meetings, Adam Powick writes down three words. Not a long list, just a quick check on how he wants to show up.
For his first FSO board meeting, the words were ‘thoughtful, interested, contributing.’ The habit says a lot about Adam’s style. He leads with curiosity and purpose.
Raised in Melbourne’s north‑east, Adam was the eldest of four in what he calls a ‘rough‑and‑tumble’ part of town. He found a love for maths and science, studied aeronautical engineering at RMIT and even earned a glider’s licence.
“I did a project on how cricket balls and golf balls move through the air,” he recalls. “It was complex maths, but fascinating.”
Then he traded wings for code, joining Fujitsu to work on mainframe operating systems and early artificial intelligence (AI), back when it lived in labs and niche projects, not headlines.
Those early years left a mark. Technology, he decided, only matters when it makes life and work better for people.
From coder to CEO
In 1992 he joined Deloitte as a technology consultant. The next three decades spanned large-scale programs across government and industry and, eventually, the CEO’s office.
He took on the CEO job in 2021, a time of lockdowns, hybrid work and a labour market in flux, and led the firm to become the largest consultancy by revenue in Australia.
Ask him what he remembers most and he’ll tell you the memories are rich and vibrant and almost all centred on people.
“It’s been about sharing experiences and achievements, overcoming obstacles and challenges, and having plenty of laughs and, sometimes, tears along the way with interesting people in many different teams and settings” he says.
But his path wasn’t linear. He missed promotions. He didn’t make partner the first time, or the second. He learned to see setbacks as tuition fees for learning faster.
And when things go wrong, two words steady him: grace and dignity. “You can learn a lot about someone’s character from how they handle failure,” he says.
The joy of building things
When he finally stepped away from the CEO role, the noise stopped.
No alarms at dawn. A diary with white space.
In that quiet, he found something he’d missed: the joy of building things.
“It’s been fun getting my rusty developer hands dirty again building AI apps and agents and staying abreast of the latest thinking and trends,” he says.
True to form, his curiosity didn’t stop there. He also decided to formalise his governance knowledge and took the AICD Company Directors course which he says was both worthwhile and more work than he anticipated.
“I am not sure this old mind is particularly well suited to sitting exams or delivering formal assignments, but I met some great people and learnt a lot along the way, even if there was barely one page on AI among over 800 pages of pre-reading.”
A mission aligned with the future of skills
Global roles have shown Adam what coordinated ambition can achieve. Australia, he says, has great talent but can suffer from fragmentation: universities, TAFEs, governments and industry often moving in parallel, not together.
“If we want to compete globally, we need to be a more technologically capable and savvy nation,” he says. “That doesn’t mean everyone becomes a software engineer. It means people applying technology in everyday life and work, including using AI with confidence.
“Technology literacy needs to underpin the entire workforce,” Adam adds. “That means supporting industry and workers to adopt new tools and ensuring the training system keeps pace, which is exactly why I want to put time and energy into the work of FSO.
“The goal isn’t only new technical skills; it’s building core generalist skills, such as communication, teamwork and problem-solving.”
Which brings him back to those three words: thoughtful, interested, contributing.
For Adam, they are more than a personal reminder. They reflect the mindset Australia’s workforce will need: curious, adaptable and ready to apply technology to solve real problems as the digital economy continues to evolve.
3 quick-fire questions
What’s the best advice you’ve been given?
Make time to think. If you don’t, you spend your days chasing tasks instead of working out what actually matters.
A simple thing that makes you happy?
My Maltese dogs. Taking them for a walk, or giving them a tummy rub, never fails to lift my mood.
A book and a podcast that you’re reading or listening to currently?
I’ve got three things on the go: a podcast exploring the 1982 sinking of the ARA General Belgrano during the Falklands War; Shane Warne’s autobiography; and an essay by Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, titled ‘The Adolescence of Technology.’