About us
About us
SMG is Australia’s premier leadership development advisor. Since 1998, we’ve partnered with exceptional talent to elevate leadership skills and unlock organisational potential.
Virginia Mansell is an executive coach and the Founding Partner of Stephenson Mansell Group. She has over three decades of experience in business, HR, and executive development. She has built SMG into one of the APAC region’s leading firms for executive coaching, CEO mentoring, and senior leadership development.
Connect
Expertise
Trained psychologist
30 years experience
Industry professional
Member of APS
Experience and background
Over the years, Virginia Mansell has worked with CEOs, boards and C-suite leaders across Australia and Asia. She is recognised as one of the region’s most experienced executive coaches. Virginia is known for her work in CEO mentoring, executive presence coaching and guiding senior leaders through high-stakes transitions.
She is known for her work in CEO mentoring, executive presence coaching, and guiding senior leaders through high-stakes leadership transitions.
Virginia blends behavioural insight with commercial acumen, helping leaders navigate complexity, build clarity, and strengthen stakeholder confidence. In addition, she is frequently called upon to support leadership alignment during strategic transformation, succession events, and board transitions.
As Founding Partner of Stephenson Mansell Group, Virginia has built the firm into one of the APAC region’s most respected providers of executive coaching and leadership development. Her work continues to influence leadership effectiveness across the business, government, and not-for-profit sectors.
She is a graduate of INSEAD’s Organisational Leadership program and the Tavistock Institute’s program on Leadership and Authority in Organisations. Virginia is also the author of The Focused Executive: How to Maximise Your Leadership Effectiveness and has contributed to Company Director and The AFR. She designed SMG’s flagship programs, including Advanced Leader as Coach, Women’s Leadership Program, and Leadership at the Peak.
Virginia's approach
First and foremost, Virginia believes that working with people holistically within their specific context is critical to their personal and professional development. In her work, Virginia applies a deep understanding of context and business environment. She also has a strong grounding in psychodynamic-systemic approaches. As a result, she can identify the underlying challenges and issues that need attention. From there, she works with leaders to design targeted interventions that lead to meaningful and sustained behavioural change across the organisational system.
In addition, she is committed to providing genuine and evidence-based thought leadership. This means her clients have access to best-practice thinking on how to lead, influence and effect change.
Qualifications and memberships
- Virginia has a BA in Psychology and Statistics and a Postgraduate Degree in Counselling Psychology
- She trained with Dr Anthony Grant at the University of Sydney’s Coaching Psychology Unit, contributed to the inaugural Standards Australia guidelines on organisational coaching and has completed a “Leadership and Authority in Organisations” residential at the Tavistock Institute London and INSEAD’s “Leadership for Creativity” program, with Manfred Kets de Vries.
- Virginia worked as an assessment psychologist whilst at the Cairnmillar institute and is accredited in the Centre for Creative Leadership Benchmarks®, LEA 360, TLCP and Kantor Structural Dynamics Assessments as well as many additional leadership development tools.
- She is a Board Member of CoachLogix (San Diego) and Mentoring Officer, YPO Executive Committee (Sydney). Virginia is a Member Australian Psychological Society.
Personal insights
Virginia remains active in the business and professional community. She enjoys spending time with extended family and friends, physical fitness – swimming, yoga, golf, snow skiing – travelling, cooking & reading.
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