Telstra announced Dr. Kathryn van der Merwe had been appointed as the new Group Executive for People, Culture and Communications. Kathryn has a PhD in Psychology and for the last six years has led the Talent & Culture function at ANZ, where she is responsible for delivering all core people-related services to enable ANZ's strategy and desired organisational culture. This included strengthening governance and accountability, and embedding a new enterprise-wide performance, remuneration and recognition framework.

Prior to that Kathryn was Results Delivery Expert Vice-President at Bain & Company, where she helped build the Results Delivery practice focused on transformational organisational design and change management and successfully led a number of client engagements across Asia Pacific. Kathryn is filling the previous Group Executive of Transformation, People & Communications role made vacant by Alex Badenoch's departure at the end of 2022. She will start with Telstra on 3 July 2023 and Telstra Executive Darren Fewster will continue to act in the Group Executive role until that time.