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Fiona Balfour (nee Meyer) is a business consultant, providing advisory services to chief executive officers. She also sits on the board of the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
Mrs Balfour completed a Bachelor of Arts (Hons), majoring in history, at Monash then began her career as a graduate recruit in the Victorian Public Service the following year. Moving on to the Commonwealth Department of Employment and Industrial Relations, she undertook program and policy work and was a member of the team that established the traineeship system across Australia.
From 1985-1991, Mrs Balfour worked in management consulting, initially with WD Scott, then Coopers and Lybrand and finally the DMR Group. During this time she completed a Graduate Diploma in Information Management (Archives) and an MBA. She also discovered a capacity for developing business cases for major IT investment programs.
In 1992, Mrs Balfour joined Qantas, one of the world's leading long distance airlines, as an executive reporting to the chief information officer. She held a variety of portfolios with Qantas, including IT strategy, enterprise architecture, enterprise applications and e-business, before being appointed Chief Information Officer and a member of the Qantas Executive Committee in 2001. In 2003 her role was expanded with the creation of Qantas Business Services, where she was responsible for a shared services organisation encompassing IT, purchasing, property, financial services and human resource services.
Mrs Balfour represented Qantas on the Supervisory Board of SITA SC (Geneva) and sat on the Global IBM Advisory Board. At the start of 2006 she was appointed Chief Information Officer at Telstra where she led the telco's centralised IT organisation and core IT programs, and oversaw the company's Operations Support System (OSS) and Business Support System (BSS) transformational programs. She left Telstra in early 2007 to pursue other career opportunities.
In 2003, she was awarded the Australian Telecommunications Users Group "Award for Excellence in Management" and was a NSW finalist in the Telstra "Business Woman of the Year" Award. In 2006, she was awarded the National Pearcey Medal for lifetime achievement to the information technology industry.
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