artist, consultant, cyclist, designer, musician, photographer, world traveller

I’m Chris Tham, an outrageous actualiser based in Sydney. I’m the founder of Hello Tham, a boutique strategy consulting company.

I am interested in short to medium term consulting opportunities relating to strategic business change, new/revised business/operating models, business process improvement, technology strategy/architecture and technology solutions.

My career has now spanned four decades and I am looking forward to entering the fifth:

• In the first decade I started as an analyst for a fintech, and then a financial institution. I pivoted to be a systems and architecture consultant for two of the biggest computer companies in the world: AT&T/NCR and HP.
• In the second decade I pivoted back to Banking and Finance. I established and managed successful strategy and architecture functions in several institutions including MLC, NAB and ING.
• In the third decade I transitioned to become a strategy consultant and have delivered successful engagements to Transfield Services, Broadspectrum and Transport for NSW.
• In the fourth decade I am working on things that interest and matter to me. I teach at Torrens University, and have continued my consulting career. I have also written a book, AI-dō.

Key Achievements

• Flexible strategic change agent and thought leader: I have facilitated business and technology strategic change for three decades – from Head of Strategy positions at MLC, NAB and ING to delivering IT strategies, roadmaps and operating models as a consultant to Transfield Services and Transport for NSW (through my consulting company Hello Tham).
• Successful and proven technology strategy and architecture leader: I have built successful architecture practices at organisations from MLC (where I wrote my own job description and built a practice that became a case study at international conferences) to NAB, ING and Broadspectrum. I have provided enterprise architecture advice as a consultant to Transport for NSW and currently at Cochlear.
• Recognised technology innovator and industry expert: I have been involved in new technologies for my entire career, from early beginnings managing one of Australia’s first commercial UNIX systems at Bain & Co, which I connected to ACSnet in 1986 to make it one of the earliest non-academic organisations in the country online, to a patented service-oriented advice platform my team pioneered at MLC, to using a large language model to classify support calls in 2018, long before ChatGPT. Most recently I shaped Cochlear’s AI strategy. I teach Information Systems at Torrens University, and have written AI-dō, a book on using AI effectively.