VANESSA LEIGHS CA
Financial leadership, digital transformation, and the strategic judgement to know where they make a difference.
VANESSA LEIGHS CA
Financial leadership, digital transformation, and the strategic judgement to know where they make a difference.
I’m Vanessa Leighs, a Chartered Accountant and the principal of 5th Consulting. I partner with Boards, executives and business owners to strengthen financial leadership, modernise finance functions, and turn data into confident decisions.
VANESSA LEIGHS CA
Financial leadership, digital transformation, and the strategic judgement to know where they make the difference.
I’m Vanessa Leighs, a Chartered Accountant and the principal of 5th Consulting. I partner with Boards, executives and business owners to strengthen financial leadership, modernise finance functions, and turn data into confident decisions.
Over my career I have led finance and operations functions across the public and private sectors — in health, technology, manufacturing, not-for-profit and professional services. I specialise in building high-performing finance functions, modernising the way they work, and acting as a trusted partner at the Board table.
I bring together three things that rarely sit in one place: financial leadership, digital transformation capability, and strategic advisory experience — underpinned by strong technical skills in reporting, modelling, policy and analytics. My focus is always on delivering clarity, trusted advice, and efficient, digitised services that enable confident decision-making.
Over my career I have led finance and operations functions across the public and private sectors — in health, technology, manufacturing, not-for-profit and professional services. I specialise in building high-performing finance functions, modernising the way they work, and acting as a trusted partner at the Board table.
I bring together three things that rarely sit in one place: financial leadership, digital transformation capability, and strategic advisory experience — underpinned by strong technical skills in reporting, modelling, policy and analytics. My focus is always on delivering clarity, trusted advice, and efficient, digitised services that enable confident decision-making.
I’m Vanessa Leighs, a Chartered Accountant and the principal of 5th Consulting. I partner with Boards, executives and business owners to strengthen financial leadership, modernise finance functions, and turn data into confident decisions.
Over my career I have led finance and operations functions across the public and private sectors — in health, technology, manufacturing, not-for-profit and professional services. I specialise in building high-performing finance functions, modernising the way they work, and acting as a trusted partner at the Board table.
I bring together three things that rarely sit in one place: financial leadership, digital transformation capability, and strategic advisory experience — underpinned by strong technical skills in reporting, modelling, policy and analytics. My focus is always on delivering clarity, trusted advice, and efficient, digitised services that enable confident decision-making.
TRACK RECORD
Experience that makes the difference
A selection of what I have delivered.
- Provided financial governance for a responsible authority’s largest-ever investment – replacing a legacy database with a cloud-based solution.
- Led an organisation-wide rollout of Power BI dashboards covering financial results, operational turnaround times and long-term trends.
- Introduced Microsoft Fabric and Copilot into organisation-wide workflows, reducing manual effort and improving insight.
- Led the audit and carbon-offset coordination to achieve Toitū Net Carbon Zero certification.
- Led successful external (OAG) financial audits with statements approved within 35 working days of audit commencement.
- Delivered board reporting and AGM support for an ASX/NZX dual-listed health technology company, and secured grants for medical-device development.
CREDENTIALS
Qualifications & expertise
Chartered Accountant (CAANZ)
Certificate in AI Fluency (CAANZ)
BMus Hons Victoria University
BAcc Massey University
Financial Reporting with Power BI
Mastering DAX Calculations
SQL for Finance Professionals
TECHNICAL SKILLS
Power BI – DAX – Power Query – Microsoft Fabric – Copilot – Xero – ApprovalMax – Advanced Excel – Data Modelling – Workflow Automation