‘Our vision and commitment drives our success’ – IPS Management Consultants

In 2015, Katina Law and Damien Chalk established IPS Management Consultants, a company designed to create career opportunities for Aboriginal people in the area of Professional Services.

Since then, this majority Indigenous owned company has grown to 48 staff, 29 per cent of whom are Indigenous. It is now one of the largest consultancy management businesses in Western Australia providing services such as leadership development, research, policy development, project management and much more.

Katina Law is an Executive Director at IPS.

‘When we were starting out we faced the challenges of so many Indigenous businesses in building a strong brand and forcing open the doors of opportunity,’ Katina said.

‘Each year we set aggressive targets to increase and secure opportunities through the Federal and State Government procurement process and via the Indigenous Procurement Policies.’

IPS faced many hurdles including unconscious bias, inexperience and competition from large multinational companies but they succeeded through close collaboration with clients to achieve lasting outcomes.

In October 2020, they celebrated their 5th anniversary because, as Katina said, their underlying philosophy to opportunity has been to ‘say yes and get stuff done’.

‘Our vision and commitment drives our success,’ Katina said.

‘Our purpose is to improve the lives of Indigenous people and we do this through employment and creating positive change through the meaningful projects we work on, while providing lasting value to our customers.’

‘We are focused on developing Indigenous talent within our business and providing our people with opportunities for ownership in the future.’

Any new business needs support to get started and to become established. IPS was no different.

‘IPS is a supply partner to the Wirra Indigenous Business and Employment Hub and works with the Hub to help build Aboriginal business capabilities in WA,’ Katina said. 

‘The Wirra Hub has also supported IPS to improve the quality of our internal policies and procedures and contracts.’

‘Early on, IPS obtained a loan from Indigenous Business Australia to assist us with our working capital as the business grew.  Supply Nation has been an important source of growth through linkages to Supply Nation members and also the Annual Connect Conferences.’

In addition, the Australian Government’s Indigenous Procurement Policy played a significant role in the development of IPS. It continues to do so.

For long term survival, a business also needs to adapt, to be agile, especially as it grows in size and services.

‘As we have grown we have had to develop our systems and structures to accommodate more employees and enable us to deliver larger projects,’ Katina said.

‘We have added significant new capabilities to our service lines.  Through consistently delivering excellent work we have grown and strengthened our brand across Australia.’

‘The challenge is to grow and develop the next generation of Indigenous leaders in the business to ensure that it can continue to improve the lives of Indigenous people well into the future.’