Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, November 2025 — Elly Smith has stepped into a new role as Head of People and Culture at Elston, marking an important milestone in her diverse and steadily progressive career across people advisory, organisational capability, and culture transformation. In her new capacity, she leads the people and culture agenda for one of Australia’s largest privately owned financial services firms, supporting its mission of being the country’s most trusted and respected financial services provider.
Elly transitions into this leadership role after serving as Senior Partner – People & Culture at Elston, where she contributed to strengthening people processes, enhancing cultural alignment, and supporting organisational effectiveness. Her growing influence within Elston reflects the organisation’s emphasis on cultivating strong internal talent with capability in people strategy and culture building.
Prior to Elston, Elly worked with Orange Sky Australia as Senior Manager – People Impact, where she led initiatives aimed at strengthening employee experience, organisational development, and people impact programs across the organisation. Her contributions supported one of Australia’s most respected social impact-driven organisations.
Before this, Elly served as Head of People Advisory at the Australian Psychological Society (APS) for over three years, where she played a significant role in designing people practices, supporting organisational changes, and enhancing psychological safety and wellbeing across teams. Her deep exposure to psychologically informed people practices further strengthened her leadership in people strategy.
Earlier, Elly built foundational experience through multiple roles, including People Advisory at EY, organisational capability work at Virgin Australia, people consulting roles at Caterpillar Inc., and organisational psychology assignments with Sentis and the Work and Organisational Resilience Centre. Her academic contributions as a Sessional Academic in Social Psychology at Griffith University further reflect her strong grounding in behavioural science.
Elly holds a Masters of Organisational Psychology (MOrgPsy) from Griffith University, which provides her with a strong theoretical and applied foundation for driving people strategy, leadership development, and organisational culture.
About Elston
Elston is one of Australia’s largest privately owned financial services companies, managing over $7 billion in assets. The firm is known for delivering conservative investment solutions designed to help investors build and preserve wealth through a consistent, methodical investment approach. Elston combines holistic wealth advice with the advantages of direct investment and is committed to being Australia’s most trusted and respected financial services firm.
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