Meet Michael, our new
Chief Transformation Officer

We recently welcomed Michael Davidson and were happy to sit down and discover what his new role is all about and to find out a little more about Michael with a quick Q&A.

You are the first Chief Transformation Officer at Foodbank WA, can you describe your role?  

Essentially, I’ve been tasked with ‘transformation’ with a focus on reviewing our Feed strategy processes to streamline and simplify systems for our staff, donors and customers. Knowing that our demand is increasing and our supply channels are changing, we want to ensure we are operating efficiently, based on the resources we have, responding to our markets and not simply doing things the way they have always been done. If doing things a little differently makes them simpler, then let’s do that!

We want to continue to evolve to meet our key purpose. This means there will be more opportunities for our team to keep growing in their careers, while also improving the overall customer experience.

My first focus areas have been in ensuring our pricing and range is appropriate to meet our vision.

Part of that is stabilising our supply and broadening our range.  To achieve this, we are looking for a dedicated Food Sourcing Manager, to work alongside and help build on our existing food and grocery relationships Latisha and Mike have made with our local and national suppliers, similar to what Angela has done with being a dedicated resource for fruit and vegetables.

We are also currently working on our “Customer Experience“ project at our Peel branch, where we are trialling a simplified pricing structure for customers, staff and our POS.  Initial feedback is good but there are of course some tweaks to work through.

What drew you to Foodbank WA from the East Coast?   

For those who don’t know me, prior to joining Foodbank WA, I was working at Foodbank Australia (+9 years) as GM – National Supply Chain, developing and looking after our National Donors, National Food Programs and National Logistics Partners.

Prior to Foodbank I worked with Tesco & Coles across multiple areas including Business Development, Business Systems, Operations (both Stores & DC’s) and Supply Chain.

I was very excited to be offered this role because it allows me to work across all the areas I love, customer, operations, change management, food and grocery industry and people.

Foodbank WA is very unique – the Community Kitchen, multiple regional branches, Mobile Foodbanks – there are so many things about this organisation that make it special. The culture is amazing too, which was a drawcard – I can honestly say, it’s the best of any Foodbank I’ve seen.

What do you like to do in your spare time?  

My happy place, or favourite thing to do is be on the road. We do multiple road trips each year. In fact when I got this job, we packed up everything on the Sunshine Coast, QLD where we had been living for the last four years, after moving from Melbourne, and we drove in our caravan the +4,000km’s across the country to Perth. It took a week for my wife, our dog “Jack” an English Staffy to get here, and it was a great trip.

I’m really looking forward to listening and speaking with everyone across the organisation, and also our external stakeholders, so I can enable and support our staff to develop and build on the great work everyone has and is doing.  My ultimate goal is to ensure we have more food, a greater range of products and sustainable fair and reasonable pricing to support our clients – the vulnerable Western Australians who seek our support.

I love a chat, so feel free to drop by and say hi any time… 😉