Aqera Advisory
Key Personnel
Principal profile and associate model
Naven Kumar — Principal
An ICT program delivery executive who has led statewide statutory election programs and an enterprise PMO in NSW Government, and who built the AqeraOne platform.
Summary
Naven is the founder and principal consultant of Aqera. He advises government and regulated organisations on AI transformation, portfolio governance and complex ICT delivery. Before founding Aqera he spent more than five years at the NSW Electoral Commission. There he was Program Manager for the 2023 NSW State General Election and the 2024 NSW Local Government Elections, and Senior Manager of the Enterprise PMO, where he led the project management practice. Earlier he held product and delivery roles in financial services and information services with Thomson Reuters, RBC Dexia, BNP Paribas and NRMA/IAG. He has taught project management at the University of Sydney since 2018.
Qualifications and credentials
- Project Management Professional (PMP), Project Management Institute
- Master of Applied Finance
- Casual academic, School of Project Management, University of Sydney (2018–present). He teaches the PMGT5850 capstone and the PMGT3850 and PMGT3851 units.
Core capabilities
- ICT program and portfolio leadership for fixed-date, statutory and high-scrutiny programs
- Enterprise PMO design, methodology and capability uplift
- Investment governance, stage gates and benefits realisation
- Agentic AI transformation, AI governance and responsible-AI controls
- Systems integration, readiness, cutover and operational transition
- Product management and platform design (AqeraOne)
Associate model
Aqera engagements are principal-led. Where an engagement needs more capacity — engineering for agent builds, specialist architecture or additional PMO staff — Aqera engages vetted associates under its own contract and method. Aqera remains the single accountable supplier.
- Each associate is screened before engagement: identity, right to work, references, police check, and security clearance where the contract requires it.
- Associates sign Aqera's confidentiality and conflict-of-interest terms and work to the AIM method and Aqera templates.
- Named associates are proposed for each engagement and approved by the client before they start.
- The principal holds quality assurance and client accountability for all associate work.
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