Faza Wulandari first encountered Catalina not as an employee, but as a client. Fresh out of university and into her first full-time role, she found herself on the receiving end of Catalina’s HR advisory services: sitting in coaching sessions, watching how the team worked… and quietly taking notes.

This early exposure stayed with her. Over the years that followed, through roles at a boutique consultancy and later inside one of the big four consulting firms, Faza kept in touch with Catalina founder Merilyn Speiser. So, when the opportunity came to join the team properly in 2021, it felt less like a leap and more like an arrival.

Five years later, Faza has just stepped into a newly created General Manager role. It’s a significant moment, both for Catalina and for Faza. And for someone who approaches everything with genuine curiosity, the fact that it’s uncharted territory is genuinely exciting stuff.

Starting from the client side

After leaving Sydney University in 2015 with a degree in Health Science and Business Management, Faza obtained a Certificate IV in Human Resources before landing her first full time role. 

That job threw her straight into the deep end: she worked alongside a manager who was building out the company’s HR function from scratch. 

“To help me learn quickly, they arranged some mentoring from Catalina”, Faza recalls. “I had regular coaching sessions from one of their senior advisors and I had the opportunity to work with Merilyn on various initiatives and matters as well. So, I like to say they’ve known me since I was a baby”.

The relationship didn’t end when Faza moved on.  Working through a small consulting firm that was subsequently absorbed into a larger group, she found herself working closely with internal consulting teams and developing an appetite for the kind of variety and client exposure that in-house roles rarely offer. 

So, when she and Merilyn reconnected, the timing was right.

“When I was given the opportunity to work directly for Catalina, I jumped at it,” she says. 

Why consulting accelerates everything

Ask Faza what distinguishes Catalina from a conventional in-house HR role and she doesn’t hesitate: the most important difference is the sheer breadth of exposure.

“On any one day, you’re working with multiple different clients and stakeholders, and you really need to be able to adapt very quickly,” Faza explains. “The way you’ll advise  a professional services client is going to be different to the way you advise a hospitality client. The documents you’re working on, the situations, the employees – they’re all quite different.”

This, she acknowledges, can be demanding in its own way, and Faza says that the ability to context switch matters just as much as technical knowledge. Add in the kind of genuine time management discipline that professional services firms require, and you have a more demanding environment than most in-house roles, but also what Faza believes can be a far richer one. 

“You get to see situations that you wouldn’t see otherwise, or that you might only encounter once or twice in your career if you were working in-house in a large HR department”, she says. “It’s really enriching in that sense.”

It’s also, she notes, the reason Catalina is an attractive proposition for candidates. “I always tell people: you can accelerate your learning here in a way that’s genuinely hard to replicate elsewhere.”

A new role, a new chapter

Catalina has grown considerably in the five years since Faza first walked through the doors as an employee. When she joined in 2021, the team numbered around 10 people. Today it’s closer to 24, with plans for further growth.

But, Faza notes, as any business scales, the less that can be run by just one person. On this front, Merilyn had been managing Catalina’s internal operations while simultaneously carrying a substantial client load of her own. The solution was to create a dedicated General Manager role that could focus on the operational health of the business, support the team’s development, and free Merilyn up to focus on what she does best. 

Faza put her hand up.

“It was something I was interested in exploring in the future”, she admits. “Much later on. But Merilyn is a huge proponent of internal career growth, and I was fortunate that she believed I was capable of the job. She was the one who said, ‘Come back from maternity leave and I’ll teach you as you go’.”

Faza is also candid about the complexity of this kind of transition. In her previous role as an HR Consultant, she had watched several founder-led organisations grapple with the changed dynamic that comes when operational responsibilities shift to someone new –  when institutional knowledge has to be shared, priorities communicated and trust built in both directions. 

“One of the hardest things I’ve seen my client stakeholders go through is when they’ve brought in someone new to take the reins on part of the business,” she says. “It’s learning about the person’s personality and dynamic with the organisation’s leaders as well as their working style. And you can’t teach someone a personality.”

The fact that she and Merilyn already knew each other well – and that the chemistry and communication were already established – removed what she considers the hardest variable from the equation. 

The technical skills, Faza says, are teachable. The rest is harder to manufacture.

What makes a great General Manager?

When asked what defines a great General Manager, Faza also draws on five years of observation as an HR Consultant as much as her five weeks in the job.

People management sits at the centre – not in the administrative sense, she says, but in the genuine, relationship-building sense. 

“Having been in that client-facing consulting role, I’ve lived what our team goes through every day,” Faza explains. “You need to understand what the people around you need, and be able to bring them along.”

Alongside that is being able to communicate in a way that aligns people with where the business is headed, especially through periods of change.

Then there’s the balance between strategic thinking and practical execution. “The ability to take that commercial, strategic perspective and translate it into the operational pieces is vital,” Faza says. “So you’re problem-solving in a way that actually gets results, rather than getting bogged down in the day-to-day.”

Looking ahead

Five weeks into the role, Faza is clear about what excites her: the fact that this is genuinely new territory.

“It’s a new role, and I’m excited to see the impact it can make – not just on Merilyn’s workload, but on the team,” she explains. 

Her focus in the near term is on understanding the full picture of how Catalina operates, earning Merilyn’s trust on the decisions she brings forward, and creating tangible improvements in the systems and processes that support the team’s work.

She also sees this as a story about what Catalina stands for more broadly. 

“Merilyn giving me this opportunity is a testament to the commitment to internal career growth that exists here,” Faza says. “People with HR backgrounds don’t often move into operational general manager roles. I think that’s worth changing.”

It’s a perspective shaped by someone who understands, from the inside, what it means to build a career through genuine development rather than simply moving from one job title to the next.

And, for someone who describes no two days as the same, a role that’s never been done before at a business she’s known since the beginning might just be the perfect fit.

Want more?

Faza Wulandari is General Manager at Catalina Consultants. 

If you’d like to know more about careers at Catalina or how we can help your business, get in touch.