Digital Transformation & AI Leader

Turning AI, analytics and automation into practical solutions that drive enterprise adoption and measurable business outcomes across global pharmaceutical, MedTech and regulated operational environments.

Explore the projects View experience

20+ yrs

Technology leadership across pharma, MedTech and shared services

30+

Countries supported through global shared services across Finance, HR, IT & Supply Chain

$10M+

Operational savings delivered through enterprise automation over three years

1,000+

Projects mapped into one prioritised network roadmap

Awards & recognition

2019

Automation Anywhere Industry Innovators Award

Enterprise automation recognition.

2×

BD Innovation Award

Recognised for enterprise automation and process improvement.

Top 20 ×2

Most Admired Shared Services Organisations

Contributed to global shared services organisations recognised in SSON's Top 20 — BD (2018) and Sanofi (2022).

1 of 5

Global Enterprise Case Studies

Featured in SSON's 2017 Global Intelligent Automation Market Report alongside ANZ, Dell EMC, EY and Walgreens.

Speaking

2018 · Keynote

SSON RPA Conference

Digital Command Centre operating models for enterprise automation.

2020 · Speaker

Forefront Conference

IT automation strategy for shared services leaders.

2022 · Speaker

SSON Shared Services & Outsourcing Week Asia

Technology for service and operational excellence.

Where I've worked across the enterprise

Front office to back office to factory floor, mapped end to end.

What I've built or led, grouped by the part of the business it serves. Each card gives the problem, what I did and the outcome.

Finance & Procurement

Order to cashFinance · RPA

Sales-order automation Enterprise · Live

Orders keyed by hand, errors found weeks later, no audit trail.

A robot that processes sales orders end to end with full traceability, replacing manual keying and giving Finance an audit trail the old process never had.

USD 100K a year saved · 2.5 FTEs released · company Innovation Award

Procure to payProcurement · Finance

SpendCube Enterprise · Developed tool

Nobody can say what the organisation really spends, with whom, or where the savings are.

Pulls procurement data into one clear picture of spend by supplier, category and site, surfaces the savings opportunities, and tracks each one until the money is actually banked.

Built for Procurement and Finance in a global pharmaceutical manufacturer

Reporting & analyticsShared services · Power BI

Dashboard Factory Enterprise · Delivered

Every function runs its own spreadsheets; nobody trusts the numbers.

A governed self-service analytics capability and Power BI roadmap for Finance, HR, IT and Supply Chain shared services, replacing fragmented Excel reporting with one standard.

Power BI adoption 0% → 80% across Global Shared Services

Investment planningStrategy · Investment

Value Trace Enterprise · Designed tool

Too many projects, no clear view of which are worth funding.

Scores every proposed initiative on business value and effort, flags the duplicates, puts the ones worth doing on a single roadmap, then keeps tracing the value each one actually delivers.

Proven across a 12-site manufacturing network with 1,000+ projects

People & Capability

AI adoption & upskillingGenAI · Change management

Generative AI adoption program Enterprise · Delivered

Licences bought, tools switched on, hardly anyone using them well.

Led adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot and the company's internal GenAI platform: use-case discovery, AI literacy workshops, roadshows, stakeholder coaching, a knowledge hub and an AI-driven coaching platform, with governance throughout.

400+ employees reached · 95% of Melbourne site employees joined the AI roadshow

Career & coachingHR · Careers

Personity AI Independent build

People know their strengths but not which career paths actually fit them.

Maps a person's personality profile to the career paths that suit them and the next concrete step toward each one.

A career conversation starter for HR teams, coaches and job seekers

Career & coachingPeople · GenAI

Coaching Plan AI Enterprise · Delivered

Good coaching is personal, which is why most people never get it.

Turns an individual's personal style profile into a tailored GROW coaching plan in minutes, so every leader can coach consistently and at scale instead of only when time allows.

Part of the generative AI adoption program for 400+ employees

Technology & Transformation

Strategy & roadmapOperating model

Transformation Loop & AI Citizen Model Enterprise · Operating model

Pain points get raised, then vanish into a backlog nobody owns.

A closed loop: KPI and pain-point signals are routed to the right solution path, the people closest to the process build the fix with Digital's guardrails and training, and realised value is traced back to the original problem.

Operating model across a 12-site manufacturing network

Build & deliverEngineering practice

AI-native software development life cycle Method

Good ideas die somewhere between the whiteboard and production.

The method behind everything on this page. It takes a problem from idea through design, build, test and release, with AI agents doing the heavy lifting and people holding the controls and review gates at every phase, so delivery is fast and still auditable.

Used end to end on every build here, from idea to working program

Build & deliverAutomation · Operating model

Global RPA Centre of Excellence Enterprise · Founded

Automation ideas everywhere, no repeatable way to deliver and run them.

Made the business case, founded the global CoE and grew it from one graduate hire to a 60+ person delivery and DevOps organisation across strategic vendors, with governance and an operating model.

$10M+ operational savings over three years

Run & operateOperations · Automation

Digital Command Centre Enterprise · Live operations

Hundreds of bots, and nobody can say which ones are healthy.

One operations centre for the automation estate: monitoring, runbooks, incident and problem management and release control for every bot in production.

250+ bots on 100+ servers · 97% operational SLA compliance

Run & operateIT support · Automation

Enterprise AI chatbot Enterprise · Live

The help desk answers the same requests all day, and still has to fix them by hand.

An IT support assistant that doesn't just answer, it resolves. The chat front end is wired to ServiceNow and RPA so routine requests are resolved end to end, not just logged.

Live in IT support for a global MedTech company · one entry point for every user

Manufacturing & Operations

Shop-floor operationsSafety · Compliance

Smart glasses hazard detection Enterprise · Prototype

Safety inspections depend on who is walking the floor that day.

Computer vision on smart glasses and cameras that spots hazards as inspectors move through the plant, making every inspection as thorough as the best one and leaving an evidence trail for compliance.

Built from shop-floor problems in GxP manufacturing plants

Shop-floor operationsOperations · Frontline

Voice-driven AI avatar for operators Enterprise · Applied use case

Operators stop work to hunt through procedures, or guess.

A hands-free assistant that answers from approved procedures, knowledge bases and live operational data, right at the workstation.

Right procedure, first time · built with operators on the plant floor

Customer & Service

Enquiry to bookingCustomer service · Voice AI

AI front desk assistant Independent build

Calls go unanswered after hours and bookings are lost.

Answers the phone, WhatsApp and SMS around the clock, books appointments and handles enquiries in Cantonese and English. Each organisation runs on its own private instance.

Built for appointment-based service businesses · runs on each organisation's own private instance

Front of houseRetail · Reception

Talking avatar kiosk Independent build

Visitors want answers at the counter, and privacy rules say nothing can leave the building.

A talking digital host for kiosks and reception areas, running entirely on the client's own hardware.

Self-serve answers on site · no customer data sent to the cloud

Front of houseCompanion AI · Retail & care

AI companion that sees, hears and remembers Independent build

Most assistants forget you the moment the conversation ends.

An always-on companion with voice conversation, webcam vision, emotion awareness, biometric sign-in and long-term memory, with safety guardrails built in. Runs on Mac and Windows.

Blueprint for customer-facing assistants that recognise the person, read the mood and remember the history

Wellness reportingHealth & wellness

Wellness monitoring from brainwave data Independent build

Practitioners spend hours writing up each session instead of seeing clients.

Turns a brain-wellness session into a plain-English wellness report in seconds, on the practitioner's own device, so a clinic can grow without adding report-writing staff.

Report time from hours to seconds · client data never leaves the device

Personal built in my own time

Life automationLifestyle · Personal AI

Personal AI assistant Independent build

Life admin eats the hours that should go to family, health and thinking.

One assistant that drafts and sends email replies, tracks expenses, pulls health and training metrics together, and keeps everything in a single personal knowledge hub. It runs on Claude, Grok and OpenAI models and extends to two automated agents: a rules-based crypto investing bot and a second-hand car trading scout.

Blueprint for an executive-assistant agent · one knowledge hub, three AI providers, zero manual filing

Experience

Leadership roles.

Click a role for the detail.

What colleagues say

In their words.

“A creative and passionate leader … Wilkins built a rock-solid team which successfully deployed the first bots.”

Steve GordonDirector, California Department of Motor VehiclesManaged Wilkins directly

“Starting up a new technology is never easy but Wilkins does it with poise and grace … He gets the job done.”

Paul BartleyLeading global business transformationsSenior to Wilkins

“Wilkins is a visionary leader … He thinks 2 to 3 steps ahead and stays agile with results driven mindset.”

Li Ying TayFranchise Head, Vaccines, SEA & IndiaWorked with Wilkins

“One of the pioneers leading digital operations and processes automation through robots across the organization in global services.”

Adrian GaeteAI + Transformation, Global Business ServicesWorked with Wilkins

From LinkedIn recommendations. Read all on LinkedIn

Approach

From pain point to value realised, end to end.

The same loop runs under everything on this page. It starts with a KPI that's off or a problem someone on the floor keeps hitting, and it isn't finished until the value shows up in the operating numbers and someone owns it day to day.

Pain points & KPIs

Start where it hurts: the KPI that's off, the hand-off that keeps failing, the hours lost to rework. Go to the floor and the finance meeting, not the slide deck.

Gemba · KPI reviews · stakeholder discovery

Prioritise & fund

Score every opportunity on value and effort, kill the duplicates, and connect each investment decision to the value it must return.

Value Trace · Transformation Loop

Fix the process, then automate

Simplify first with Lean Six Sigma. Then RPA for the repetitive work, AI for the judgement calls, and the people closest to the process building with Digital's guardrails.

Lean Six Sigma · RPA · AI · AI Citizen Model

Run & operate

Hand nothing over that can't be run. One command centre for every bot and agent: monitoring, runbooks, incident, problem and release control, with governance built in.

Digital Command Centre · Responsible AI

Realise & embed value

Trace the benefit back to the original KPI, track it until it's banked, and build the capability so adoption holds six months after go-live, not just at launch.

Benefits realisation · adoption metrics · capability building

About

Business-facing leadership, grounded in delivery.

I lead Digital across Australia and China for a global pharmaceutical manufacturer and advance AI adoption across its 12-site manufacturing network. Before that I led analytics and automation for a global pharmaceutical company's shared services across Finance, HR, IT and Supply Chain in 30+ countries, and founded a global MedTech company's RPA Centre of Excellence, growing it to 60+ people and delivering $10M+ in savings over three years.

I started as a software engineer and still build. I enjoy connecting business needs with practical technology: shaping strategy and governance, supporting teams through change, and staying close enough to emerging tools to understand both their possibilities and their limits. The independent projects on this page reflect that curiosity; the enterprise work shows how I apply it in organisations.

Currently: Head of Digital (Australia & China) and AI Lead across a 12-site manufacturing network for a global pharmaceutical manufacturer; leading an AI and digital program for a Victorian disability services provider; and in conversations about senior digital and AI leadership roles across Australia.

Bachelor of Software Engineering (Honours), University of Melbourne · Diploma in Global Business Services, The Hackett Institute · Lean Six Sigma Black Belt · Certified SAFe Agilist · Microsoft Power Platform · English, Cantonese, Mandarin · Melbourne, Australian citizen

Contact

Let's discuss a role, a project or a collaboration.

Senior digital transformation and AI leadership roles, problems like the ones on this page, or ideas worth building together. Connect on LinkedIn or send a note below; I reply within one business day.

Connect on LinkedIn Email me