ABOUT JUANITA

Strategist. Persuasion expert. Leadership advisor.

I’m Juanita Wheeler, Founder & CEO of Full & Frank.

For more than two decades, I’ve worked across business, social impact, academia, governance and major initiatives helping people answer a deceptively simple question:

What will it actually take to make this happen?

That has meant interrogating strategy, testing evidence and assumptions, assessing risk and readiness, strengthening ideas and propositions, mapping decision-makers and barriers, building the case for support, developing leaders, navigating negotiations, and helping people move from ambition to action.

The contexts have changed. The throughline has not.

I’ve done the work I now advise on.

My career has included global marketing and market development, high-stakes commercial negotiations, M&A, political strategy, governance, nonprofit leadership, speechwriting, strategic advisory, leadership development and the creation and delivery of new initiatives.

I have worked with founders, CEOs, executives, researchers, government, nonprofits, boards, investors, funders, partners and people with ideas they believe are worth fighting for.

Sometimes the work is visible: a keynote, pitch, negotiation, board presentation or TEDx talk.

Much of it happens well before anyone steps onto a stage or into a meeting: pressure-testing the strategy, interrogating the evidence, understanding the people who need to say yes, strengthening the proposition and working out whether the ask itself needs to change.

The words and the delivery matter. But they come after the thinking.

TEDxBRISBANE

More than a decade finding and developing strong ideas.

For more than a decade, I have led the curation and speaker-development work at TEDxBrisbane.

That has involved identifying ideas worth spreading, deciding which ideas are not yet ready, helping speakers interrogate and strengthen their thinking, translating specialist expertise for broader audiences, and then developing the case, narrative, language and delivery required to earn attention and action.

I have coached and developed 140+ TEDx speakers, and TEDxBrisbane talks have reached audiences around the world.

Stagecraft matters. But stagecraft comes after the substance.

FULL & FRANK

It’s a product disclosure statement.

Full & Frank isn’t just the brand. It’s a product disclosure statement.

I am not particularly interested in telling people what they want to hear, polishing weak ideas until they sound impressive, or recommending an off-the-shelf solution because it is convenient to deliver.

I’m interested in doing the thinking properly, saying what I actually think, and helping people create the conditions for worthwhile work to be championed, implemented and sustained.

That sometimes means strengthening the case.

Sometimes it means changing the strategy.

And occasionally it means saying the most responsible thing to do is not to persuade at all.

THE HUMAN BIT

How a screaming introvert ended up around stages, speakers and large audiences.

Outside work, I’m married to Rob, mother to three adult sons and dog-mum to Gromit.

I’m an introvert who realised that if I cared about my ideas — and the people who could benefit from them — no one was going to champion them as powerfully as I could. So I needed to suck it up and learn everything I could get my hands on about the science of persuasion and human decision-making.

It changed my ability to champion my own ideas. Quite quickly, other people started asking me to help them champion theirs.

That is how a screaming introvert came to spend a substantial part of her life around stages, speakers and large audiences.

I colour-code bookshelves, get unreasonably interested in native plants, and at 50 took up run/walking — which has since resulted in two 10km race finishes and considerably more Lycra than I ever anticipated owning.

I believe good ideas deserve rigorous thinking; good people deserve evidence-based information, not opinionated advice; changing the world is not the sole purview of charities; and expertise comes with some responsibility to throw down the ladder and pull up another chair.