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Biography

Pete Ekstedt is the founder and practice principal of Ekstedt Consulting, an innovative coaching and counselling practice focused on the needs of senior leaders, creative entrepreneurs and busy professionals. 

Pete created the business because he saw the need for a new kind of practice which could combine the energy and commercial acumen of a business coach/mentor, with the evidence base and rigour of a mental health care professional. Today, Ekstedt Consulting works at the intersection of executive effectiveness and personal well-being, because resilient leaders achieve more.

Alongside Ekstedt Consulting, Pete has recently served as Director of Program Implementation (Mental Health & Suicide Prevention) at Movember, and a lecturer in counselling at Deakin University's School of Psychology.

 

Prior to starting Ekstedt Consulting, Pete spent almost six years as CEO of a charity dedicated to the development of young rural leaders in Victoria. Before that, Pete spent two decades working for major corporations in the insurance, banking and IT sectors, advising managing directors, general managers and vice-presidents about their leadership communications, crisis communications, employee engagement, change management and corporate social responsibility.

Pete holds a masters degree in counselling from Monash University and additional postgraduate qualifications in education (RMIT University) and applied linguistics (Monash University). He is a registered counsellor with the Australian Counselling Association (ACA), a member of the ACA College of Supervisors, and a clinical registrant with the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA). Pete has been certified to deliver entrepreneurship development programs by the Geneva based Micro-Enterprise Acceleration Institute (MEA-I) and social enterprise programs by the Australian Centre for Rural Entrepreneurship (ACRE).

 

An experienced and engaging speaker, facilitator and educator, Pete has previously been awarded a prestigious Gold Quill Award for excellence in multi-audience communications by the International Association for Business Communications (IABC).

Pete enjoys spending time with his family, travel, music and a wide range of sports. Pete won age group gold medals for singles tennis at the World Masters Games in Edmonton, Canada (2005), Sydney, Australia (2009) and Turin, Italy (2013). He also won a gold medal for doubles tennis at the Sydney games. He has competed on the International Tennis Federation's Seniors Tour with a highest world ranking to date of 590. With two other volunteers, he ran a junior tennis program for approximately 60 children at a rural tennis club between 2013 and 2018. He is currently serving his fourth term as president of a table tennis club.

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Pete grew up on the Bellarine Peninsula and in Geelong where he completed secondary schooling at The Geelong College. He is married with two adult sons.

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