Group Executives

Jonathan Waecker is a globally experienced executive with a proven track record in retail, brand, digital, customer experience, and business transformation. He joined Michael Hill as Chief Executive Officer in August 2025, bringing deep commercial and consumer expertise developed at some of the world’s most recognisable brands. 

Jonathan has held senior leadership roles across retail and consumer industries, most recently as Chief Customer & Sales Officer at The Warehouse Group in New Zealand. Earlier in his career, he held global executive positions at The Walt Disney Company and Yahoo, where he led large-scale teams across brand, digital, and customer innovation. 

He is recognised for delivering transformational growth, building customer-centric cultures, and leading complex organisations through change. His recent work has focused on helping retailers unlock new value through technology, data, and media partnerships. Jonathan is widely regarded for his commercial acumen, digital expertise, and customer-focused leadership approach, aligning strongly with Michael Hill’s strategic priorities and future opportunities.

Elodie Guillaumond joined Michael Hill as Chief Financial Officer in February 2026. She is a highly accomplished global finance executive with more than 20 years’ experience across listed and private sector organisations in Australia and internationally. 

Elodie began her career with PwC as an Auditor, where she built a strong foundation in financial controls, risk management and governance frameworks. She has since held senior leadership roles with Ampol Australia, Amart Furniture, Coles Supermarkets and British American Tobacco. She has delivered strategic financial leadership, transformation and strong governance across complex, consumer focused businesses. 

Her experience spans leading finance transformation programs, improving operational efficiency and margin performance, and supporting disciplined capital allocation. Elodie brings strong commercial acumen, a collaborative leadership style and a deep focus on sustainable value creation to support Michael Hill’s long term growth and profitability.

Tonia Zehrer is a globally experienced product and retail executive with a distinguished career spanning jewellery, fashion, and large-scale consumer businesses. She joined Michael Hill as Chief Product Officer in 2026, bringing deep expertise in product strategy, merchandising, brand, and customer-led innovation developed across some of the world’s most established retail organisations. 

Tonia has held senior leadership roles across global and multi-brand retailers. Most notably, as Senior Vice President and Chief Merchandising Officer at Signet Jewelers, the world’s largest retailer of diamond jewellery, where she led enterprise-wide product and merchandising strategies across multiple brands and markets. Earlier in her career, she held executive and senior leadership positions in the US, Africa and Europe, including at Sears Holdings and Edgars Department Stores, building a strong reputation for shaping differentiated assortments, driving commercial performance, and translating consumer insight into compelling product experiences. 

She is recognised for combining creative vision with analytical rigour, delivering product portfolios that are both emotionally resonant and commercially disciplined. Tonia’s leadership style is grounded in collaboration, craftsmanship, and innovation, with a focus on evolving product relevance for modern consumers while honouring brand heritage — capabilities that strongly support Michael Hill’s strategic direction and long-term growth ambitions

Jo Feeney joined Michael Hill in March 2021 as Chief Marketing Officer to lead the revitalisation and growth of the company’s brand, delivering end to end marketing strategies in an omnichannel environment. Jo is responsible for shaping the company’s messaging, delivering an outstanding experience to the Michael Hill customer across both digital and traditional marketing channels and leading the vision for a world class loyalty program.

Jo brings with her over 20 years’ experience in both local and global organisations (including Woolworths, Telstra, Foxtel and McDonald’s), specialising in strategic brand building, end to end marketing communications and driving key customer growth strategies across channels. In her most recent role as Director of Marketing at McDonald’s Australia, she was responsible for marketing, brand and media strategies and driving commercial growth through innovation and 
re-imagination of the brand.  

Jo is also a recognised leader in creativity - winning multiple awards both locally and internationally. She brings a fresh approach to driving the future growth of the brand through a lens of commercial creativity.

Matt Keays joined Michael Hill in June 2015, bringing with him extensive international IT experience in the retail space. Prior to joining the company, Matt led the global IT strategy for Forever New as their General Manager Information Technology, and prior to that worked as Chief Information Officer for Super Amart where his final project was successfully leading a full-scale disaster recovery process after the Queensland floods in 2011. He also worked for leading national footwear and apparel company, Colorado Group after enjoying his long retail apprenticeship with 11 years at Country Road, where he worked initially as a Finance Accountant, and also gained solid shop floor experience during his tenure.
 
Matt has strong technical skills and a track record of developing an effective team focused on business alignment. Matt’s career has seen him lead significant technology and infrastructure programs, covering Microsoft Dynamics, Infor, Oracle and JDE. He has helped all retail businesses implement and embrace data warehousing with his first Microsoft based implementation as far back as 2004. The Michael Hill advanced data warehouse went live in 2016 and his team continually evolve our data platforms to align with the strategic shifts across the business.

Tabitha Pearson joined Michael Hill in May 2024 as Chief People Officer.

With 30 years’ experience in people and culture across a number of ASX listed companies, including Bunnings, Super Retail Group, Myer and G8 Education. Tabitha’s strength lies in her commercial and people driven approach. She is experienced in leading large and diverse teams, integrating large scale acquisitions, and implementing modern people and culture strategies. She has a focus on building capability and talent, while driving a strong performance culture in organisations.

With a workforce of ~3,000 people across Australia, New Zealand and Canada, Tabitha’s experience will lead the Company’s strategic priority of attracting, retaining and developing top quality teams across the group.

Tabitha holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Post Graduate Diploma in Human Resources and Industrial Relations.