About Our People

Our Team

Carole Tokody

Founder

At the heart of every corporate decision or recommendation Carole makes is one person: the customer. Her highly creative nature is expressed through the design and execution of innovative and disruptive digital solutions that are truly customer-centric; with the customer’s genuine needs at the heart of every product or service.

Carole is a CEO and digital marketing leader with over 15 years’ experience in the global travel insurance, medical and assistance industries. Recognised for having achieved strategic growth, innovation, and strong financial returns for the world’s largest insurance groups.

A naturally gifted innovator, she is skilled at finding ways to re-arrange or re-create traditional product offers into valuable customer-centric propositions.

Carole’s enthusiasm for making a difference to people’s lives through technology and creative thinking makes her exciting to work for. Though often at times demanding, Carole inspires loyalty in her teams and returns and recognises that loyalty in spades. Her underlying drive to find innovative and disruptive ways to change things for the better, makes Carole an engaging and persuasive person to work with. Carole’s greatest professional joy comes from making her ideas light up for others, and then bringing them on an innovative customer-centric journey.

Carole strongly believes that a corporate organisation must stand for something worthwhile; it must make a difference to people in need, be respectful, kind yet edgy. Carole does not go with the flow or do things just because they have “always been done that way”. She abhors the corporate shackles of inaction, bureaucracy and fiefdoms. Carole believes true corporate value, and the key to long term profitability can only be found in meeting the genuine needs of customers.

Carole’s career has taken her from one end of the earth to the other. She has baked bread in homes from Sydney to New York and now London. No matter where she calls home or where she goes in the world, Carole is always conscious that the unexpected can and does happen every day. Whether a traveller turns down the interesting street to the left or the one to the right, or takes that train or the next, Carole’s goal is for them to be able to do so knowing that real genuine help is always there to get them to safety.

Jo Hill

Governance & Compliance

Jo is a highly experienced legal, compliance and governance professional who focuses on delivering high quality, commercially astute legal advice and pragmatic compliance solutions.

With extensive financial services experience spanning major product classes, sectors and investment vehicles, Jo is valued by boards and executives who seek best practice, truth and clarity in their activities and dealings.

A qualified solicitor and member of the Queensland Law Society, Jo has held senior legal, company secretary and advisory positions with listed and unlisted financial services companies operating in the Australian and US markets. In addition to being a founding director of Crisis Cover, Jo provides compliance and governance services to an Australian Financial Services Licensee, responsible for over $5billion of investments via mandates, registered management investment schemes and trusts. Investors include some of Australia’s largest institutional investors and superannuation funds.

As an executive Jo is action-oriented – she can always see what can be done and gets straight into doing it. In addition to her highly developed analytical and reasoning skills, Jo has the benefit of certainty and conviction in her decision making. A natural manager, Jo likes to lead situations so that progress is always being made by her team. With a focus on getting results, she is adept at harnessing resources and people to drive corporate outcomes.

Travel for Jo is about family. A customer is not a policy number or a statistic in report; they are mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. When Jo travels with her family, she wants to know that the best in assistance and care is available 24/7 to protect them if the unexpected should happen.

Mel Ghadban

Director of Partnerships - Asia and the Middle East

In terms of providing excellent networks and distribution pathways, Mel Ghadban is an expert in his field with contacts from Australia, Middle East and Asia. With over 20 years experience in the Wealth and Consulting industry, Mel has worked with Australia’s leading banking and wealth management firms assisting small owners to realise their financial goals.

Commencing his career as a financial adviser with a leading Australian banking institution, Mel has worked across a broad spectrum of financial, coaching and consulting roles; from owning his own Financial Planning business through to various high-level management roles at major institutions across Australia.

Mel has extensive professional skills in business planning, business strategy, negotiation, leadership, team leadership and sales. Mel is an innovative, results-driven professional with experience in both large and small corporations. An expert in business strategy development, distribution, wealth management, M&A, sales and coaching. Mel has helped a number of professionals grow from a small business to a corporatised entity.

Mel holds a Bachelor of International Business and a Diploma in Financial Services.

Mel often travels to visit his family and friends in Lebanon, where he enjoys the local cuisine and most of all, his Mum's cooking. Mel knows first hand the difficulty of getting out of the unexpected. In 2006, his mother became trapped in Lebanon as a result of the Israel-Hezbollah War. Unable to be evacuated through diplomatic channels, Mel's family had to arrange for her to flee by car to Syria, where she scrambled aboard an aircraft home to Australia.

Advisory Committee

Philippe Cornet

Philippe is eminently recognised as a global leader in the insurance and assistance sectors. Joining Zurich in 2005, Philippe held the position of Global Head of Travel Insurance and successfully grew the portfolio organically and inorganically including the acquisitions of Cover-More in Australia and Universal Assistance in Latin America, to become the second largest provider globally.

With more than 15 years in strategy consulting, private equity and financial services, Philippe holds deep inhouse expertise in the identification of emerging and growth opportunities globally.

Philippe graduated from Catholic University of Loubain (Belgium) with a Bachelor’s degree in Economic and Finance. He is currently leading a private fund investment group.

David Bycroft

Robert (Bob) Dabinett, OAM

Bob has extensive military and corporate industry experience.  He served in the Australian Army for over 36 years, reaching the rank of Warrant officer Class One and being appointed Regimental Sergeant Major at all levels of Command.  Bob served in Australia’s High Readiness Brigade at both unit and command level. He served on United Nations Peacekeeping operations (UN MINURSO) as the Force Sergeant Major before being appointed as the Regimental Sergeant Major (Command Sergeant Major) of Strategic Formations – Land Command and Headquarters Australian Theatre (now Joint Operations Command).  As well as the usual requirements of being a Regimental Sergeant Major, Bob’s extensive military career would see him work as an advisor, mentor and trainer to a generation of military commanders.  His career focus was to enhance and maximise individual and group performance; preparing troops for operations through operational planning, training, logistics and personnel management.  Bob contributed closely to the development of new methodologies of training for military operations in high readiness, rapid deployment situations.   Throughout his career, Bob has operated in close cooperation with multinational forces including the oversight of emergency action training.

Upon leaving the military, Bob was the Regional Manager for a military contractor responsible for the storage, supply, management and transportation of military ordinance and supplies. 

Bob brings a wealth of military experience and knowledge to Crisis Cover.  He provides a valuable sounding board for advice and guidance regarding the impact and risks of flashpoints and events involving armed forces.

Dr Lynn W. Phillips

Dr Lynn W. Phillips, Managing Director, Reinventures, is a former award-winning teacher and scholar. He served as a faculty member at the renowned Stanford Graduate School of Business for 12 years—in addition to having held faculty positions at Harvard, Northwestern, Rice, and UC Berkeley business schools. A Northwestern University PhD graduate of the world-renowned Kellogg School of Management, he has 30-plus years of experience in executive education and implementation guidance, coaching, and consulting as the founder and principal of his firm, Reinventures.

Dr Phillips acts as an advisor to numerous leading-edge enterprises and startups and is widely recognised as the co-creator and developer of many of the essential customer-centricity and value-delivery frameworks, concepts, tools, disciplines, and methodologies now employed by companies worldwide to hone their competitive edge, reinvent their businesses, and drive sustained growth.

While Dr Phillips brings an understanding of commercial best practices in choosing and delivering winning customer value propositions from his work with enterprises spanning a diversity of industry sectors and more than 300 clients in over 40 countries, he has domain expertise in insurance and financial services, having worked with some of the leading companies in the world in this sector, including AEGON, Allianz, Bank of America, Barclays, Fidelity, HDFC Bank, Liberty Mutual, Investcorp, Nedbank and UBS. His work with these and other firms has consistently been cited by their leaders as directly impacting customer acquisition and retention rates and improving their business execution and performance track record.