AI help for real people,
not just tech people.

Aaron Hayes has built a career on making difficult things achievable.

His working life has been a series of deliberate steps forward. Aaron began as a kitchenhand, earning the money to travel to Japan and pursue his love of judo. He entered the security industry in the mid-1990s and progressed into licensed and armed roles, close personal protection and covert operations during a period of heightened inner-city crime.

Alongside that career, and continuing as he moved into online security, Aaron worked as a professional judo and mixed martial arts instructor in paid and voluntary roles.

By the early to mid-2000s, Aaron had moved from physical security into online security and networking. He later worked with a national compliance management, registered training and investigations business. That experience helped shape PeopleForward AI’s practical approach to compliance: track obligations against real dates, maintain evidence as work happens and conduct scheduled reviews before problems emerge.

Running his own business taught Aaron the parts of business that technical knowledge alone cannot cover. It also led him into vocational education, where he delivered training up to Advanced Diploma level in New South Wales and Ningbo, China. He remained actively involved in TAFE teaching until 2017.

Alongside his education work, Aaron spent nearly six years at an Australian wildlife park, caring for marsupial joeys and reptiles while providing relief in animal education and koala-sanctuary leadership. Working with visitors strengthened his ability to make unfamiliar subjects engaging and approachable. Contact with visiting coach drivers also helped steer him towards scenic tour coach driving.

After stepping away from active teaching, Aaron broadened his experience through a relationship-based business venture focused on leadership, communication, financial capability and personal development. He built that business while also working in operations management and driving scenic tour coaches. Together, those roles strengthened his ability to read a room, respond calmly to change and communicate clearly with people from many backgrounds.

Judo remains the thread running through Aaron’s working life. He completed a Diploma of Judo in 2010 and continued teaching beyond that year. Its principles—respect everyone, keep improving and treat failure as the step before success—still guide how he works. He focuses effort where it will make the greatest difference and does not need to win an argument to make a point.

Aaron is a lifelong learner whose sessions are practical, enjoyable and designed to leave people wanting to learn more.

Aaron leads client delivery, coaching and automation at PeopleForward AI.

Kate has learned as much about people on prawn trawlers and in drum circles as she has in hospital wards and lecture theatres.

Her working life has taken a wonderfully unconventional route. Alongside careers in nursing, healthcare, music, research and education, she has worked as a deckhand on prawn trawlers, been a barmaid, a cook and a bus driver. Every one of those experiences taught her something about people—particularly how they learn, what helps them feel comfortable and what makes new knowledge genuinely useful.

Kate’s qualifications are almost as varied as her work history. In addition to her clinical training, she has studied continuous quality improvement, adult education at university level, and teaching English to people who speak it as a second language. She also established and ran an English-language program for a non-government organisation (NGO) in Thailand.

Together, those experiences have given Kate a keen instinct for the difference between something that sounds impressive and something people can really use.

She has spent years designing curricula and delivering training for people with different backgrounds, experiences, and ways of learning. Her classrooms have included hospitals, universities, NGOs, community groups and workplaces of all kinds. She is endlessly curious about how people learn, practical about what sticks and is a stickler for evidence: if the research doesn’t support it—or best practice doesn’t recommend it—it doesn’t make it into the workshop.

Music has woven its way through Kate’s working life, too. She has played and taught African drums and is currently half of a musical duo that volunteers twice a week, with Kate singing backing vocals and playing electronic drums.

Kate is the proud granddaughter of a Stolen Generations woman. That history shapes PeopleForward AI’s approach to cultural safety in a way that is deeply personal as well as professional. It influences not only what is taught, but how each learning experience is created—ensuring that respect, inclusion and care are present from the very beginning.

What people tend to remember most about Kate’s sessions is how welcome she makes them feel. She brings warmth and good humour to the room and treats every question as one worth asking. She would rather build someone’s confidence than their vocabulary, and her measure of a successful session is refreshingly simple: people leave feeling better equipped to do their jobs than when they arrived.

Kate is a lifelong learner whose sessions are warm, evidence-informed and designed to leave people feeling more confident about what they can do next.

Kate leads education and research at PeopleForward AI.