Career

Heather McGovern is a senior commercial C-suite executive with more than 20 years of experience leading marketing, product and digital transformation across financial services, insurance, property and technology businesses in Australia, Italy and Canada. She has held executive leadership positions across ASX-listed businesses, major global organisations and customer-focused challengers, with responsibility for P&Ls of up to $6 billion, budgets exceeding $50 million and teams of up to 110 people.

Heather has built a career around turning customer insight into measurable commercial growth. Her results include delivering $2 billion in incremental deposit growth at MyState at twice system growth, achieving 17% audience growth at Domain against a declining budget and a competitor spending approximately twice as much, and delivering more than 200% member growth for AIA Vitality. At BankVic, she built a B2B2C growth engine from the ground up, winning three government tenders and delivering record new member growth in under 12 months.

Most recently, Heather was General Manager Residential Marketing at Domain and previously served as Interim Chief Marketing Officer during the CoStar acquisition and ASX delisting. She also served as a Non-Executive Director of IAB Australia and has extensive experience operating across executive leadership, commercial strategy, product, marketing, digital transformation and organisational change.

Role at Factor

Heather brings a highly commercial perspective to Factor’s Expert Advisor Network through her ability to connect customer insight, marketing, product and digital capability with measurable business growth. Her experience is particularly valuable for organisations looking beyond traditional marketing activity and seeking to understand how proposition, customer relationships, digital experiences, data and investment decisions can work together to create sustainable commercial outcomes.

Her advisory perspective is especially relevant for organisations operating under increased pressure to deliver growth while managing constrained budgets and rising customer expectations. Heather can help executives examine where growth is actually coming from, improve marketing effectiveness, strengthen customer propositions, identify underutilised customer relationships and build measurement frameworks that allow leaders to make better investment decisions.

Heather is also well suited to executive roundtables and advisory discussions focused on growth transformation, customer strategy, marketing effectiveness, product innovation and digital performance. Her experience leading through acquisitions, organisational uncertainty and major transformation programs gives her a practical perspective on creating clarity from complexity and building teams that can continue delivering after a transformation has been implemented.

Key roles Heather works with include: CMOs, Chief Customer Officers, Chief Growth Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief Digital Officers, CEOs & Executive Leaders, COOs, and Boards & Commercial Leaders.

Previous Roles

As General Manager Residential Marketing at Domain, Heather was responsible for rebuilding the strategic and commercial rigour of the marketing function within one of Australia's leading property platforms. She delivered 17% audience growth across FY23–FY24 against a flat-to-declining budget while competing against an organisation spending approximately twice as much. She achieved this through smarter attribution, tighter segmentation and greater value from existing partnerships.

Heather also built Domain's marketing analytics capability from the ground up, including a marketing mix modelling framework and attribution approach that delivered a 36% uplift in marketing ROI and changed how the business approached marketing investment decisions. As Interim Chief Marketing Officer, she led the marketing function through the CoStar acquisition and subsequent ASX delisting, maintaining performance, team stability and executive confidence through a period of significant organisational uncertainty.

At MyState, Heather served as General Manager and CMO of Digital & Marketing, holding P&L accountability for the $6.2 billion deposits division while leading the Group's digital transformation and marketing functions. She delivered $2 billion in incremental deposit growth over two years at twice system growth, increased digital customer deposits ninefold and built a new marketing engine from the ground up. She also led the digital transformation of the bank, taking 96% of transactions online, increasing active app users by 250%, improving the App Store rating from 1.7 to more than 4, and scaling digital origination to 98% of new customers.

As Chief Product & Marketing Officer at BankVic, Heather held responsibility for both the product P&L and marketing function, leading the development of new commercial growth channels and digital capabilities. She built a B2B2C growth engine from scratch, developing the proposition and partnerships that resulted in three government tenders being won within 12 months and record new active account volumes. She also chaired the Product and Pricing Committee and participated in the Assets and Liabilities Committee and Group Risk Committee.

Earlier, as Head of Strategic Delivery at AIA Australia, Heather was responsible for the growth strategy and commercial model for AIA Vitality. She delivered more than 200% member volume growth in the first year by redesigning the go-to-market strategy across consumer, corporate and SME channels and developing a digital engagement roadmap spanning apps, wearables and third-party integrations. She also built the three-year commercial roadmap and secured executive endorsement and investment to scale Vitality as a standalone growth platform.

Media Presence and Industry Contributions

Heather brings a strong commercial perspective to the relationship between marketing, product, digital and business performance. Her experience demonstrates how organisations can move beyond viewing marketing as a communications function and instead use customer insight, product proposition, data and digital capability to create measurable growth.

Her experience is particularly relevant to conversations around marketing effectiveness and constrained investment. At Domain, she demonstrated that stronger measurement, segmentation and attribution can enable a business to outperform a better-funded competitor. Her work developing marketing mix modelling and attribution frameworks provides a practical perspective on how executive teams can understand what is actually driving growth and make more disciplined investment decisions.

Heather also brings extensive experience building new commercial engines and transforming established businesses. From digital banking and insurance to property and B2B2C growth, she has repeatedly worked across product, marketing, technology and customer functions to create new propositions, improve digital experiences and unlock new sources of growth. Her experience across Australia, North America and Europe provides an international perspective on customer-led transformation and commercial leadership.

Leadership Philosophy

Heather's leadership philosophy centres on creating clarity from complexity and building organisations capable of delivering step-change growth. She believes leaders need to understand not only what customers want, but how customer relationships, propositions, technology, data and investment decisions connect to the commercial engine of the business.

Her approach combines commercial discipline with a strong customer focus. Heather is comfortable moving between strategic and operational environments, from board-level discussions around P&L and investment through to building measurement models, restructuring teams and developing new propositions. She focuses on making constrained resources work harder and ensuring teams understand the outcomes they are accountable for.

As a people leader, Heather places significant importance on building high-performing teams that can continue to deliver beyond the tenure of any individual leader. Her experience leading teams of up to 110 people through transformation, M&A and periods of organisational uncertainty has shaped a leadership style focused on clarity, accountability, collaboration and empowerment. She describes herself as a builder rather than a maintainer, with a focus on creating the commercial capabilities, teams and systems that enable organisations to keep growing.