Jill Gower has been appointed chief executive of Overseer Limited, the organisation that administers the farm planning and management tool OverseerFM.
Gower is Overseer Limited’s former company secretary and has worked there for three years.
Overseer board chair Ian Clarke says they were impressed by Gower’s vision for OverseerFM.
“Jill clearly recognises the critical role OverseerFM can play in helping farmers and growers make better decisions to improve their farm’s environmental sustainability and productivity.”
Gower says she is looking forward to consolidating and building the core business, but also taking advantage of emerging opportunities.
“It has certainly been a challenging couple of years, however the light is starting to shine on OverseerFM’s value as a decision support tool.
“That’s a relief to the team because knowing that OverseerFM actually helps farmers and growers respond to the enormous pressures on them personally, on their businesses and on our environment is what gets us out of bed in the morning.
“Many farmers have been using OverseerFM not by choice and they haven’t been shy about telling us so. We can’t control how the tool is used so the question became ‘what can we do to ensure using OverseerFM is easy to use and worthwhile?’
“We lean heavily on the sector for advice and our efforts have converted many detractors into advocates, but we have a way to go yet.
“Our focus for the next year is making sure the value-add features in OverseerFM are highly visible, that everyone understands how to best use OverseerFM, and that any future improvements offer serious bang for buck.”
Jill replaces Dr Caroline Read, who left Overseer Limited in February 2022 to take up a new role.
