By Ninja

Together, different.

At By Ninja, I connect good people doing good things in businesses with good customers, and help them grow through strategic and thoughtful experiences. 

I don't just think outside the box, I fold the box into a paper crane. 

Our teams are brought together on a project basis to deliver exceptional creative outcomes. This keeps us agile, lean and efficient, while staying true to the outcome. We have delivered award-winning creative for startups, small businesses, state governments, and local and international beauty brands.

Visit our website to learn more👇
www.byninja.com.au

Creative Overlord

Freelance Graphic Designer

Design Ninjas

Design Ninjas is a subscription-based design service that brings lightning-fast creativity to the forefront. 

No frills, just skills.
After years of working alongside marketers, brand managers, co-designers, and agencies, I uncovered a common challenge – the need for high-quality design that's accessible and efficient. We believe that exceptional design should be within reach for everyone, and Design Ninjas is here to make it happen.

Check out the website to learn more👇
www.designninjas.au

Founder

Communify 

As a member of the Communications Committee I advise and support the Communify team on the strategy and execution of their marketing and communications plan.

Communify Queensland is an established community organisation providing a diverse range of services, from early childhood, mental health services to aged and disability services, including day respite and aged care packages. As one of Brisbane's largest and most active charities, Communify supports the community on all sides.

Communications Committee Member

Focused Marketing Solutions Pty Ltd

Lead Designer

QinetiQ Australia

Achievements:
QLD PICA Gold Award for the Flipper Book
National PICA Silver Award for the Flipper Book

Graphic Designer

Ashdown-Ingram

Assistant Senior Graphic Designer

Salton Group

Achievements:
Design of product which rated GfK top 10 for more than 5 months running
Developed a processes and training guide for New Product Development processes
Introduced a graphics brief system which reduced draft re-work by more than 50%.

Australian Department of Defence; and HTR Engineering and IT Professional Services

As a contractor to the Australian Department of Defence, I was responsible for the development and amendment of technical illustrations for a number of high priority projects. This position required me to obtain a Defence clearance at RESTRICTED level.

Technical Illustrator - contractor

RSEA Pty Ltd

Boeing Defence Australia

This position required me to obtain a Defence clearance at SECRET level.

Junior Graphic Designer

This position required me to obtain a Defence clearance at SECRET level.

Achievements:
Selected to participate in the Boeing Leadership Development Program
Finalist in the 2006 Boeing Young Leader Award
Nominated and short-listed for the 2006 Queensland Training Awards.

Technical Illustrator

For years I worked in the creative industry, delivering multi-million dollar projects for design houses that fell short on delivering value and ingenuity for their brands.

I found myself seeking more from an industry that offered low prospects for designers and brands alike — something that was creatively challenging, but also impactful. I had reached a turning point.

I freelanced as a designer while pursuing a mechanical engineering degree. A real change occurred when I began working with brands that shared my values, and that experience led to a profound transformation.

From this journey, By Ninja was born — a brand studio that differentiates itself through a deep commitment to customer intimacy and innovation.

We create meaningful impact, aligned to the values of the brands we work with. Our approach has earned us a reputation for excellence, exemplified by high retention and professional accolades.

Now, I empower beauty brands to craft unforgettable experiences that drive growth, through conscious branding and product design. 

We take your product idea from concept to consumer; crafting brand, design and packaging experiences for the conscious consumer. 

Our clients and their results are testament to our approach:

𝐀𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐥𝐚 𝐂𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐚
👉 Cell Forté Serum Violet Grey top seller, selling out 3 times in 2 months. 
👉 BFCM D2C sales soared by 300%, with a 60% repurchase rate.

𝐑𝐄-𝐃𝐎𝐗 𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐧 𝐋𝐚𝐛
“Kathleen has an amazing ability to understand your needs and vision for your brand and translate that into a brand and product that exceed your expectations.”

𝐋𝐔𝐗𝐄 𝐁𝐨𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐬
“They transformed not only our branding but also our brand voice and digital presence in such a way that our business has grown in triple digits since the start of the partnership.”
👉 Doubled traffic and checkout value.
👉 Increased customer retention.
👉 Triple-digit growth in 9 months.

𝐂𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩
👉 Featured in Vanity Fair and Beauty Independent for branding and sustainability.
👉 Reduced transport emissions by up to 90%.
👉 Increased D2C sales by 65% within 12 months.

𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐞
👉 Reduced carbon footprint by 24%.
👉 Diverted >1 tonne of plastic from landfill.

𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐈𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐄𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐬
👉 Minimised start-up costs.
👉 Mitigated product breakage.
👉 Eliminated ~0.3kg of carbon emissions per product.


Interested in working with me and my team:
🌟 Bespoke Branding & Product Design - www.byninja.com.au
⭐ Unlimited Graphic Design Support - www.designninjas.au 

Reach out to me kathleen@byninja.com.au

Kathleen Casford

25hours.ai

25hours is an AI knowledge and enablement company that works with organisations to deliver their mission

CEO/Co founder @ 25hours.ai

Researchmaster

Chief Executive Officer - Researchmaster

Accenture

Contract Manager

Owl Advisory

Delivering strategy, growth/transformation, commercial, sales/marketing and digital outcomes.

Principal - Owl Advisory

AGL Energy

Commercial and Sales Operations Manager

Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry

Leading a team of 120,  my team delivered  strategy, commercial and sales/BD leadership to deliver  commercial services (legal, Workplace Relations, HSE, apprenticeships and training)  to VCCI's 5000+ members.

Executive Director Commercial Services

For QinetiQ (~300 FTE's) - leading a team of 6, I provided strategy, commercial and governance expertise to maximise QinetiQ's financial/operational performance while mitigating risk.

My core remit included all commercial and governance matters, legal, enterprise risk management, safety and quality etc.  See https://youtu.be/gnt4dIx3hYw  

For Optasense - with a sales engineer I was responsible for establishing  the Australian footprint for Optasense selling its Distributed Acoustic Sensing offering across oil and gas,mining, transport (rail and road) and security verticals. See https://youtu.be/x1I0lgGZIVY

Head of Commercial + Governance and Country Manager Optasense (concomitant roles)

BAE Systems

With a team of 2, I was responsible for all commercial issues surrounding  the delivery of 2 Landing Helicopter Dock Ships to the Royal Australian Navy (contract value $3b) - see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra_class_landing_helicopter_dock

Commercial Manager

South East Water Ltd

Responsible for commercialising South East Water's internally developed IP.

Commercialisation Manager

Aquastralis

Vertically integrated manufacturing/distribution business selling a range of water sports and outdoors products in  Australia and globally (exporting to 14 countries). Business successfully divested in 2009

Proprietor

What I do

I lead 25hours.ai, a generative AI knowledge and enablement company.

We advise boards and executive teams on how to leverage AI to advance organisational mission — with minimal disruption and no hype:

AI training – build practical AI fluency across your organisation

Applied AI and automation – build, deploy, and maintain tools that:

automate co-pilots, smart chat, and workflow agents (LLMs)

extract, classify, and surface insights from text and data (NLP, ML)

process images, video, and voice when needed (computer vision, speech AI)

AI and data DevOps – keep your AI running smoothly, securely, and at scale (MLOps, data pipelines)

We’ve delivered executive training and deployed AI-driven tools to over 20 of Australia's leading universities and organisations, with over 1,000 people scheduled for training in 2025.

Our work reduces time spent on admin, communications, reporting, and routine decisions — by up to 80%.

Organisations report 5+ hours per person, per week, freed up within the first week — compounding to 25 hours a month or 8 weeks each year.

All implementations use your existing systems. No new platforms. No extended change cycles.

About me

I began my career as an M&A lawyer, later founded and exited multiple ventures, and returned to the corporate world to lead strategy, transformation, and commercial mandates — spanning billion-dollar defence programs, enterprise software, and now generative AI.

The common thread throughout my career is the ability to align people, systems, and product to deliver mission-critical objectives.

My biggest strength is building capable, confident teams that deliver lasting organisational change.

Anyone who knows me describes me as gregarious, high energy, and exceptional at building high-performing teams that sustain strong, system-wide relationships.

taplio

The Battle

Kathleen Casford

Michael McCallum

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