About SavoirClair

Who I Am

I'm Lorraine Pestell, a digital strategist and enterprise architect. Over a forty-year career as an IT professional — across public, private, and non-profit sectors, spanning financial services, mining, healthcare, utilities, and local and state government — I've spent the last three decades at the intersection of digital strategy, transformation, and enterprise architecture.

Female executive and male IT professional discussing content on a computer monitor in a modern workplace, using digital tools and data visualizations

What I Observed

For the last three decades in senior roles, I have sat at the intersection of technology and organisational decision-making — close enough to observe what was taking place and predict the outcome, but rarely given direct access to the decision-makers to help them avoid or mitigate the risks.

I watched capable, intelligent leaders make high-stakes decisions they did not fully understand — not because they were negligent, but because nobody had ever given them the right tools and support.

This pattern repeated across strategy, transformation, procurement, and operations — leaders making significant commitments without independent guidance, with the specialists who could have helped them kept at arm's length until it was too late.

As I built my career, I moved between roles, organisations, industries, and countries. Everywhere I went, the same outcomes. And as digital, data and technology capabilities become ever more critical to an organisation's success, the cost of getting these decisions wrong keeps escalating — more failed projects, bigger budget overruns, greater risk exposure.

Why SavoirClair Exists

SavoirClair provides the framework I would have given anything to put directly in these leaders' hands — before the decisions were made, not after the consequences arrived.

These are the resources I developed while trying to prevent the same problems occurring time and time again — the tools and techniques I designed because commercial methodologies were too cumbersome and riddled with technical jargon.

I'm now making this framework available so that senior leaders no longer have to navigate these decisions alone. They can apply it with confidence, drawing on the expertise they already have inside their own organisation — and building the capability to lead these decisions well, not just this time, but every time.

The SavoirClair Framework

Our mission is to give senior leaders a framework of plain-English tools, guidance, training, and a peer community with which to lead digital strategy and transformation decisions confidently. The specialist support typically offered for other business decisions — finance, HR, procurement — but too often overlooked for digital, data and technology decisions.

Further instruments are planned as the SavoirClair Framework takes shape, covering the full range of digital, information and technology capabilities the modern organisation needs — from strategy and transformation through to day-to-day operations.

Current Instruments

The Technology Supplier Red Flag Checklist — 16 important factors to consider across each stage of the supplier engagement journey, when you engage, while you evaluate, and before you sign. Free to download. Free to share.

The Technology Contract Essentials Toolkit — 30+ Critical and Moderate questions across nine sections of a technology contract, with a Decision Guide and an Internal Expert Roles Guide to support consultation with the specialists inside your organisation. £97.

Why I Built It This Way

SavoirClair exists to bridge the barrier between the leaders making technology decisions and the experts who can provide insights. For that bridge to be trusted, it must rest on values built into SavoirClair's operating model, not merely stated in its marketing material.

Independence

SavoirClair is the bridge I would have given anything to share with these leaders — before the commitment, not after. Not a consulting relationship that creates dependency, but a framework to be tailored and applied with confidence.

SavoirClair holds no affiliate relationships, commission arrangements, or referral fees from any supplier, platform, or service provider — ensuring its guidance is free from commercial bias and influence.

Integrity

Every SavoirClair interaction is grounded in respect, honesty and transparency. No-one knows all the answers — SavoirClair exists to provide guidance for your decisions, not to make them for you.

SavoirClair is plain English — because jargon is a power dynamic, and you deserve better than that.

SavoirClair says what it means, prices fairly, and delivers what it promises. It refunds without friction. It conducts evidence-based due diligence rather than relying on assumptions.

Integrity is not only a standard SavoirClair aspires to — it's the embodiment of my personal philosophy applied to every customer interaction.

Independence and Integrity are two of the five values that hold SavoirClair to account. The others — Clarity, Safety and Security, and Empowerment — are set out in full on the Our Values page.

In your corner, not in your chair — the SavoirClair Framework is yours to use, with the structural protections built in so the guidance you receive is genuinely independent.

Who SavoirClair Serves

Given the importance of technology to every organisation's future, these decisions must sit within the senior leader's accountability — even when the planning and execution happens elsewhere in the organisation, even when the technical detail feels like someone else's domain.

SavoirClair serves these senior leaders — business owners, C-suite, and leadership team members across private, public and non-profit sector contexts.

It also serves the Digital, Information and Technology Professionals who work alongside them — enterprise, security and solution architects, information management specialists, data leaders, and governance, risk & compliance colleagues. These are the people senior leaders should bring in early — while technology decisions are still being shaped, not after they're made. SavoirClair gives both audiences the shared language and structure to work as one — the connection that has so often been missing.

I know this collaboration well. I have been the digital strategist supporting senior leaders, and I have advised and worked among the operational IT teams who make things happen day-to-day. The framework reflects the value that can be achieved when all disciplines engage collaboratively, making the whole substantially more than the sum of its parts.

Curriculum Vitæ

Professional — Australian state and local government (Queensland & Victoria); IT consulting (UK, USA, Europe, Singapore & Australia); industry roles (utilities, financial services, mining & healthcare); software development (UK, USA & Australia); member of the Business Architecture Guild's worldwide Government Reference Model team; volunteer roles in multiple IT professional communities.

Personal — Author of a 7-part contemporary fiction novel series (six published, one to go); former arts organisation Board member (Western Australia & Victoria); and confirmed dogaholic.

Qualifications & Certifications

  • BSc (Hons) Management Science with French Language

  • The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) Practitioner

  • Portfolio, Program & Project Management Offices (P3O) Practitioner

  • Certified Process Professional Level 3

  • Enterprise Design

  • Architecting AI for Business

Speaking Engagements

  • "Enterprise Architecture for Risk Management", Australian Computer Society (2013)

  • "Strategic Business Analysis", International Institute of Business Analysis (2015)

  • "Queensland Government Digital Twin", Public Sector Network (2021)

  • "Improving Operational Resilience & Security Through Enterprise Architecture", Public Sector Network (2022)

  • "Business Architecture Delivers the Organisation's Digital Twin", Business Architecture Guild Summit (2022)

SavoirClair. In your corner, not in your chair.