December 2025 |
Supporting our next chapter of growth with strategic leadership and operational excellence
THE APPOINTMENT
As HATZ enters its 3rd decade of designing spaces where life's most meaningful moments unfold, we're pleased to announce that Poly Kiosses has joined our practice as Practice Director.
This pivotal role serves as the operational and strategic backbone of HATZ, enabling our architectural team to focus on design excellence whilst ensuring the practice thrives as a sustainable, well-managed business. As the Founder's strategic thought partner, Poly will steward everything that supports creating innovative architectural solutions—legal, compliance, financial management, human resources, administration and marketing.
The Practice Director role is essential to our mission of creating memorable buildings by delivering client success through inspired people. It requires balancing multiple disciplines simultaneously: protecting the practice legally whilst fostering creative freedom; maintaining financial rigour whilst supporting design innovation; implementing efficient systems whilst preserving the bespoke, client-focused approach that defines HATZ's service model.
ABOUT POLY
Poly brings extraordinary credentials and directly relevant experience to this role.
She's a Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program graduate with a Master of Laws from University of Melbourne and qualifications from the Australian Institute of Company Directors. She's admitted as Barrister & Solicitor in both Australia and England & Wales.
Most recently, Poly spent 14 years at Hickory Group Holdings, where she served as General Counsel (supporting $1B+ annual turnover), Board Member, Executive Team Member and Director of People. Prior to that, she practised at top-tier law firms including Minter Ellison, Pinsent Masons (UK) and Norton Rose, advising on complex construction, infrastructure and energy projects across Australia and international markets.
At Hickory, Poly built legal and business infrastructure for complex construction, manufacturing and data centre ventures achieving sustained 50% annual growth. She developed risk management and compliance frameworks, negotiated contracts exceeding $1 billion annually, protected and commercialised intellectual property portfolios, and successfully managed regulatory investigations whilst maintaining operational licences across all jurisdictions.
As Director of People, she created the 'Creating Better People' development platform, designed competitive compensation packages aligned with organisational values, implemented leadership pathways and succession planning, and built organisational resilience through capability-building initiatives.
Her experience encompasses precisely what HATZ needs: sophisticated understanding of architectural industry dynamics, professional services business models, risk management in creative environments, and the interconnected systems that link business development through project delivery to financial performance and client satisfaction.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR HATZ
Poly's appointment reflects our commitment to ensuring that HATZ's 20-year legacy is supported by equally enduring business practices.
Her experience aligns naturally with HATZ's core values. She understands design excellence requires robust systems that push boundaries whilst remaining practical—she's built infrastructure that enabled creative teams to innovate whilst maintaining commercial discipline. She's dedicated to client success, consistently delivering outcomes that genuinely enhance organisational ambitions. And she knows that inspired people are what make organisations truly successful—she's created comprehensive leadership development and succession planning frameworks that strengthen capabilities and enable teams to do their best work.
As HATZ continues designing tertiary education buildings where tomorrow's leaders discover their potential, luxury residences where families flourish, and healthcare facilities where healing happens faster, Poly will ensure we have the business infrastructure to support this ambition.
She'll manage practice evolution and knowledge transfer, ensuring the next generation of architectural leaders is prepared whilst HATZ's distinctive culture continues to strengthen. She'll provide the commercial acumen, risk management and operational excellence that allows us to deliver memorable buildings driven by design excellence, outstanding client value and inspired people.
Most importantly, Poly shares our fundamental belief: the future isn't something that happens to us—it's something we actively shape through the work we do today.
Welcome to HATZ, Poly. Together, we'll continue to design a future worth living in™.
