Meet the Team


  • Trained in Environmental Engineering, a systems approach was used to balance multi-faceted challenges across a broad range of projects impacting the natural and built environments. Applying these skills has allowed a diverse range of professional engagements including university lecturing/research, project design, construction supervision, project management and strategy.

    Subsequent work has included CE roles in processing, consulting, transport and local government, focusing on strategic direction and organizational development.

    Collectively this experience has provided both client side and applicant knowledge which has allowed direct input into Winning

    Pitch’s support for prospective tenderers. Meeting client requirements and understanding their key drivers will provide the best opportunity to be successful.


  • While Gerry has a mechanical engineering background, over half of his 40-year major project experience has involved business development and major project procurement for organisations in New Zealand, Australia, Swaziland, Zambia, Israel, and South Africa. 

    His work in preconstruction phases has traversed most of the different delivery models, with a focus on the forming and storming phases of project procurement. Gerry is adept at inspiring teams to exceed customer expectations and win against market expectation.

    Gerry brought a unique perspective to the in-house team formed by Steve to emulate the Customer and thereby better prepare bid teams for Interactives - and to ensure that the submissions compellingly answered the questions asked.

    Since moving to New Zealand from South Africa twenty years ago Gerry is now keen to contribute his unique perspective to Winning Pitch Limited as it works across the wider industry with organisations that are driven to win but perceptive enough to know they need to lift their game.


  • A Chartered civil and structural engineer with over 40 years experience in design, design management and construction. Steve has worked within and gained understanding of consultant, contractor and client organisations across New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and the United Kingdom.

    Involved in many major tenders, his client-side roles on tender evaluations have given him a detailed understanding of exactly what Tender Evaluation Teams look for in assessing and differentiating bidders.

    Since returning to New Zealand, Steve has held positions in design consultancies, Auckland Transport and Fletcher Construction. At Auckland Transport he sat on Tender Evaluation Teams for their largest multi-billion dollar contracts and at Fletcher Construction he used his client-side experience to establish a small team to transform bid teams and enhance the win rate. This was highly successful. Steve and his fellow directors subsequently formed Winning Pitch to offer the proven approach to a broader market.

  • Having studied Economics, Karen Jepp acquired the expertise and experience to be our Winning Mindset Guru with a career that spanned both on-stage performance and teaching others to perform. Based in Sydney Australia, her on-stage work traversed dancing, singing, acting and modelling. Karen knows what it feels like to perform well.

    She offers tips and techniques to win work, learned from an eight-year journey of full-time education in the performance arts. This involved winning and losing auditions with career highlights at Sydney Opera House, billboard appearances and short films.

    That experience gave Karen the credentials to work with Learning Performance Seminars in the UK. In this high-pressure role, she taught senior students in 1000’s of classrooms throughout England, Scotland and Wales .

    To transform the expectations and academic performance of those from extremely diverse socio economic, religious, gender, and ethnic backgrounds, she learned the hard way how to win over a challenging crowd and share with them the tools to succeed.

    For the last 15 years, Karen has worked with individuals and teams in Australasia and the UK to empower them to successfully lead large organisations at all levels and to win major capital project contracts. She has the insights and techniques to create strong pitching teams that can deliver a compelling message. Highly competitive, Karen likes to win.

  • JP Cowey’s 36 year career with a major corporate construction company traversed property, marketing, creative direction and writing / editing across NZ, Australian and Pacific operations, finally focusing solely on strategic and creative input to the winning of major infrastructure contracts. He is widely viewed as the unseen hand behind the company’s superior presentation to the market - with non-price attributes routinely marked significantly higher than competitors through compelling storytelling.

    The distillation of such experience is now being applied through his consultancy, JPCo Ltd, helping contractors, designers and owners to ‘make their point’. JP has a rare ability to work with clients to cut through complexity and generic bumph to articulate the compelling point and achieve the desired outcome.

    Winning Pitch is successful because of the diversity of expertise and experience offered by the five members. JP Cowey is not an engineer with experience in the field - but he knows how to transform teams and their messaging to win work. He is insightful, challenging and direct.