With more than 20 years’ experience in professional services in recruitment, on-hire, group training and workforce development, Tully has spent his entire career working with businesses that have long term trade skills shortages or productivity issues based around skills.
Tully graduated from La Trobe University in Melbourne (BA in Economics and Politics) in 1995.
After working in recruitment services and the on-hire sector for a number of years, Tully’s passion to provide skills solutions for industry led him to start Blue Tongue in 2001. The business went from a start-up in 2001 to $53M in sales in 2024.
Tully started the Blue Tongue international hiring program in 2005. Since then, under his active management the business has hired, employed and managed more than 900 specialist technicians from Africa to work in the Australian mining sector.
In 2010, Tully pioneered a new skills development and supply model and the term ‘Upskilling’ for heavy equipment maintenance in mining. As a result, the team at Blue Tongue has since hired and upskilled more than 1,000 Automotive Service Technicians to work as Heavy Duty Equipment Technicians in the Australian mining sector. Blue Tongue has grown to become Australia’s largest employer of mature-age apprentices, a leading workforce development consultancy, and a pioneer in training innovation programs.
