A strategic corporate affairs agency working with some of New Zealand’s most important organisations to solve reputation, engagement, communications and government relations challenges.

A small part of a great comms team, helping Unite NZ Against Covid-19.

Responsible for planning, implementing and performance managing the strategic development of internal and external communications at Kaikoura District Council. I report directly to the Chief Executive and advise senior leadership, staff and elected members on all things communications. I have developed and begun implementing a comprehensive Communications Strategy. My various hats include proactive PR and marketing activity, stakeholder relationship management, media management, internal communications, managing multiple social media and digital channels including content creation and curation and providing strategic issues management and planning advice to leadership and elected members. My core drivers are to: • Lead KDC's vision and values – keeping the organisation’s vision and values at the forefront of management and staff decision making and action.• Enable innovation and improvement – encouraging self and others to seek opportunities for different and innovative approaches to addressing problems and opportunities; facilitating the implementation and acceptance of change within the workplace.• Focus on community engagement – ensuring that customer and stakeholder perspectives are appropriately incorporated into decisions and activities; crafting and implementing service practices that meet or exceed community needs and manage their expectations.• Deliver results – setting high goals for personal and team accomplishment; using measurement methods to monitor progress towards goals; tenaciously working to meet or exceed goals while deriving satisfaction from that achievement and continuous improvement.• Improve Business outcomes – use internal and external sources of data to understand and improve organisational outcomes; use my understanding of major business functions; sector trends, and the organisation’s position to contribute to effective business strategies and decision-making.

Building New Zealand's disaster readiness and resilience through public education (social marketing) and improving nationwide public information management (crisis communication) capability. Helping MCDEM and CDEM communicate more effectively and efficiently. Improving understanding of and engagement with key audiences, Part of the 24/7 duty team on call to respond to disasters as required. I am focused on building an effective and connected public information management (crisis communications) function nationwide. This involves facilitating peer-to-peer relationships between MCDEM and CDEM groups (regional councils and local authorities), the media, community groups, and key stakeholders (lifeline utilities), identifying skills and training/operational resource requirements and delivering solutions, providing thought-leadership and direction and coordinating projects across multiple CDEM groups where appropriate. Key current projects include investigating the development and integration of virtual operational support teams (VOST) within NZ CDEM PIM teams, incorporating open-source-intelligence gathering (OSINT) best-practice into PIM processes and procedures, developing training solutions to fill current skills gaps and building a PIM reference group of key CDEM staff, media and stakeholders.

Responsible for strategically growing and strengthening MPI's social media presence, integrating social media as a communications channel across MPI, upskilling staff, developing policies and procedures, identifying and procuring appropriate tools and training, content creation and curation, community management, planning and executing campaigns, monitoring and analysis. As part of a new team, my key focuses were on improving MPIs social media capability and capacity whilst managing risk. Internal engagement and relationship building were critical to help build staff support for and understanding of the various social media platforms and accounts.Whilst transitioning into this role I was responsible for developing and implementing the highly successful digital elements of the government response to the criminal threat to contaminate infant formula with 1080 (Operation Concord). This involved identifying key audiences, channels, essential capabilities and risks, then planning for and resourcing the roles, tools and processes to achieve response objectives. The digital elements included global digital media monitoring, analysis and reporting, building and managing social media channels (facebook, twitter, youtube), a proactive advertising campaign (social/web/print), messaging and content development and community management. As an all-of-government response collaboration and co-ordination were critical. I built a core digital team from 5 different government agencies and worked closely with several external providers (domestic and international).

Developed, managed and implemented end-to-end social marketing campaigns to support MPI’s (www.mpi.govt.nz) operational activities and objectives. Provided marketing and social media support for biosecurity and food safety responses (crisis management). Built and managed relationships with media and design agencies, staff and stakeholders. Drove the development of social media capability within the MPI communications team, resulting in the creation of a social media team and transition to the role of Social Media Advisor.Managed the recreational fishing and consumer food safety portfolios, running strategic campaigns to effect behaviour change. Included identifying and tracking key metrics, designing and coordination consumer research, refreshing digital footprint (web, apps and social media), proactive and reactive advertising (all channels), print collateral design and distribution. Part of the public information management team that lead issues-management around biosecurity and food safety responses. Responsibilities included identifying channels and messaging required to achieve response objectives. Coordinating the design, production and distribution of required collateral and advertising.

Involved in stakeholder management, b2b and b2c marketing campaigns. Oversaw the implementation of digital communications. - Project management. Planning, promoting and running the Annual Conference and Annual General Meeting. Managing speakers, sponsors, delegates and media. - Developing and implementing a publications strategy in line with wider communications and media strategies. Including creating and managing content, publication design and distribution. - Assisting with website content management and re-design. Generating and editing content, planning and progressing web redesign including identifying organisational goals and needs.

Grew business turnover by 60% in two years, implemented and managed new programmes and revenue streams, managed staff training and recruitment. Community focused business reaching 30 schools in the Wellington area, involving over 3000 children per week with 10-15 part-time staff.Key Responsibilities:- Business growth and marketing. Researching customer needs and developing specifically targeted approaches and programmes. Conducting satisfaction surveys and analysing enrolment and financial data to assess results of initatives.- Staff management. Recruitment, development and training. Working on a one-to-one or group level with staff. Conducting performance reviews and seeking staff feedback to improve business practice and activities/services provided. - Customer relations. Using varied approaches to suit the situation and meet the needs of varied customer groups.