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Anjum Rahman

Anjum Rahman is the Project Co-Lead of Inclusive Aotearoa Collective Tāhono, an organisation focused on increasing belonging and inclusion through developing diverse community networks. In this role, Anjum facilitated a series of community engagements across 46 towns and cities in Aotearoa New Zealand, and since then, has worked on community engagement for state agencies and for other community projects

Anjum has governance roles with Trust Waikato and InternetNZ, along with experience in media representation and public speaking. She is a part of the Christchurch Call Advisory Network, which addresses the removal of terrorist and violent extremist content online.

Dave Wild

Dave Wild is the author of Futurework – A Guidebook for The Future of Work. Living on the edge of the world in Aotearoa, Dave has presented on stages and screens across the globe from San Francisco to South Auckland to Sydney.

He’s inspired and guided audiences at industry conferences, government meetings and team events for clients such as Treasury, Māori & Pasifika Trades Training, Auckland Council, Diverse Digitech and Microsoft.

Dave inspires audiences with future insights and tools that open minds to new possibilities ahead. His engaging and uplifting approach reaches beyond stages and screens to challenge and energise audiences – creating a greater future for all.

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Andrew Maughan

Effective engagement is simple but comprehensive: inform, consult, involve, collaborate and empower the local groups essential to a project’s success. This was actioned through comprehensive engagement tools and the final decision making is in the hands of Council and the community.

Andrew builds close client relationships to view projects from the client’s ‘seat’ so that outcomes delivered meet client and community needs.

Dr. Anne Cunningham

Anne has 25 years of experience in the research, design and delivery of public participation processes and practices in the context of urban and rural planning, landscape architecture and public place/ landscape governance. This includes:

Communication and Engagement Strategies for organisations and projects - including climate adaptation, mode shift and place-making. Working in multi-disciplinary teams to integrate appropriate participatory methodologies and methods into design and planning projects. Everything from Collaborative governance and strategy workshops, to public workshops, art installations and cups of tea. Providing evidence-based advice, mentoring and training for consultants, local authorities and government agencies. Process design/ review, facilitation and mediation, often for more novel or challenging contexts. Her research focused on why local people disrupt processes, and how professionals can ground their approach in different contexts.

Anne Pattillo

Bridget Lange

Chris Mene

I work as a professional facilitator, engagement practitioner and trainer coming from a diverse work and community background with broad experience across a range of sectors. These include health, education, philanthropic, central and local government. I've held elected and appointed governance and executive roles, and I’m passionate about leading and supporting positive change. In all these roles I have been and continue to be challenged by intercultural engagement contexts where differing world views, preconditioned biases and prejudices come together.

Claire Fletcher

Claire recently pitched, co-developed and led collaboration across portfolios to deliver ‘Our future Canterbury’ engagement programme gathering feedback from communities across Waitaha/ Canterbury to inform direction of several regional policies, plans and projects.

Claire is a mum of a strong minded inquisitive three year old who brings joy and reminds her every day how wonderfully complex and beautiful life is.

Courtney McCrostie

Courtney is a transportation engineer with a focus on proactive resilience works, and post event recovery planning. This means she has spent much of the past few years talking with councils and coastal communities about how their access may change in the long term and all that that entails. These can be difficult conversations to have, but effective engagement can ensure outcomes that meet client and community needs.

Danielle Hamilton

Having worked within cultural, not-for-profit and public sectors in roles including marketing, communications, engagement and public education, Danielle is a strategic leader motivated to work with organisations which provide benefits to our communities.

Danielle currently works with Watercare which provides drinking water and wastewater services to the people of Auckland. Her team supports community and stakeholder engagement on the delivery of these services including major infrastructure projects as well as communications and outreach. Danielle also established and led Watercare’s flood recovery engagement team after the significant weather events in January and February 2023.

In addition to qualifications in both business and communications, Danielle has an MBA from the Auckland University of Technology with a major in marketing.

Jacob Quinn

Jacob is communications and engagement specialist, facilitator and people leader, with an 18-year career in local and central government. He has held roles including Press Secretary to the Deputy PM Michael Cullen, UN spokesperson in Kosovo, and Communications Manager at Waikato District Council. Jacob leads a resource management planning and engagement team with WSP, based in Hamilton. He is a Trustee on Trust Waikato and holds a MA in political studies.

Juliet Speedy

Juliet Speedy is Newshub's South Island senior reporter, based in Christchurch. She has been a journalist for 24 years, 17 of those with TV3. Juliet covers a broad range of stories across the South Island and has covered many of the country's biggest news events including the David Bain retrial, Christchurch earthquakes, the March 15 mosque attacks and the Mama Hooch crimes.  She's travelled the country and the world reporting for Three and when she's not at work, she's most at home high up in the Southern Alps with her three children.

Kanewa Harrison

"He kuaka mārangaranga, kotahi te manu i tau ki te tāhuna, tau atu tau atu tau atu e!"

E ao te mihi ki a koutou, ki a tātou katoa. Ko Kanewa Harrison tōku ingoa. My name is Kanewa Harrison. I am from the small settlement of Te Kao in the Far North. I am currently living in Kaikohe with my partner, raising our two babies in te reo Māori and tikanga Māori. In accompaniment to my primary role as a māmā, I also work as an Advisor for the Electoral Commission. Alongside my whānau and community in Kaikohe we were able to achieve great success with hosting our very first Kaupapa Māori Voting Site in last year's General Elections. In true Ngāpuhi style, this will be a straight up the guts no frills kinda kōrero. I look forward to sharing with you all.   

Kate Doran

Kate has been working in communications around Aotearoa and Scotland for 23 years and is now a Principal Communications and Engagement Advisor at Canterbury Regional Council (Environment Canterbury) based in Timaru, where she was born.

Moving from traditional ‘comms’ to community-focused engagement over the past few years has given Kate a renewed focus, supplying her with the tools to lead complex projects that impact her local environment. Kate has valuable insights to share from working face-to-face with the local stakeholders that she is also likely to bump into at the supermarket.

Katy McRae

With more than 15 years’ experience across engagement, strategic communications and public relations, Katy has held a variety of engagement and communications leadership roles. More recently, she’s worked for the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, Regenerate Christchurch, and the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Attack on Christchurch Mosques. She is currently the Head of Communications and Engagement at Christchurch City Council. 

Kevin Miniter

Kevin has helped governments from Denver, Seattle, Boston, Hawaii, California, NASA, along with nonprofits and businesses engage their stakeholders online around the most contentious issues using consider.it. With hundreds of thousands of opinions shared, Kevin has shown he can create civil, deliberative and organized online insights with innovative opinion analytics. 

Kylie Cochrane

A global engagement leader, Kylie has 30 years’ experience in communication and stakeholder engagement. She specialises in helping clients to maintain and regain their social licence through mitigating social risk and managing community outrage.Kylie was the Global IAP2 Chair from 2017-2022 and was on the Australasian IAP2 Board from 2011-2021. She currently chairs the Australian National University’s Advisory Board for the Institute for Infrastructure in Society (which oversees the NextGen research into community engagement trends).

In 2022 Kylie was named one of three inaugural Honorary IAP2 fellows across Australia and New Zealand. She was named a Deloitte Outstanding 50 LGBTI+ leader in 2020 and the Consult Australia Female Champion of Change in 2018.

Kylie has spent the last decade building the Communication and Stakeholder Engagement practice at global engineering and infrastructure advisory firm Aurecon. Over the last seven years the Aurecon engagement group has won more than 18 coveted industry awards including IAP2 International Engagement Project of The Year, the National Women in Construction Innovative Team award, and Consult Australia’s Gold Excellence Award. 

Lexy Seedhouse

Lexy manages the Engagement team at Wellington City Council. She is passionate about community-led solutions to complex issues, and recently led Wellington City Council’s first Citizens’ Assembly.  

Megan Carpenter

Megan works for the Christchurch City Council as a Team Leader for the Parks and Recreation team. She is a highly experienced Parks Planner with a Bachelor of Recreation Management majoring in Parks. She enjoys working with the community to develop play spaces and recreational assets.

When Megan isn’t head down engaging and advocating for recreation spaces across the city, she is helping out the Broadfield Netball Club as an umpire and committee member and entertaining her two young children and spending time with them and her fiancé camping around New Zealand. 

Natasha Turnbull

Natasha has significant experience in engagement practice across a wide range of methodologies. Building on her previous career experience in market research, Natasha now applies those quantitative skills to delivering robust engagement in both the digital and real world. Natasha is an advocate for the engagement profession and demonstrating its value to the public and project teams. She believes in using scientific methods in engagement and is always interested in exploring new techniques that can help communities have a stronger voice in decision making.

Neil Henry

He also manages international government relationships via Marlborough’s sister region wine relationship with Ningxia, China. Neil has worked on UK and EU partnership projects related to regeneration, education exchange and dry ports.  He has managed and participated in many community and industry engagement projects that has resulted in national and international recognition, including:

- Marlborough Sounds Future Access Study                                                                      - Marlborough Smart+Connected Community and Industry Development Programme          - TEAM Marlborough Covid response                                                                        - Marlborough-Ningxia Sister Region relationship

Norma Kloosterman

Norma has over 25 years of experience. She is well known for the positive community outcomes that excellent stakeholder engagements are always trying to achieve. Norma is the subject matter expert on difficult conversations, managing community consultations where there could be outrage and communications for major construction projects. The experience with issue and crisis management while working for the Ministry of Social Development, Fulton Hogan and Aurecon, and her involvement in several rebuild alliances has brought her a wealth of valuable knowledge on engaging with vulnerable communities.

Sara Templeton

Sara is a third term Christchurch City Councillor with a background in community initiatives and education. She currently holds Council's Climate Change Portfolio and is a director of Christchurch City Holdings Ltd. Sara has been outspoken on the misinformation, misogyny and abuse of female politicians and went through Netsafe and the District Court several years ago to unmask people behind fake profiles on social media that had been harassing her.  

Dr. Sonia Randhawa

Dr Sonia Randhawa has been involved in over 80 deliberative democratic projects, mainly in the recruitment of a diverse mini-public. She has a background in human rights and journalism, and has taught at both Monash and Melbourne universities. 

Sonya Leahy

Sonya has more than 20 years’ experience in communications and stakeholder engagement strategy, planning and delivery across different sectors in both NZ and the UK. She has worked on many of New Zealand’s largest transport infrastructure projects, both within the design and consenting and construction phases, managing engagement with thousands of impacted residents, landowners and businesses. For Auckland Light Rail, Sonya developed both the landowner engagement strategy to help de-risk lodgement of the project’s Notices of Requirement and regional consents and its engagement health and safety plan to ensure adequate training and wellbeing support for front-line engagement teams.

Steve Dudley

Steve trained as a planner but has spent most of his 28-year career in transport planning.  A generalist who has led structure plans, road and multi-modal projects at all stages of development, Steve has been most influential in developing business cases and designs for urban public transport projects, particularly interchanges and stations.  It is here that Steve found the importance of a very human view on design and decision making.  When people use an interchanges and public transport generally, they sense - feel, hear, smell, see - everything when compared to driving a car.  People also pay for public transport more directly.  In the course of his career, access to information and big data has dramatically expanded enabling rich insight to movement patterns. Steve has been a promoter of harnessing and understanding of the way people feel about a problem, a concept or an investment as a key part of problem solving, design and developing business cases.  

Sue-Ellen Craig

Sue-Ellen specialises in enabling behaviour or perception change at the junction of reputation, revenue, and regulation. Her career spans over 20 years working internationally with leading brands and government agencies involved in projects of high complexity or significant political interest.

This has included transport technology and road funding initiatives across North America, Australia, New Zealand, and other engagement and change projects within the transport, urban development and renewable energy sectors.

In late 2023, the International Road Federation (IRF) recognised Sue-Ellen’s knowledge and expertise by inviting her to present on public acceptance at their global conference, also including her in their panel for the Leadership Seminar on Road Pricing. 

Tara King

Tara works for WSP as a Senior Community Engagement Specialist with an IAP2 advanced engagement certificate and more than 14 years’ experience.  She has a particular interest in disaster recovery engagement following her time leading a communication team at SCIRT and has a passion for working with youth.

When Tara isn’t working with clients on engagement, she can be found keeping busy managing one of her boy’s touch teams and being part of the Rangiora Highschool Rugby fundraising committee.  She is a proud Mum who enjoys spending time with her husband and three boys in the great outdoors of NZ.

Zola Rose

Zola is passionate about community-led development, participatory democracy, regenerative systems, conflict transformation, and communication that builds connection. She enjoys infusing community engagement with fun, cooperation, and creativity.

Her newest endeavour is the Homefullness Show—change-making conversations to create more affordable, connected, and resilient places to live.

Zola has a Masters in International and Intercultural Management, a BA in Sociology/Anthropology, and certificates in Permaculture Design, Ecovillage Design Education, and the Regenerative Practitioner.  She has lived in twelve countries and in Aotearoa since 2016.

Zola is mother of two young adults, lives in a tiny home in the oldest intentional community in Aotearoa, and does improv dance and theatre.

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