I have been involved in the sector for 35 years and at various times have been CEO of NZ Recreation Assn (RA), National Sport & Recreation Manager for NZ YMCA, interim CEO of Outdoors NZ, a long-standing recreation and open-space consultant, and a public health planner in the health sector. This has provided me with evidence and passion for recreation as a core plank of community wellbeing. 

  

I bring significant futures and trends analysis expertise with a focus on how emerging trends and issues will impact the ways communities recreate, congregate and communicate with a focus on community wellbeing through recreation (spaces and places) and a Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach. 

 

My consulting credentials include being a founding Director of one of Aotearoa’s longest continuous Recreation and Open-Space consultancies, and in 2012 I founded Ideaus Ltd, a community futures consultancy that looks at probable, possible and preferred community futures specifically within the local government sector. My role with Thrive Spaces and Places brings all this experience into one role. I am a recipient of the ‘Mark Mitchell Memorial Award’ for ‘excellence and outstanding personal contribution to the wider industry’, and am also a Fellow of Recreation Aotearoa. 

 

I have spoken nationally and internationally on recreation-related topics including spontaneous urban activity spaces for youth, the future of the recreation industry and the opportunities provided by new technology and disruptive innovations. My abiding philosophy was summed by the foreword to Al Gore’s book: ‘My parents – they gave me a future, an abiding curiosity about what it holds and a sense of our common human obligation to help shape it’. 

 

  

Qualifications

Bachelor Education, Dip Tch (Primary) 

  

Industry Accreditation 

Accredited Recreation Professional, Recreation Aotearoa (ARPro)