Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
• Delivering successful change management through restructuring the communications group to better deliver on the Ministry’s strategic goals, while measurably improving the group’s wellbeing and morale. • Leading the communications group (a total of around 16 staff and contractors) delivering communications strategies at pace for a broad range of significant policy areas, including climate change, resource management reform, freshwater quality improvement, indigenous biodiversity, and waste management including phasing out single-use plastics. • Media management, including developing the teams’ skills in responding to media queries, supporting spokespeople through interviews, working with journalists to ensure fair and balanced coverage of issues, and supporting Ministers’ offices with media queries. • Providing counsel to the Chief Executive and Executive Leadership Team on media issues, select committee preparation and support, and all other external communication. • Member of the Ministry’s Partnerships & Customers business group leadership team, and the communications lead for the Ministry’s emergency and COVID-19 response groups.
• Responsible for creating the Ministry’s Māori Engagement Plan, working alongside the Treaty Partnerships Team and other colleagues to ensure a joined-up approach and alignment with MfE’s new Strategic Framework. • Alongside the Director Customers, developed the Ministry’s new Engagement Framework, including a communications plan and training plan to ensure the framework was embedded rapidly into MfE’s culture and work. • Lead advisor for the Chief Executive’s communications, including speechwriting, briefing notes, blog posts, and other support as required. • Provided strategic communications to several high-profile policy areas, including writing communications strategies which were presented to Cabinet or on occasion directly to the Prime Minister for approval.
• Managed the multidisciplinary digital communications team (around 10 staff) in a high-pressure, fast-paced environment. The team was responsible for the Leader of the Opposition’s social media presence, along with the profiles of up to 70 MPs and candidates through the 2020 election campaign. • Worked with senior members of the leadership team to create strategic and consistent messaging based upon qualitative and quantitative data analysis, then working with the digital communication team to segment, design and target those messages to key audiences across a range of channels to ensure maximum online engagement with issues. We also encouraged genuine engagement on our digital channels through discourse and digital listening. • Engaged with staff and volunteers across the country to support their implementation of the campaign strategy and targeted messaging, including targeted support to enable local online engagement on specific issues in each electorate. • During the term of my contract, our reach on social media increased by around 460% compared to the prior two months, and by the end of my contract our primary account was reaching 2.5m New Zealanders each week. Engagement on our content increased by a similar percentage. • This role required significant personal resilience and the ability to calmly lead a team through a very challenging, high-pressure environment.
• Managed the high-functioning Strategic Communications team of fourteen staff. The team was responsible for communicating the Department’s strategic direction to its 10,500+ staff, 10,000 prisoners, 30,000 people serving sentences in the community, and a wide range of external stakeholders including political leaders. • Worked alongside the Chief Executive and Executive Leadership Team to develop and implement high-level communication plans for the Department’s new strategy, Hōkai Rangi. This included production of high quality engagement collateral including running events for external stakeholders, staff, and senior leaders; presentations; digital engagement tools including websites and apps; and publications targeted to distinct audiences ranging from prisoners to Cabinet Ministers. • Responsible for a $2.3m budget including strategic capital planning, consistently staying on budget, finding additional savings as directed by the Deputy Chief Executive, and achieving the required outputs within strict limits. • Led the redevelopment of the Corrections website with the goal of making it accessible for our key audiences. The website was delivered on time and on budget. Improved performance in the first month after launch included a hit rate increase of 19%, reduced bounce rate by 13%. We also increased read rates on each week’s most important intranet posts by ~30% through finding new ways of drawing people’s attention to key items they may otherwise have missed. • Led the Department’s communications response through a number of crises including the Christchurch mosque shootings, the 2019 measles outbreak, significant water shortages, and the COVID-19 coronavirus.
Built and managed excellent working relationships with staff in a variety of roles, including the wider Public Affairs team, Regional Communications Advisors and National Office staff in many areas including the Executive Leadership Team. I’ve also made a point of building relationships with those in other roles within the Department and externally, such as Prison Directors, frontline staff and peers in other justice sector agencies. Event management, logistics and support for the openings of the National Learning Centre and Auckland Prison, the 2018 Leaders’ Forum, Rimutaka Prison Gate to Plate and the Justice Sector Forum. Worked collaboratively across the wider Public Affairs team to create consistently accurate, high quality communications materials including intranet content, speeches for Executive Leadership Team members, printed collateral, project communications strategies and more, while carefully evaluating and minimising risk to the Department. Proactively worked to model strategic communication best practice, cutting through jargon and ensuring engagement with all key stakeholders in any given project.