About me

A little about me

I live in Paraparaumu with my wife Renee and our two young sons Alex and Leon. You’ll often find us down at Paraparaumu Beach where we’ll be taking to our boys to Maclean Park or to the Saturday market.

I have a Bachelor of Arts majoring in History and Political Science from Victoria University of Wellington (and you may have seen me leading the fight opposing the proposed name change to VUW).

Professionally, I’ve had a varied career that saw me start as a supermarket assistant at high school and then move onto being a bank teller after university.

After getting in ANZ’s Graduate Programme I moved onto a career in communications and public relations which has seen me work across New Zealand, Australia, and in London in a range of communications roles for organisations like ANZ, Telstra, and Te Papa, as well as for Prime Ministers Sir John Key and Sir Bill English, and most recently for farmer industry good body Beef + Lamb New Zealand where I finished in early June 2020.

I’ve also been involved locally with the Kāpiti Economic Development Agency, a volunteer-run group providing help and advice to Kāpiti’s business and community entrepreneurs.

2019-2022: Districtwide Councillor, Kāpiti Coast District Council

In 2019 I stood for Kāpiti’s mayoralty and as a districtwide council candidate, and in the election I was successfully elected to Council with 3,595 votes as the top ranked districtwide candidate, and missed out on the mayoralty by 971 votes, getting 8,058 votes to incumbent Mayor K Gurunathan’s 9,029.

In October 2021 I announced I would not be seeking re-election.

While on Kāpiti Coast District Council, along with my regular duties as a councillor, I also held the following roles:

Committees
Strategy and Operations - Deputy Chair November 2019 - August 2022, Chair August 2022 - October 2022

Subcommittees
Audit and Risk

Portfolios
Rural

Greater Wellington Regional Council

Economic Wellbeing