Workshop speakers

Mike is an environment law specialist, based in Wynn Williams’ Auckland office. He acts for both councils and private clients on complex planning and consenting issues, including retail, commercial and industrial developments, infrastructure projects and comprehensive residential schemes. Mike is the Chair of the RMLA Auckland Branch Committee.

Lucy is a specialist in environmental and local government law, based in Wynn Williams’ Christchurch office. Lucy advises both local authorities and private sector clients and has particular expertise in freshwater management, district and regional planning processes and the full spectrum of local government issues. Lucy regularly appears before independent hearings panels and the Courts.

My fascination with agriculture started as a young boy growing up in England. This fascination was driven by a love of machinery and animals. At the first opportunity as a 12-year-old, I started working on a neighbouring farm for every awake hour that my parents didn’t force me to go to school. The farm was primarily arable with some sheep and beef. It was obvious this was where I wanted to focus my career path, and soon found myself on a plane with my parents and younger brother in 1996, as a 15-year-old, destination New Zealand. Once here, I completed 6^th and 7^th form before immediately going to work on a dairy farm in the South Waikato. There was still a strong pull towards growing crops and operating machinery, so I worked for a contractor for three years. Following this, I spent a short 12 months working for Waratah in the forestry equipment industry before I found myself working for a John Deere dealership (there was that love of machinery again) in the Waikato and Auckland regions. There I built a career working my way through the business, spending the last 5 years as Chief Operating Officer before moving on to join Drummond & Etheridge and relocating to the beautiful South Island.

While the pull of working with cool farm machinery has always been a draw card in my career, as I have grown older, my understanding of the part we play in feeding the world has continued to develop and become increasingly important. I believe the future of food production, resource management and climate change are going to be one of humanities biggest ever challenges. We established Landlogic with a focus on providing world-leading equipment and technology solutions that provides farmers and growers with the tools to face these challenges head on and build a sustainable future.

Shah is a corporate finance specialist in the fields of consultancy and start-ups. Upon completing his MBA at the National University of Singapore, Shah returned to home to Aotearoa where he took up a position with the Bank of New Zealand (BNZ). There he honed his skills in leveraged buyouts and mergers & acquisitions.

He made the decision to leave BNZ to start up his own venture capital firm SO Capital. It’s success led to him purchasing Air Napier in 2018 where, as CEO, he is currently disrupting and growing the aviation industry. Through his many years of leadership and finance experience, Shah has a amassed a verifiable history of financial modelling, preparing and implementing short and long term strategic objectives and consulting multinationals.

He has also been called on to provide recommendations to the company boards and CEOs and analyse merger and leveraged buyout opportunities through the application of advanced technical acumen coupled with highly developed interpersonal skills. His professional focal points include advanced business administration, cost integration, carrying out merger & acquisition analyses, complex negotiation, industry networking, multi-corporate operations and performance monitoring.

Felicity Hayman is the Environment and Planning Manager at Christchurch International Airport Ltd, who is passionate about enabling future Airports ensuring Te Waipounamu and Aotearoa continues to be connected to the rest of the world.

Felicity has worked as an Environment and Planning practitioner for 15 years, with a strong focus on large infrastructure providers, bringing a thorough and grounded understanding of resource management issues into day to day operations and long term intergenerational planning. More recently Felicity successfully led complex resource management process, which enable the future Airport, and provide intergenerational protection for communities around the Airport. Like most Environment practitioners, Felicity loves spending time outdoors connecting with the mountains, rivers and the sea, preferring to travel everywhere by pedal powered two wheels.

Degrees in science and law from Otago University, two decades practising law (including working for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment) and experience as a company director meant Rachel Brooking was well-prepared when she became an MP in 2020.

She has been a member of the Finance and Expenditure, Environment and Regulations Review select committees. In April, she was made a Minister, holding the portfolios of Oceans and Fisheries, Food Safety, Associate Environment and Associate Immigration.

Rachel lives in Dunedin – the city where she was raised, educated and spent most of her working life, and where she and her husband are now raising their own family of three. In her spare time, she likes to go running.

Prior to becoming a Green MP in 2011, and then Minister of Conservation, Land Information and Associate Minister for the Environment (waste) during the Green’s first term in Government from 2017-2020, Eugenie was an elected Regional Councillor with Environment Canterbury. She also worked for Forest & Bird for 13 years, campaigning to protect Tai Poutini/West Coast beech and rimu forests and the South Island high country. She is proud to have been made a Distinguished Life Member by Forest & Bird, and values the huge amount of practical conservation work volunteers do around the country.