Bridget Cooksley

Manager Specialist Recruitment, Department of Corrections

Bridget has a wealth of recruitment experience within both agency and in-house environments in both New Zealand and Australia. She is currently the Manager Specialist Recruitment with the Department of Corrections (in New Zealand) where she looks after a national team of Senior/Recruitment Advisers, focussed on providing high quality recruitment support to the business and profiling the Department externally to excite people about the range of opportunities we have available.

Bridget manages the Department’s relationships with external partners including psychometric testing, advertising and pre-employment screening providers, recruitment agencies and is the main point of contact at Corrections for the All-of-Government recruitment solution. During her career she has worked tirelessly to increase the professionalism of industry, both when leading teams within recruitment agencies and building the in-house team at Corrections. She recognises that the best results are achieved when recruitment agencies work in partnership with their clients, where there is transparency, mutual respect and understanding. She expects to receive professional service from the recruiters the Department engages and is often heard reminding her hiring managers to ‘be a good customer’.

Catherine Taylor

Director, Head Office

Originally from Dunedin, Catherine gained a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Otago University.  Her experience includes the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Mitsubishi Motors, Rudd Watts and Stone, Sun Alliance Life and Disability, State Insurance, ENZA and Land Information New Zealand.

In 2001 Catherine joined the New Zealand Post Banking Project Team (Kiwibank Limited) and developed and led the People strategy, programmes and processes, and culture development for this start-up from scratch.  In her role of Group Manager People, she was a member of the Kiwibank Leadership Team.

After leaving Kiwibank, Catherine worked on assignment at the Ministry of Health as Group Manager People and Capability where she reviewed the People and Capability function and people processes for the Ministry.

She has since helped set up the people processes and organisation structure for KiwiBuild in start up phase, and then was part of the senior leadership team responsible for the establishment of the new agency, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. She led the set up of the people function, processes, policies and programmes, and facilitated the development of purpose and values for this new agency.

Catherine is a member of the Te Omanga Hospice Board and the Victoria University MBA Advisory Board, and was previously on the Human Resources Institute of New Zealand (HRINZ) Board, including National President. She is a Fellow of HRINZ.  She is a member of the New Zealand Institute of Management, the New Zealand Institute of Directors, and Australian Institute of Company Directors.

She won the HRINZ HR Person of the Year award in 2003, was finalist in the “Outstanding Corporate Leader” category of the HER Regional Wellington Businesswoman of the year awards in 2009, and recognised by Columba College in the School’s Business Hall of Fame in 2014.

Jeremy Sole

CEO, Electrical Training Company

Jeremy Sole is the Chief Executive Officer at The Electrical Training Company, New Zealand’s largest Group Apprenticeship scheme. Previous roles have included six years as CEO of the NZ Contractors’ Federation (Now Civil Contractors NZ) and MBIE, where he held roles in stakeholder engagement and as an engagement lead in the Sector Workforce Engagement Programme (SWEP). He has experience across a wide variety of sectors and role types including; sales, marketing, division management, training and development, engineering, HR and organisational development. Jeremy has also spent time privately consulting in NZ, Australia, Japan, and the Pacific. His qualifications include a G.Dip.Bus.HR and an MBA from University of Auckland and he is a member of the Institute of Directors and the CEO Institute.

Leslie Taylor

Head of Employment and Corporate Brand, The Warehouse Group

Leslie is the Head of Corporate and Employment Brand at The Warehouse Group – one of New Zealand's largest general merchandisers. They have 5 core brands, 12,000 people, over 250 locations and close to $3 billion in sales.

Leslie leads the Corporate and Employment Brand team to promote The Warehouse Group as a brand of choice for customers, communities, candidates and employees. She is responsible for defining, articulating, bringing to life, advocating and protecting The Warehouse Group corporate brand and The Warehouse Groups employment brands (The Warehouse Group, The Warehouse, Noel Leeming, Warehouse Stationery and Torpedo7).

With over 10 years’ experience in recruitment and Employment Brand, Leslie is an expert in her field. Leslie was the winner of the 2018 Employer Brand International, Global Employer Brand Leader award and also the 2018 HRINZ Specialist of the year award. The Warehouse Group has won numerous awards under her leadership. She has mentored over 60 Marketing, Communications and HR Interns. She is a proud advocate for Employment Brand and therefore co-founded and manages the Auckland Employment Brand Network.

Grant Burley

Past Co-Founder and Director

Grant started a career in IT Recruitment in 1993, some 25 years on he’s helped establish and build some of New Zealand’s better known recruitment brands including Absolute IT which was recently sold to NZX listed AWF. 

Grant is now retired but is actively involved in new ventures and business mentoring.

Mark Knoff-Thomas

CEO of the Newmarket Business Association

Mark Knoff-Thomas is CEO of the Newmarket Business Association. A role he has held for 5 years which involves overall town centre management of the Newmarket Business precinct and its 1,900 diverse businesses. Prior to that he had an extensive career in recruitment where he helped develop a start-up, worked as a leasing consultant for an SME, then went onto executive leadership roles with a multi-national. He has over 17 years director level, and general management experience leading diverse teams, revenue streams and in multiple cities. Experienced in start-up, SME, MNC and NFP environments.

Siobhan McKenna

CEO, Global Women

Siobhan has a broad background in business, including media, digital and utility sectors and was founder and CEO of MediaWorks Interactive. She has held leadership positions in a global management consulting company, working in a variety of international markets and has most recently been leading transformation initiatives in part of the education sector in New Zealand. Siobhan was also appointed a Future Director with Ports of Auckland in 2017.

Pauline Brown

National Manager Recruitment, Downer

Pauline is the National Manager for Downer NZ. Downer NZ has approximately 12,500 employees across their Downer, Spotless and Hawkins business and they design, build and sustain assets, infrastructure and facilities and are the leading provider of integrated services in Australia and New Zealand.

Pauline heads up the Recruitment function for the business, currently with a team of sixteen, sourcing talent across the company’s broad disciplines. With over 20 years’ experience in Recruitment and working within internal functions in high profile organisations such as Air NZ and Telecom (now Spark), Pauline has a wealth of experience in developing strategies to attract and engage in a wide talent audience. Pauline is delighted to be a part of the judging panel for the SARA awards and is looking forward to seeing the great work being done in Recruitment across NZ.