CEO, Restaurant Association

A staunch advocate for hospitality & raising the industry’s profile, Marisa has extensive experience in programme design and advising Government agencies and has worked in an advisory capacity to Government and on industry leadership groups for 25+ years. Marisa  spearheads initiatives like the HospoStart programme. Marisa also led collaboration with MSD to create the RA’s HospoStart & Springboard programmes, receiving a number of accolades for her contributions to the industry.

National President

Restaurateur / Owner Boulcott St Bistro (co-owner); Burger Liquor, Wellington; Monsoon Poon, Auckland and Wellington

For more than 30 years Mike has owned and managed many iconic NZ hospitality businesses. He currently the National President of the RA, trustee of the Restaurant Association Education Trust and Trustee of the Wellington Culinary Events Trust, operators of Wellington on a Plate

National Vice-President

Restaurateur and owner of Café Hanoi; Ghost Street, Auckland

 Krishna is co-owner/operator of the Comensa Group. Krishna is one of the most highly respected professionals in NZ hospitality. She has been associated with some of the most loved and successful restaurants in Auckland and has won numerous hospitality accolades. She is National Vice President and also the president of the RA’s Auckland branch.

General Manager,                        Restaurant Association

Nicola has over 20 years experience working in leadership, strategy and
people management roles in the not-for-profit sector. She has extensive project-management experience and has been involved in co-designing industry programs and working with Government agencies, including MBIE, DPMC, WorkSafe and MPI.

Operations Manager, Restaurant Association

As Operations Manager, Sara is responsible for overall management of all aspects of the Association’s training, including the professional development programme and the RA training hub on demand content. She also manages the Hospo Start training programme amongst others run by the Association.

Marketing Manager,
Restaurant Association

Mike has 20 years’ experience as a chef in a varietyof  establishment types in Aotearoa and abroad. In his role as Marketing Manager at RA, Mike is responsible for the Associations communications and marketing, as well as supporting members with their food costing, safety, marketing and more.

David Maucor is a Principal Consultant at Edge. David has over 10 years’ experience in Health, Safety, Environmental and Sustainability management across major industries in New Zealand and France. He has worked on large Public-Private Partnership infrastructure projects in France, the Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Alliance (SCIRT) and City Rail Link in NZ. He is an Infrastructure Sustainability Accredited professional (ISAP) and formally trained in Environmental Management System (ISO14001:2015).

Hannah is a Circular Economy Consultant with expertise in material optimisation, strategy development, circular economy advisory, circular procurement, and behaviour change. Hannah has experience with the public, not-for-profit, and private sectors including with ASX20 listed companies. Hannah applies a human-centred systems thinking lens in working across a broad range of materials throughout the value chain with extensive experience in managing and maintaining value from food materials.

          Hannah brings over a decade of behaviour change experience working with top-tier corporates and government agencies across the globe. Hannah’s approach recognises that behaviour is a function of both the individual and their environment and uses science to develop interventions that work. Hannah’s work spans health, water, and waste sectors, and her doctoral research focuses on climate  resilience and        behavioural          adaptations.

Aidan (Consultant, Circular Economy and Lifecycle Thinking) graduated with a bachelors in Sustainable Innovation (Fashion and Textiles) and has since worked in a range of sustainability and CE projects surrounding fashion & textiles, circular economy implementation, sustainability research, supply chain transparency and built environment. Recent projects include researching, analysing and visualising quantitative data within complex material collection and processing systems for BioPak, as well as conducting waste data analysis and visualisation to produce insights on CE objective implementation for GPT and JLL.

Jaymee has honed her excellent branding and design skills through working predominantly in smaller teams throughout her career. Her ability to get stuck into solving design problems quickly, effortlessly and beautifully makes her a secret weapon on any project. She’s a detail driven, thoughtful creative thinker who can adapt to suit any brief.

More than comfortable thinking big for large scale brands, or carefully crafting the small stuff, Jaymee helps bring a balance to any project she works on.