New Sport NZ Chair, board members appointed

  • Hon Grant Robertson
Sport and Recreation

Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson announced a number of appointments to the Sport New Zealand (Sport NZ) board today.

Bill Moran has been appointed Chair of the board. He replaces outgoing Chair Sir Paul Collins, whose outstanding contributions on the board since 2009 are being recognised this week at an event in Parliament.

“Sir Paul’s significant contribution to sport was recognised in the 2015 New Year Honours list when he was made a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit,” Grant Robertson said.

“I wish to thank Sir Paul for all he’s done for sport in this country, including as New Zealand Sports Foundation Governor from 1986 to 1999 and being integral to the foundation of High Performance Sport New Zealand and the successful Rugby World Cup 2011 process.”

Bill Moran has been on the Sport NZ board since September 2016. His experience includes a range of senior governance roles for New Zealand Football including as director from 2008-2015, chair of the Organising Committee for the FIFA Men’s World Cup 2015 in New Zealand, and trustee of the New Zealand Football Foundation.

He spent more than 30 years at the Treasury, where he was most recently Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Secretary before retiring in 2016.

A number of new Sport NZ board appointments were also made today. Farah Palmer, Raewyn Lovett and Rowan Simpson are new board members. They join Mr Moran, Darrin Sykes (who was reappointed today for another term), Jason Shoebridge, Hilary Poole and Kylie Clegg.

“The new appointments bring a mix of governance experience and expertise in sports participation and administration. They bring an appropriate balance of knowledge, skills and diversity,” Grant Robertson said.

Farah Palmer is a former Black Ferns captain. Her interest in rugby continues as a member of the New Zealand Rugby Board and as an independent member of the Māori Rugby Board. She is a senior lecturer at Massey University’s School of Management, with research interests in race, gender and sport management leadership.

Raewyn Lovett is a partner at Duncan Cotterill Law, chair of Quotable Value New Zealand and Auckland Sport – ‘Aktive’ (the umbrella regional sport trust for Auckland), co-chair of the International Working Group on Women and Sport and a former Netball New Zealand chair.

Rowan Simpson is the Wellington-based founder and investor of a range of New Zealand technology start-ups including Trade Me, Xero, Vend and Timely. He also sits on the board of the New Zealand Winter Games Trust.

Grant Robertson thanked outgoing board members Paul Cameron and Jacqueline Barron, whose terms concluded, for their considerable contributions to Sport NZ.