Carly O’Connor is the Wai Puna (Manager) for Te Wai Māori Trust.

She has experience working in resource management policy and planning. Her roles have been held in local and central government and her environmental planning roles at engineering and environmental services consultancies in both New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Carly joined Te Wai Māori Trust in January 2020 and has a focus on policy and legislation (freshwater and resource management reform, climate, biodiversity) and mahi related to developing and supporting freshwater taonga research and other initiatives.

Prior to joining Te Wai Māori Trust, Carly’s most recent roles were at Jacobs New Zealand as an environmental planner and at the Ministry for the Environment working across a number of work programmes relating to the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and RMA and consenting.

Carly holds a Masters of Conservation Biology from Victoria University of Wellington and the University of New South Wales and a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Management from Lincoln University.