Nelson comes from the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, where she ran a public-private partnership with government and worked alongside what the Fellowship describes as global entrepreneurs and innovators. Before that she was at Callaghan Innovation in a senior strategy role, and earlier in her career she worked as a journalist and in technology foresight and market strategy.
Foundation chair Stephen Jones said Nelson was well suited to the pressures of the moment.
“At a time when ocean health requires both urgency and focus, her leadership will help Live Ocean to sharpen its strategy, strengthen its partnerships and scale its impact.”
Founders Peter Burling and Blair Tuke, who built Live Ocean around their own connection to the sea as competitive sailors, said Nelson’s record of leading organisations through complex change was the deciding factor.
Nelson said the role felt like a natural fit.
“New Zealand begins and ends with the ocean. It is central to our identity and to our future. What we do here matters. Yet the accelerating pressures facing our ocean are often unseen or overlooked.”
She joins as the foundation backs ultramarathon swimmer Jono Ridler’s Swim4TheOcean, a 1,367km swim calling for an end to bottom trawling, which has put Live Ocean’s advocacy work in the public eye.
Nelson starts on Monday 20 April.
