Rosalie Nelson has been appointed chief executive of Live Ocean Foundation, bringing a career spanning journalism, technology strategy and nonprofit management.
Nelson joins from the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, where she led a public-private partnership with government and worked alongside what the Fellowship describes as global entrepreneurs and innovators. Before that, she held a senior strategy role at Callaghan Innovation, and her earlier career took in journalism, 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 built Live Ocean around their connection to the sea as competitive sailors. They said Nelson's record of leading organisations through complex change was the deciding factor in her appointment.
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 takes up the position as the foundation backs ultramarathon swimmer Jono Ridler's Swim4TheOcean, a 1,367km swim calling for an end to bottom trawling, which has brought Live Ocean's advocacy work into the public eye.
Nelson starts on Monday 20 April.
