Equal Pay Act Event Speakers

Gráinne is the Chief Executive and System Lead Pay Equity. She was appointed to the role in April 2021. Prior to joining Te Kawa Mataaho, she served as the first Secretary of Children and Chief Executive Oranga Tamariki — Ministry for Children. She was previously Chief Executive of Bupa Care Services NZ. Gráinne holds a BSc (Hons) from the University of Liverpool and worked in the UK National Health Service prior to emigrating to New Zealand in 1998. Gráinne was awarded an MBA (Hons) in 2003 from IMD Switzerland and was presented with the Welshe Award for outstanding female graduate.

Cybèle is a senior lecturer in the History Programme at Victoria University of Wellington, a union delegate, and active in the living wage movement. A scrupulous, adventurous writer, Cybèle identifies as a twentieth-century New Zealand social, cultural, and labour historian. In her first book, Workers in the Margins: Union Radicals in Post-war New Zealand, she explored the roles women, Māori, Pasifika and unemployed workers played in working-class organisations and protests. She has almost completed a book-length biography of Auckland communist and trade union leader Bill Andersen (1924-2005). Andersen's life is a window through which to examine the intersection between communism, trade unionism and social movements, from the 1930s to the early twenty-first century. She has just completed a chapter-length biography of activist Rona Bailey, who led equal pay campaigns in the 1940s.

Ally is a teacher aide at Newton Central School, a long-running NZEI Te Riu Roa member, and teacher aide campaigner. Starting as worksite rep, Ally moved into the Auckland Support Staff National Caucus Kaiawhina Tautoko (SSNCKT) role in July 2017. In this role she worked with Sue Nimmo, and her remarkable group of women, who pioneered the first teacher aide pay equity claim. In February 2020, the Ministry of Education and NZEI Te Riu Roa settled a historic pay equity claim for the 20,000 teacher aides who work in state and state-integrated schools and kura in New Zealand. The hard work led by Ally and the pay equity negotiation team resulted in a pay correction for teacher aides to eliminate sex-based undervaluation in remuneration and terms and conditions of employment.

Martha is a human rights and public law barrister with over 25 years' experience. Early in her career, she worked in trade unions. She joined the Clerical Workers Union in 1979 as a union organiser, becoming the union’s assistant national secretary in 1986. While working for the union, she received a Winston Churchill Fellowship to study pay equity in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada and was a founding and active member of CEVEP, the Coalition for Equal Value Equal Pay. Martha has also worked as a pay equity researcher both in New Zealand, where she worked as part of a small team at the Commission for Pay and Employment Equity developing Equity at Work, a gender-neutral job evaluation system, and in the United Kingdom where she worked on equal pay cases for trade unions. Martha was a member of NACEW for seven years and was instrumental in NACEW hosting the 2004 Conference on Pay and Employment Equity. Currently she is a Deputy Chairperson of the Human Rights Review Tribunal and a Panel Convenor of the New Zealand Parole Board. She has been a Barrister sole since 2014, and for the previous 14 years was employed by the Crown Law Office specialising in human rights.  

Alex is a senior manager, lawyer, and diversity and inclusion practitioner with expertise in creating and implementing strategy to achieve positive workplace culture change. With a background as an employment lawyer, she has significant experience leading initiatives targeted at creating and sustaining fairer and more inclusive places of work. She is currently Deputy Commissioner Workforce, Employment Relations & Equity at the Te Kawa Mataaho | Public Service Commission leading and implementing workforce strategy to ensure the Public Service is an exemplar employer of a highly skilled and capable workforce. She also sits on the State Sector Pay Equity Governance Group – a group established by Ministers to close gender and ethnic pay gaps across the Public Sector. Alex is a Trustee on the Board of Diversity Works New Zealand and a member of the YWCA Gender Tick Advisory Board.