Mele Wendt

Consultant and Board Director

Mele Wendt, MNZM, has 17 years of leadership/management experience and 20 years of governance experience. She served as the executive director of the Fulbright New Zealand programme for ten years. Prior to this Mele worked at Victoria University of Wellington as the founding pacific islands liaison officer and then manager of the domestic student recruitment and course advice office.

In the last few years, Mele has been doing consultancies in various areas including scholarships, Pacific peoples’ development, governance, diversity strategies, and organisational capacity building. In governance, Mele currently serves on the boards of Te Kura Correspondence School and the Wellington Community Trust. She recently stood down as the Chair of the Pasifika Education Centre in Auckland.

Mele is Samoan (Malie, Lefaga, Vaiala) and palagi (NZ/Britain) and grew up in Samoa and Fiji. She lives in Wellington, is married to Eteuati Ete and has four grown-up children and three grandchildren. In January 2019, Mele was awarded a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM)  for her services to governance, the Pacific community and women.