Our Trustees

Nick Potter

Chair & Trustee

Nick was born in the Waikato, bred in Auckland and cultured in Wellington. Funnily enough, this Potter is an earthy type – he grew up making pots in his mum’s shed. These days he mostly potters around town.
Nick works at the interface of sustainability/regeneration and social innovation. He enjoys connecting parts, including people and ideas, together. He makes a living as an independent researcher, facilitator and writer. Over the last decade he’s also worked for Landcare Research, New Zealand’s Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Victoria’s Environment Commissioner, and at RMIT University in Melbourne.
Nick is constantly inspired by the people around him who are generating positive changes. He’s also grateful for the bountiful supplies of chocolate that they feed him. Nick enjoys the paradoxes of life. Even though he’s starting to clock up the years, he reckons that he’s actually growing younger every day.

Megan Hosking

Trustee

Megan has been instrumental in getting Intersect off the ground; getting the ball rolling with a brand, website and identity and a sense of humour. Her initial vision was to create a forum for us to have some of the tricky conversations that need to happen in a fun and engaging environment. It has become so much more than that thanks to all the others who now actively contribute to the network. Her background is visual communication design, which she has been using to advance the cause of sustainability and cultural transformation through her design company Alto. Alto is on the back burner now, as Intersect and other world-changing activities take over her life!

Megan loves the web. She's enjoying all the interesting ways that it is able to be used to connect people in action around things that matter to them, and to enable them to have a collective voice within a global context. Her mother tells us that Megan was born disruptive, but over the years this trait has become an asset – when applied to things like “the Freeze” and “Frocks on Bikes” which essentially aim to disrupt our old thinking for a moment in time and leave us open to consider that we can be a part of great change.

Joshua Vial

Trustee

Programmer by training, changemaker by vocation - Joshua spends most of his time building websites (ruby on rails), exploring business opportunities and working on not for profit campaigns. Last year, a lot of his energy is currently going into a campaign to say NO to plastic bags in New Zealand. This year, he has just launched 'Work Now' which is a time trading platform. Both of these ventures involve getting a large number of people contributing small amounts of time to make some significant change in the world. Follow his thinking on his blog. Joshua is basically interested in everything and says "diversity is the greatest wonder of this world". He has expertise in order of enthusiasm and inverse proficiency; dancing, singing, drumming, writing, talking, reading, martial arts, meditating, walking, computer stuff.

Isabella Cawthorne

Trustee

Born and raised in Wellington, Isabella's roots are firmly planted in the seaside village of Plimmerton.  This was a pretty good start: you can't avoid being soaked in sea, bush and a sense of community.   Watching too many David Attenborough nature programmes as a child meant Isabella got interested in environmental matters before she was knee-high to a grasshopper, and when of age she headed for Victoria University to get Law and a Masters in Environmental Studies (fisheries research and the role of science in policy - woo-hoo!).

By day she's at the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, in the Environment and Social Science team, helping figure out what science NZ needs to do its thang (but better than it's currently doing it).  By night (or at least outside working hours) she can be spotted hurtling across town on her turquoise fixed-gear bike, dancing in short shorts with Latinbeat, exhorting ladies to frock up with Frocks On Bikes, and antagonising people at parties by saying things like "Um.... hello?! True-cost pricing for natural resources puh-LEEEEASE!"

Mahara Inglis

Trustee

Sarah Campbell

Trustee

Carl Chenery

Trustee

Carl's work bridges ReGeneration (beyond Sustainability), Facilitation and intergenerational collaboration, and has initiated and designed a number of events and processes that bring people together around possibilities and ideas that are part of the future he wants to see. Empowered Citizens. Cradle to Cradle not Cradle to Grave. Env regeneration & Social Justice, together not separate. Life, Justice and Fun. Dialogue not debate. Connected young people. Good Intentions, not less harmful ones. He is trained in Mechanical Engineering and Commerce, enjoys to boogie, and frequents his local beach in Te Henga, Auckland.

Regional Activators

Jasmine Cargill

Regional Activator - Auckland

Born in Dargaville, home town WangaVegas, Wellingtonian at heart, currently residing in Grey Lynn (an independent region located close to Auckland).

Passionate about community, social justice, equity, holistic wellbeing. Interested in how things connect and interrelate. Excited by the change/crisis/opportunity/possibility matrix.

Studied and worked in theatre, trained as a counsellor, worked with community groups (community theatre, mental health, sexual violence prevention research) and government (Taskforce for Action on Sexual Violence), currently working with business (SBN) - interested in how community/government/business boundaries blur. Intersected in social innovation, shifting the convestaion from "zero negative impact" to creating "positive social and ecological impacts".

Likes dress up parties, bikes, community notice boards, wedges shaped buildings, outrageous dancing.

Jasmine's personal utopia includes visions of living in harmony with nature, clean and smart technologies, regeneration of wild places, social systems that respect all people, seasonal celebrations, dance festivals and lots of bicycles!

Eva Laurence

Regional Activator - Auckland