Our People
SCANZ is run on behalf of its members by the Executive Committee, a set of volunteers who are responsible for organising the strategic plans, events and publicity relating to SCANZ.
SCANZ Executive Committee
Sarah-Jane O'Connor - President
Georgia Carson - Vice President and Secretary
Emma Hudson-Doyle - Treasurer
Andrea Liberatore - Events Officer
Ceridwyn Roberts - Marketing and Communications Officer
Penny Fairbrother - Conference Officer
Jana Makar - Fundraising and Sponsorship Officer
SCANZ Executive Committee
Sarah-Jane O’Connor - President
Sarah-Jane is a lecturer in science communication in the School of Science in Society at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. She has a PhD in Ecology and a Graduate Diploma in Journalism. She was a reporter with The Press in Christchurch and on the West Coast, before joining the Science Media Centre in 2016. Since joining Te Herenga Waka in 2020, Sarah-Jane has taught across undergraduate and postgraduate science communication courses, and has research interests in how news media covers science issues and the role of experts in informing such coverage. She joined the SCANZ executive committee in early 2022 and took over the President role at the November 2022 AGM.
Georgia Carson - Vice President and Secretary
Georgia (Ngāti Whakaue, Te Arawa) has been part of the SCANZ whānau for many years as part of her interest in science communication alongside blogging and tweeting. She is also passionate about podcasts, politics, and making science accessible.
Emma Hudson-Doyle - Treasurer
Emma is Senior Lecturer at the Joint Centre for Disaster Research (Massey University/GNS Science). Her interests lie at the interface between physical science and critical decision makers, with a primary focus on enhancing the communication of science advice during natural hazard events.
Emma’s research has included exploring the communication of forecasts, model uncertainty, probabilities and risk; identifying what motivates preparedness for disasters; as well as how citizen science can build community resilience.
Andrea Liberatore - Events Officer
Andrea is the Associate Director for the New Zealand International Science Festival. She has a background in biology and environmental education and has worked as a museum science communicator and a researcher at the University of Otago’s Centre for Science Communication. She finds joy in providing engaging science experiences to people of all ages and backgrounds.
Ceridwyn Roberts - Marketing and Communications Officer
Ceridwyn Roberts has her own science communications consultancy. She has worked for six of the eleven National Science Challenges and is still sad she won’t collect the full set. Currently she is writing overarching policy briefs collating the last 12 years of research on disaster recovery for the Extreme Weather Research Platform and working on an international Antarctic project. In years gone by, she managed the launch of the NZ SeaRise Programme’s national interactive map and helped write the Climate Change Commission’s draft report on the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Before freelancing, she worked for five years at Motu Economic and Public Policy Research at the intersection of quantitative research and policy.
Ceridwyn has worked in a variety of fields including climate change, disaster resilience ecology, technological innovation, energy, economics, human rights, tertiary education, the performing arts, social services, and vehicle manufacturing. She has a degree in theatre, has worked with StoryCollider as a science storytelling producer, and in ancient times was one of Aotearoa’s top drag kings. She is addicted to weird science crafting, is known for bringing haiku into science, and truly loves synthesizing findings from different disciplines and institutions for science impact.
Penny Fairbrother - Conference Officer
Penny is a senior advisor environment at Greater Wellington Regional Council. Born and bred in Palmerston North, Penny moved to Wellington in the early ‘90s, where she gained a BSc in Zoology and Ecology and a Graduate Diploma in Environmental Health, before spending 4 years working as a lab technician and scientist at ESR and Wellington Hospital.
It wasn’t long before she realised she hated being behind a lab bench, and so moved into roles at The Animal Health Board, WelTec Connect Ltd, The Parliamentary Commission for the Environment and Greater Wellington Regional Council. Most of her roles have revolved around research management and reporting.
Penny lives in Karori with her husband, son and two dogs (Rhino the shitzu and Tank the pug)!
Jana Makar - Fundraising and Sponsorship Officer
Based at the University of Auckland, Jana Makar is the Communications Manager for New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI). She has also worked as a communications professional for multiple organisations in Canada’s cyberinfrastructure sector, from provincial research & education networks to national high performance computing platforms.
She sits on the Women in High Performance Computing Australasia Chapter (WHPC AusNZ) Organising Committee and is working to build community amongst other communications practitioners across Aotearoa’s computational research sector. She has a degree in Communications from the University of Calgary and spent the early part of her career working as a newspaper journalist.
Catherine Kirby
Catherine is the Communication and Relationships Manager for Eco-index where she enjoys the challenge of translating and sharing interdisciplinary research and digital public goods.
Catherine started out in terrestrial ecology research and consulting before being drawn to the creativity of science communication. One of her first serious forays involved writing a field guide for the plant species that she studied during her MSc, to address the issue of fragmented information. Catherine then had a hair-brained idea to replicate a National-Geographic style tree portrait in the depths of Pureora Forest; a successful, collaborative project which celebrated the majesty of our own forest giants and got her hooked on communicating all things science.
Dacia Herbulock
Dacia is Director of the Science Media Centre. She joined the SMC at its launch in 2008, bringing extensive experience in radio, film, documentary and television news in the US, China and Aotearoa New Zealand.
Over the past decade, she has designed and led initiatives to broaden Aotearoa New Zealand’s network of media savvy experts, improve journalists’ understanding of complex science issues and make relevant information accessible to media when science is in the headlines.
Dacia is an Adjunct Research Fellow with the Science and Society group at Victoria University of Wellington.
Lesley Stone
Lesley is a natural scientist with decades of experience leading or supporting sustainability and environmental programmes within and beyond Aotearoa NZ. Communication through storytelling has long played a significant role in her advocacy, teaching, research and professional practice.
As sustainability manager for the University of Auckland, she and her team used aspirational stories to communicate staff and students’ contributions to sustainability. In 2019 and 2020, their stories contributed directly to two consecutive, first-in-the-world placings in the international Times Higher Education rankings for sustainable development impact.
A life-long learner, Lesley is currently enhancing her multi-media storytelling skills through Otago’s science communication programme. She's delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to SCANZ’s journey.
Nina Vidović
Nina holds down several science comms gigs, including as Comms Manager at Wellington UniVentures and Senior Science Comms Advisor at the Earthquake Commission, as well as running a consulting and contract writing business.
She studied biology and maths at Canada's University of Waterloo, during which she worked in toxicology, genomics and physiology labs before realising she much preferred writing about other people's research over doing it herself. This led her to a career in comms and a Masters of Science in Society from Te Herenga Waka –Victoria University of Wellington. She loves helping researchers bring their science to new audiences.