We are pleased to welcome two new members to the ITENZ board, Emily Cordwell and Jon Smith.

Emily is an educational leader and manager with experience in both New Zealand and the United Kingdom. In 2023, she  joined AsureQuality, a state-owned enterprise, to lead its PTE and is responsible for the commercial viability, growth, and quality assurance of the AsureQuality Academy, which offers over 130 courses across primary industries, food safety, meat processing, and environmental sectors. She works closely with external stakeholders such as NZQA, Workforce Development Councils, TEC, the Ministry for the Environment, and MPI.

Emily is passionate about education and making it accessible for all, leveraging the latest technological advancements. In 2022, she completed a four-year, part-time Master’s in Digital Education with Massey University, focusing on the motivation and engagement of adult learners in online environments. She is currently studying Te Reo with the Open Polytechnic.

Jon’s is General Manager Quality Assurance at Ignite and across the Skills group. He is an established and proven senior strategic academic leader with over twenty years’ experience within further and higher education, and the learning and training sector, having worked intensively with domestic and international learners. He is highly experienced with a range of international educational qualification structures, awarding bodies, standards, and associated quality frameworks and systems.

His previous roles at NZQA, Northable, NorthTec and various roles in the UK have allowed him to work in a range of multicultural environments in different countries with learners, staff, employers, and industries. These experiences have provided a solid understanding and deep appreciation of stakeholder needs, capabilities, challenges, support requirements and the social disadvantage that learners may encounter whilst in education and training.

Jon was actively involved with Reform of Vocational Education (RoVE) work streams in his previous roles at NZQA and Senior Leadership roles within the ITP sector. Jon has been an NZQA External Evaluation Review (EER) team member conducting EER and Targeted Evaluation Reviews (TER) across the sector. He is passionate about quality assurance and continuous improvement.