Our clinical leadership team

Nadine has a proven track record of strategic leadership, clinical expertise, and a deep commitment to advancing Māori health outcomes. Her previous role was as Chief Nursing Officer at Māori Health Authority.

The primary purpose of the National Chief Nurse role is to provide strong professional leadership for our highly valued nurses across the system, ensuring the delivery of safe, high-quality care. This includes developing and maintaining the nursing workforce as well as increasing the proportion of Māori and Pacific nurses. As a member of the National Clinical Leadership Team, Nadine will help ensure that clinical advice and expertise underpins our strategic decisions, especially for service design and delivery.

Nadine’s previous experience includes roles as Clinical Chief Advisor Nursing at Manatū Hauora | Ministry of Health, and as Māori Clinical Nurse Specialist in Cancer Care at Capital & Coast DHB, supporting whānau Māori in cancer care pathways. She holds a Master of Health Sciences with First Class Honours and a Bachelor of Nursing and is currently an adjunct teaching fellow at the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Practice at Victoria University of Wellington.

Sue is a registered Physiotherapist, with a broad range of clinical experience in primary care, acute and tertiary services in the public and private health sector through her career working in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom.

In the UK, Sue held senior management and executive leadership positions in various National Health Service trusts and worked extensively with Primary Care commissioning groups and NHS trusts to develop and implement Allied Health-led models of care across South East London to increase access to services and improve outcomes for patients.

In 2012, Sue was appointed Chief Health Professions Officer at Auckland District Health Board and in the last two years has undertaken a co-leadership role with Te Aka Whai Ora as the national Health NZ lead for the Allied Health Scientific and Technical Workforce Group. She is the Chair of the National Directors of Allied Health Group for Health NZ, a role she has held for many years.

As Tāngata o Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, Ngāti Hāmoa, Laura is passionate about addressing the inequities in our healthcare system, and ensuring both clinical and whānau voices are at the heart of our service design and delivery. Laura is focused on the system capability we need to support our midwives throughout the motu providing care for women, pregnant people, pēpi, and whānau. She is excited about supporting inclusive, collaborative ways of working, empowering our kaimahi throughout our system, and a persistent focus on whānau voice and community need. 

Laura has spent over 20 years in healthcare as a midwife, in midwifery and maternity service development, and in leadership and advisory roles across Aotearoa. Laura has worked in national health workforce and service planning, employment relations, change management, as a clinical researcher and in rural health models of care redesign. She has worked with many District Health Boards across the motu, NGOs, regional and national organisations including DHB Shared Services, Health Workforce New Zealand, Health Quality and Safety Commission and the University of Auckland. Laura also served as an advisor to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet on Te Pae Tata, the New Zealand Health Plan.

More recently, she held the position of General Manager National Hospital and Specialist Services and Acting Deputy Chief Executive Service Development and Relations at Te Aka Whai Ora | The Māori Health Authority.

Laura holds a Master of Public Health, a Master of Business Administration, and a Bachelor of Midwifery degree. She is a member of the New Zealand College of Midwives and a member of Hauora Taiwhenua – the Rural Health Network.

Nick is a General and Community Paediatrician based in Nelson. He has been Chief Medical Officer for Te Tau Ihu for 10 years.

Prior to this, he was President of the Paediatric Society of New Zealand for two elected terms and chair of the New Zealand Child and Youth Mortality Review Committee for six years. Nick developed a national network of groups that worked to identify, address, and potentially decrease the numbers of infant, child and youth deaths. He has also chaired the South Island Child Health Alliance and the South Island ICU Network Group. He is currently chair of the National CMO group.

Nick’s areas of interest are preventive healthcare, population child health, health policy and clinical governance structures, community involvement in health, paediatric infectious diseases, quality improvement and integrated IT systems for health gain.

Dr Sarah Jackson has more than 30 years’ experience working to improve quality and safety of care for patients and their whānau.

A qualified anaesthetist specialising in neuroanaesthesia, Sarah’s most recent role was Interim Chief Medical Officer at Capital, Coast and Hutt Valley. Sarah has led changes to models of care, and has established clinical governance boards at the district and regional level. She is chair of the Central Region Clinical Board, and anesthetic representative on the Cancer Services Planning – Surgical Services team, a group set up by Te Aho o Te Kahu, Cancer Control Agency, to look at how best to deliver surgical services to cancer patients in Aotearoa. Her previous research includes contributing to a study on ethnic disparities in postoperative mortality, with a specific focus on outcomes for Māori and non-Māori.

Sarah is responsible for providing professional leadership for all quality and patient safety, working in collaboration with other clinical leads at national, regional and local levels.