About
Jon

Fresh thinking starts here

As your Queenstown Whakatipu candidate, I offer my life-long love for this district and my career experience of leadership in challenging times.

Our district faces many challenges. But challenge and change present opportunities. I am keen to help our recovery from the COVID crisis, adapt to climate change, be resilient to risk, and grow our community’s wellbeing.

The Queenstown Lakes is a truly special part of the world. It has exceptional people and passionate communities. I am committed to ensuring their wellbeing through the best delivery of council governance, leadership, infrastructure, and services.

Jon Mitchell

I am absolutely committed to ensuring a sustainable future for our communities, environment, and economy. We need experienced, independent leadership for real change.

Born and raised in Queenstown Lakes with forty years of experience in local government, change and project management, community and economic development, disaster and recovery management, and leadership development – in NZ and abroad. Plus four seasons in ski industry management.

My tertiary qualifications in geography, planning, emergency management and leadership will be invaluable in a new council.

I have been co-chair of a public-private international risk-management consortium and have been board member of Queenstown Lakes Shaping Our Future for5 years.

In the bio below, I share the life experience that uniquely equips me to lead our district at this time of change.

 

Born to the district

Born in 1964 into an entrepreneurial Queenstown family with businesses in photography, tourism retail, and a restaurant when Queenstown was only beginning to become the visitor destination it is today.  We moved to Glenorchy in 1975, where my parents opened the top of the lake’s first café. I have seen a lot of change in the district since then. The only constant in this district other than the scenery is change.

I love the lakes, streams, rivers, hills and mountains of this stunning place we call home. Hiking, swimming, rafting, hunting, fishing, running, biking, skiing, and enjoying it all.  Sharing this with my wife and our now mid-20s children has been a highlight of my life here.

 

Early tourism experience

I have extensive experience in tourism, including photography and raft and track guiding. With a specialty in cableway operations management at Skyline and ski field lift management at Coronet Peak, The Remarkables, and in the USA.

Cutting my teeth on organizational change management in the early 1990s as Mt Cook Ski Operations was transformed into a contemporary visitor experience business.

 

Early career

After working in military and law enforcement intelligence and completing qualifications in geography and planning, I began my local government and emergency management career at Central Otago District Council in 1997.

From the CODC’s 76 staff and $200,000 economic development budget I managed, I moved to Northern Manchester, UK, with 10,000 staff, where I led planning for a NZ$110 million community regeneration project. That work extended into initiating joint service delivery projects with 15 local authorities in the region, serving a population larger than New Zealand’s.

While in Manchester, I managed aspects of local responses to a series of crises. These included a “400-year” flood, the foot and mouth disease outbreak, community unrest before and after 9-11, and oil refinery blockades and the resultant impact on fuel supplies and communities.

 

Leadership in emergency planning

Returning to New Zealand in 2002, I joined Emergency Management Canterbury as the regional emergency management planner. This role required working with mayors, CEOs, and emergency management and emergency service leaders from across Canterbury, as well as with ministers and local MPs, and regional business and community leaders.

I was appointed to the National Incident Management System (CIMS) Steering Committee as the local government representative, along with representatives of a wide range of government agencies.  A role I held for seven years.  That system is now one of the most advanced in the world in how it draws agencies together in unified responses to better meet the needs of those affected by emergencies.

 

Crisis leadership

By 2008, I was promoted to regional manager of Emergency Management Canterbury. I led aspects of the immediate and ongoing response to the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes. This included advising the government on New Zealand’s largest disaster recovery programme.

Like the rest of the central Canterbury community, our family worked through and recovered from that crisis. This professional and personal experience built valuable understanding and skills directly relevant to Queenstown Lakes’ recovery from the COVID crisis and its ongoing growth-related challenges.

My responsibilities in Christchurch had me working alongside Mike Theelen, then Christchurch City Council’s chief planning officer. I know how the man ticks.

 

First return to Queenstown

After a decade in Christchurch, it was time to move our family home. I took a half-time emergency management role with QLDC and my wife worked as an emergency nurse at Lakes District Hospital. Our kids finished their schooling at Wakatipu High.

We built a low emissions “forever home” on a site at Arthurs Point that we’d had our eyes on for 20 years.

My time working at QLDC gave me insights into how the organisation operates. Good and bad.

 

Consultancy business

While living in Queenstown established a disaster risk and emergency management consultancy business that grew rapidly. This led us to move to Wellington in 2014 to allow me to deliver services more efficiently in the capital, around New Zealand, Australia, and across the Pacific.

My company led several projects, including developing the Massey University’s undergraduate emergency management teaching programmes and the South Island Alpine Fault Response Plan (SAFER) framework. We were contracted to review national health emergency management plans, and to develop disaster response and recovery management and establish leadership programmes.

We also supported emergency responses directly and indirectly, from bases in Wellington and the Southern Lakes.

My consultancy work with Massey University transitioned to a full-time business and capability development role at the Joint Centre for Disaster Research in 2018, where I still work today. Although mostly remotely from our off-grid eco-lodge south of Kingston.

 

Home to Queenstown

We have moved back to Queenstown and joined the growing league of remote workers. This time the “forever home” will actually be it.

 

Most of my current work is with Massey University’s Joint Centre for Disaster Research, where I lead the national Response and Recovery Leadership Development Programme.

 

I have handed my co-chair of the board of NZ Hazards Inc, a consortium of engineering and geology firms, crown research institutes, private sector resilience service providers, and others, to a colleague. The organization leads on opportunities to build resilience, manage risks, and develop emergency management capabilities in the Pacific, South East Asia, and beyond.

 

When we moved to Wellington in 2015 we knew we would be coming back and bought 10 acres / 4 hectares just north of Kingston with a view into Queenstown Lakes, ten minutes from Kingston, and within easy reach of Queenstown.  We have slowly developed the property since then, slowed down by COVID. We completed our fully off-grid echo home there last year and opened it as an off-the-beaten-track homestay, Nevis Landing, this year.

Shaping our future

I joined the board of Queenstown Lakes’ Shaping Our Future in 2020.  This not-for-profit organisation plays a key role in community consultation on challenging issues and future planning.

 

I’m proud of the work we have done as a diverse group of board members to revitalise the organisation, so that it can now deliver services to a much wider set of clients and funders in Central Otago and Southland.

 

Shaping Our Future runs community planning projects and public workshops and surveys on wellbeing and sustainability topics.  It’s a role I thoroughly enjoy supporting.

 

With Rachel Rose surveying the public at Winter Festival for Shaping Our Future