Our Team

Amanda is one of the Directors of Pillar Consulting which she started in 2017 after moving back to New Zealand from Australia. With a background in HR and Health and Safety, and experience in the coal mining sector in Central QLD, Amanda is passionate about providing education to leaders, enabling them to enhance the safety culture within their organisation. She often works with Boards and senior leadership teams to ensure that they understand their duties when it comes to New Zealand legislation across health and safety and employment.

Amanda is a HASANZ registered health and safety practitioner, a ‘Professional’ member of the New Zealand Institute of Safety Management (NZISM), a qualified ‘Lead Auditor’ and sits on the committee for the Tauranga Chamber of Commerce’s subcommittee ’The Business Women’s Network (BWN) as well as the Bay of Plenty Kiwifruit and Avocado Safety Liaison Forum. With firm ideals and beliefs that New Zealand’s safety records can and will be improved, Amanda is proud to be part of the New Zealand safety landscape, creating a progressive/positive difference to workplaces in our country.

Amanda  has also completed the completed the “ICAM Incident Investigation Lead Investigator Course”

Mariska started her career in South Africa and later moved to the UK, where she worked for prominent Recruitment Agencies and internal Hr teams. After a memorable working holiday in New Zealand, she decided to settle down there and make it her home. With over 13 years of experience, Mariska has worked with three major Recruitment Agencies, holding positions such as senior consultant or senior manager. Her innovative thinking has proven valuable for her previous employers, enabling her to secure significant clients and develop high-performing teams.

In her most recent role as Group General Manager for a leading recruitment company in Wellington, Mariska led a team of Consultants and Administration staff. Her responsibilities included driving sales, fostering a positive company culture, and ensuring smooth operations for excellent continuity.

Mariska has obtained accreditation in psychometric assessment interpretation and facilitation through OPRA Consulting. This powerful tool helps ensure clients and candidates find the right fit, ultimately improving employee retention by making informed hiring decisions. This area of responsibility aligned with her passion, and it served as a strong foundation for her next career move here at Pillar Consulting.

Heather joined the Pillar Consulting team in August of 2019.

Having recently returned to NZ after living in Seattle with her husband and three children, she is excited at the opportunity to help NZ organisations achieve safer working environments.

Heather’s work history includes 15 years of retail, account management and sales in the pharmaceutical industry.

Heather also worked in the Aviation Industry for 4 years where health and safety standards and procedures are paramount to every aspect of operations.

Based in Wellington, her role as Client Relationship Coordinator is to ensure our clients gain ultimate value and are entirely satisfied with the services we provide.

Heather is excited at how she can help clients achieve their best across the health and safety landscape by working with the highly talented and experienced team at Pillar Consulting.

Tash joined Pillar consulting as a Health and Safety and Human Resources Consultant. She brings with her valuable experience from various roles across the Manufacturing, Steel Construction and Agricultural sectors.

As a Health and Safety Professional, Tash has worked within organisations from the ground up in the development, implementation and management of best practice systems. She is passionate about worker engagement and creating a positive culture around Health and Safety within an Organisation. Always committed to finding the best solution, Tash prefers to take a practical approach to health and safety, looking to implement systems that actually work within an organisation while maintaining the ultimate goal that all workers go home healthy and safe.

Tash has New Zealand Diploma in Business endorsed in Human Resources. She is experienced across multiple HR functions, including the design and implementation of HR Policies and Procedures, job design and recruitment as well as people and performance management. Specializing in communication, Tash is well practiced in working with organisations to strengthen positive team culture which she believes is an integral part of building productivity and performance.

Natasha has also completed the “ICAM Incident Investigation Lead Investigator Course”

Chantelle is the Director of Pillar Consulting Group Australia, the sister company of Pillar Consulting in New Zealand.  Wanting to build a career that had more focus on developing and maintaining relationships helping people, Chantelle began her career in customer service, talent acquisition and human resources.

She started her own consultancy focusing on IT and financial recruitment and it grew strongly for five years. Family values became central to her life, so she sold her consultancy and moved to New Zealand to raise a family. Chantelle quickly built an active profile in New Zealand, working with a variety of companies as a principal consultant and implementing developmental changes in large businesses.

More recently Chantelle qualified to consult in Workplace Health and Safety in Brisbane Queensland, partnering with our clients to help them put strong, robust processes in place to allow them to protect their people and their business. Driven by a strong work ethic, challenge, and change, she continue her passion to make a genuine effort to improve people’s lives.

Chantelle consistently delivers quality within her work and are passionate about people, change and technology. 

Elaine is a career Office Manager and joined the Pillar team after returning from Sydney, Australia where she worked for a large leading Wholesale Distribution and Marketing Company.

With a great eye for detail, organisation skills that are second to none, a passion for communicating effectively with our clients and a strong desire to continuously develop her own skillset, Elaine is a key part of our team and we’re not sure how we ever managed without her!

Elaine will often be the first point of contact for new clients and with such a friendly, professional manner, everyone really enjoys engaging with her.

Matt joined the Pillar Consulting team in 2022, following seven years as a qualified trainer specialising in providing safety related training on elevated work platforms, working at heights, harnesses, confined space entry, rescue planning and techniques, and permit to work amongst others.

Matt’s extensive knowledge of industry hazards and risk, combined with his wealth of experience, enables him to advise our clients on how best to engage workers on communicating health and safety matters and implementing control measures.

With a long history of working in high-risk environments, including leading adventure tourism activities through to specialist horticultural work to industrial abseiling on construction sites across the globe, he is well placed and thoroughly enjoys brainstorming safety initiatives with our clients as a subject matter expert whilst also trying to keep it simple and realistic.

Luzanne is part of the Pillar Consulting team based in Auckland. She is an experienced H&S professional, specialising in strategic health, safety and wellbeing advice and solutions which are practical and specific. Her background includes more than 10+ years of experience across a wide range of industry groups having worked as a H&S Manager within geotechnical, civil, water resources and soil contamination engineering; conducting external health and safety audits; and providing risk and opportunity management consultancy services across a diverse portfolio.

Her technical proficiency covers a broad understanding of the current health, safety, and wellbeing compliance frameworks, as well as delivering comprehensive health and safety management system gap analysis, improvement initiatives, and implementation of solutions. She is committed to direct, influence and support stakeholders to promote a positive working environment, leading towards a mature health and safety organisational culture.

Luzanne has a strong interested in the mental health and wellbeing of workers. She completed her Master of Business Studies exploring the New Zealand legal response to work-related psychosocial harm and continues her research towards a PhD within the field of workplace psychosocial factors. 

She is a certified member of the New Zealand Institute of Safety Management (NZISM) as well as being listed as a health and safety practitioner on the NZ HASANZ Register. Luzanne has also completed the completed the “ICAM Incident Investigation Lead Investigator Course”