The New Zealand Law Society has appointed Helen Morgan-Banda as its new Executive Director, Law Society President Kathryn Beck announced today.
Ms Beck said the appointment followed a rigorous recruitment process undertaken to replace the Law Society’s previous Executive Director, Christine Grice, who was appointed a Justice of the High Court of New Zealand in December 2017.
Helen Morgan-Banda.
Ms Beck said the Law Society Board wanted to thank Mary Ollivier who has been acting Executive Director of the Society for the past year.
“Mrs Ollivier has led the Society during a particularly challenging period, and on behalf of the Board I want to publicly thank her for her significant contribution.”
Ms Morgan-Banda will bring to the role experience in leading another professional body, the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners (RNZCGP), where she was CEO from 2012 to late 2018.
“The experience she has gained leading RNZCGP during a period of change is very relevant to her new role,” she said.
Ms Beck says Ms Morgan-Banda will take up her new role on 9 April.
Helen Morgan-Banda
Helen Morgan-Banda is an experienced Chief Executive and joins the Law Society after having led the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners for 6.5 years.
In her role at the College Helen led a transformation programme to develop its operational capabilities. This centred on meeting the needs of its members, delivering high-quality training and professional development as well as setting, and assessing against, quality standards for general practice.
In parallel she managed initiatives to enable the College to better influence government policy, to introduce mandatory general practice quality assurance, and make significant improvements to the systems and infrastructure of the College.
The College has responsibility for training general practice registrars and during her time at the College the numbers of trainees, and government funding for training, significantly increased.
Stakeholder engagement, and advocacy on behalf of members and general practice, was a major focus of the role.
Earlier in her career Helen held senior roles in both private and public sector organisations. She worked as a senior advisor in the Prime Minister’s office and held corporate affairs roles in New Zealand, Australasian and global public and private sector organisations.
Helen has been a Director on the Boards of two health information technology companies and was the Director of Communications and Marketing for a multinational IT corporate that provided services to major Australasian businesses.
In 2017 Helen completed the Leading Businesses into the Future Executive Programme at the London Business School, having previously completed an MBA, with distinction, from Massey University.
Her personal interests include spending time with her family, travel, outdoor activities and reading widely.