Blair Mainwaring

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT BLAIR MAINWARING

New Zealand is engaging in deep and exciting conversations about our identity and our place in an increasingly climate-conscious world. At Ocean, we’re committing to bringing clarity, insight and strategic and cultural input to these conversations. Through our talented and multi-lingual team, our work interweaves te ao Māori and commercial perspectives. In my role as a Te Kaihautu, I look to inspire our team to guide public and private sector organisations to identify their best ways forward. Frequently that involves speaking with other leaders about how creativity and design can add value to their key objectives.I trained as a designer, then moved into owning and running Ocean. Through focusing and directing this agency over many years, I recognised that if we really wanted to help modern New Zealand leaders, then we needed to reflect the New Zealand we want this country to be. Embedding bicultural thinking into every aspect of how we work was deeply challenging – but it also revealed the huge and exciting potential for true partnership to refocus how we addressed our clients’ needs. Today, our Ocean team brings a full range of experiences and perspectives to our work. We do that by welcoming indigenous wisdom and the spirit and opportunities of te Tiriti o Waitangi into our conversations; and by growing a strong company through good people from a range of backgrounds who share Ocean’s passion for what New Zealand can be. It’s an exciting journey, buoyed every day by the traction that our work and approach receives from our clients, and by the energy and ideas of our team.