About Us

Our professional community
engagement group

We volunteer our professional skills and talents and love it when new people want to join our team. Please get in touch if you want to be part of a new kind of empowered community movement.

Core Team

We all love trains, and we all love New Zealand. Rather than campaigning in the streets, we decided to put our heads together and come up with an idea for how we could make rail work for everyone in Aotearoa. We are focused on making it work in the Golden Triangle first. Once that work is complete, we believe that the introduction of other lines across the country will become both viable and affordable.

Katrina Ramage

Project Founder & Director

Ross Hale

Brand Guardian

Scott Faville

Media & Events Manager

Benjamin Love

Industry Expert Liaison

Mike Smith

Finance & Funding Advisor

Andrew Crisp

Website & Social Media

Mary Abiad

Rangatahi Engagement

Kelvin Eagleton

Stakeholder Manager

Vin Porter

Tech Support

Rini Mohandas

Website Support

We are also grateful to the research, copy-checking and administrative support we received from Dominic Joseph, Christian Fernando, Dan Ortiz, Shirley Porter, Maria Smith, Harriet Preddey, Chris Ramage, Mandy Hale, and Kira Soeberg. We hope they can rejoin the team when they have more time again.

Independent Expert Contributors

As well as reading everything about rail and economic strategies that we could lay our hands on, we also reached out to industry experts who could help us set our ideas in context, and ensure they are aligned to international best practice. They volunteer their time to challenge our ideas and also contribute their own for inclusion in our work. They give us the confidence to continue to champion the voice of the communities who are underwhelmed by New Zealand’s current transport and lifestyle options, and under-represented in the decision making processes that are currently in place to fix it.

Dr Natalie Allen

Urban Strategist & Founding Partner
The Urban Advisory

Michael van Drogenbroek

Director,
Heriot-Edievale

Gillian Cook

Specialist Associate
Society for Cooperative Housing

Jacqui Rolleston-Steed

Principal Advisor, Regional Public Service Commission

Stephen Stringer

Former UK Senior Civil Servant, Expert on
Development Corporations

Kim Forrester

Independent PR, Media & Wellbeing Advisor

Roz Henry

Chief Executive
Cooperative Business NZ

Joe Fortune

General Secretary
UK Co-operative Party

Yachal Upson

Climate & Systems Transition
Expert, Novology

Roger Boulter

Economic Advisor
Boulter Consulting

Funders & Supporters

Our funders and supporters contribute what they can to help us connect with more people about our ideas and concepts. We can’t thank them enough.

BayTrust

Funder

Trust Waikato

Funder

University of Waikato

Project Partner

Public Transport Forum

Project Partner

Save Our Trains

Project Partner

Making Rail Work Alumni

We are grateful for the support that our past team members have given on us along the way. They continue offer advice today, despite being very busy people.

Heidi Hughes

Founder & Project Director
The Wednesday Challenge

Ed Mayo

Former Vice President
Cooperatives Europe

Greer O'Donnell

Director & Urban Strategist
The Urban Advisory

Julian Tankard

Transport Engineer
Independent Supporter

Susan Troddon

Project Director, T.R.O.N
Co-Founder, Making Rail Work

Jacinda Thorn

Managing Director
Thorn PR

James Llewellyn

Managing Director
Taith Consulting

Ian Skelton

Project Management Advisor
Independent Supporter

Ralph Ward

Co-Author
Play The Game

Emma McIver

Brand & Graphic Design
Emma Jade Designs

Thanks also to Dan Kneebone, Nigel Tutt, Rosie Spragg, Nicola Nation, Larry Baldock, Dean Kimpton, Sue McArthur, Glen Crowther, Jo Allum, Anne-Sophie Lahaye, and Todd Muller who provided their perspectives, advice and ideas at key stages of our work. We hope to continue to work with many of them in future.

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