B2B Special Interest Group

Cassandra Powell drives the marketing of Assurity’s brand. Responsible for generating awareness and demand for Assurity’s solutions, she is adept in promoting the company’s unique value among clients, potential clients, and key stakeholders.

An experienced and results-oriented marketing leader, Cassandra has a solid track record delivering outstanding investment returns on integrated B2B multichannel campaigns across the Asia Pacific region. The current Chairperson of the Marketing Association B2B Marketing Special Interest Group, Cassandra sits on the Board of Governance of Crown Institute of Studies.

She was a member of the judging panel for TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards 2020, 2021, and Campaign Asia-Pacific Agency of the Year 2020.Cassandra holds an honours degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering and a post-graduate diploma in Technopreneurship & Innovation from the Nanyang Technological University Singapore.

Sam is MD at Badger Communications. He has decades of experience helping kiwi businesses do more business with other businesses.

His claim to fame is that he once stared in his own TV commercial, as an (in)famous Aussie cricketer.

Michael is incredibly passionate about the customer and their experience and believes marketing and communications have a seat at the revenue table by proving ROI on tactics and using customer data to drive insights and competitive advantage.

Michael is a qualified marketing executive with 15+ years of experience and currently heads the Marketing and Communications for Tonkin + Taylor Group. Michael and his team were instrumental in the development of the group-wide customer experience strategy, implementing new communication channels, strategic customer experience, relationship management planning, and business strategy. Their team have had good success at the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards with several Rookie Marketer of the Year nominations, finalists in a number of categories, and winners for their internal communications channel design in 2019.

Livvy is a a natural problem solver, communicator, and leader, skilled at bringing together people, processes, and technologies to meet strategic objectives. She loves building high-performing, passionate, and driven marketing teams. Empowering people to do their best and bringing them together to deliver results.

Livvy has worked with brands in New Zealand and the United Kingdom on digital marketing projects to align their digital marketing strategy and tactical campaigns with their business goals to drive performance and growth.

She is a strategic and forward-thinking digital marketing leader with a passion for aligning brands, products, and services with customers' needs. Dynamic and commercially savvy, with a deep understanding of technical requirements and capability for digital marketing.

Jonathan Wrait, Attain’s Head of Marketing, comes with a rich history in business. First starting at the age of 18, he started a successful school tutoring business before being named as the 2011 Global Student Entrepreneur of the Year.

Over the next 13 years, Wrait worked both as a marketing manager and headed up his own agency, Red Gorilla.

He has worked with clients in a wide range of industries including retail, property, food & beverage, technology, engineering, corporate training and telecommunications.

“I love working with businesses that are technical or complex - understanding what they do and distilling this down to a simple, effective message that resonates with their target audience.”

Bernhard is a senior marketing and innovation leader with a knack for customer centred products and experiences.

He is skilled in team leadership and coaching and uncovers customer needs and trends to generate insights then creates solutions by collaborating and creative thinking.

Tim is a direct marketing strategist who has always believed that automation is only ever part of the answer to create true customer engagement.

He takes great pride in designing and fine-tuning the model of engagement that puts our organisation at the fore front of providing digital engagement services to business in New Zealand.

Anne is an experienced Business Development and Marketing professional with over 14 years of work experience in the UK, Australia and NZ.

She has spent most of her career working for professional services firms. Since moving to New Zealand, she has worked for Russell McVeagh, Deloitte and she is currently a Marketing and BD Manager for DLA Piper.

In the last few years she has been focussing on managing key client and sector programmes for some of the following sectors: Public sector, Healthcare, Tech, FinTech and InsurTech.

Anne's strengths include providing a strategic approach, encouraging innovation and stimulating creative thinking.

Sobia is a senior marketing professional experienced in the technology, education, and services industries. She's had both B2C and B2B Marketing experience but currently, her role focuses purely on B2B as a Marketing Manager at Trade Me. For over 9 years, Sobia has been managing advertising campaigns (digital), go-to-market projects, new product launches, market research, and working with key stakeholders to provide solutions from a marketing point of view.

Alongside her professional career, she's also active in the marketing academia. She's presented two research conference papers in Portugal and Germany. One of which she won the Best Paper Award at a Macromarketing Conference. What gets Sobia up every day is having a meaningful and purposeful life. And to her, that starts and ends with people whether it's volunteering giving back to the community, or simply helping a friend out.

Danielle is passionate about strategic marketing and believes that in order to be successful, you must truly understand your customers – their challenges, their wants, and their needs. She loves project managing and launching exciting initiatives, and of course, delivering value to her customers and internal stakeholders.

Her role at the Marketing Association is to manage the marketing for the MA, including the brand, content, social media, campaigns, and creating a strategic marketing plan which aligns with the business strategy. 

In her spare time, you will find Danielle herding her active 3-year-old son and spending time with her husband, friends and family. She also enjoys a nice getaway and trying new things. And rugby, she won’t miss an All Blacks game!

Parker is one of our passionate and enthusiastic Product Specialists on the Learning and Development team. Look to her for any customised corporate workshops, online workshops, or any workshops outside of Auckland.

Originally from Los Angeles, Parker has a background in digital marketing, communications and events. In her free time, catch her at a local pub quiz, or strolling through the Auckland Domain with her dog, Schroeder.