Vacancies

Location: Pūkaha (Mt Bruce), Wairarapa
Contract: Flexible contractor, fixed term or part-time
Reports to: Executive Director/Pūkaha Board

About Pūkaha

Pūkaha is entering a new era. We’re home to extraordinary wildlife and equally extraordinary stories, and we’re ready to level up how people experience them. We want Pūkaha to feel energising, meaningful, and a little bit magical, for every single person who visits us.

To help make that happen, we’re creating a role for someone who can bring spark, courage, and a fresh perspective to our visitor experience. Not a custodian of the status quo, a change-maker.

About the role

The Chief of Awesome is our catalyst for visitor transformation. You will help ignite a new standard of visitor engagement, shifting Pūkaha from “good” to “unmissable.” This is a hands-on leadership role that blends creativity, coaching, operational savvy, and a genuine love for people.

This is a new beginning and an opportunity to create a visitor experience that is vibrant, warm, story-rich, and deeply connected to our conservation mission. You will lead through energy and example showing our team what “awesome” feels like, and lifting confidence, capability, and pride.

Key responsibilities

Lead a step-change in how visitors experience Pūkaha:

• Partner with the Executive Director, Rangitāne Tū Mai Rā and the management team to reimagine the broader visitor offering and strengthen Pūkaha’s reputation.
• Inspire, coach, and energise the visitor-facing team to adopt a bold, warm, and proactive engagement style.
• Model “awesome” on the ground – working alongside staff, guiding real-time interactions, and creating a culture of generosity.
• Design and deliver new visitor experiences, storytelling moments, micro-interactions, guided activities, and seasonal activations.
• Bring fresh creativity to the daily environment, from how people are welcomed, to our café experience, and how wildlife stories are shared.
• Work closely with conservation, ranger, marketing, and education teams to ensure our experiences are authentic, meaningful, and connected to wildlife outcomes.
• Lead front-of-house culture, ensuring every visitor feels seen, welcomed, and valued.
• Champion innovation, testing new ideas, pop-ups, events, partnerships, collaborations, and playful moments that give Pūkaha its spark.
• Support volunteer engagement, lifting confidence and giving them tools to contribute positively to the visitor experience.
• Gather and interpret visitor feedback to inform continuous improvements.
• Ensure the on-site environment (including our visitors centre, merchandise area and café) feels alive, safe, welcoming, and aligned with our values.

What you bring

• Magnetic energy – people naturally lift when you walk into the room.
• Leadership ability that is hands-on, not hierarchical.
• Creativity + practicality – ideas that work in the real world.
• Confidence in coaching and culture change, especially in established teams.
• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to build trust quickly.
• An appreciation for wildlife, conservation, and te ao Māori context (or a genuine willingness to learn).
• Comfort working in a flexible, evolving, sometimes messy environment.
• A desire to create moments of wonder, humour, connection, and delight.
• A track record in visitor experience, tourism, events, hospitality, brand experience, or storytelling is desirable.

Functional Relationships

Internal

Pūkaha Board/Executive Director

• Strategic direction, prioritisation, decision-making, and reporting.
• Joint leadership on major visitor-experience initiatives and organisational culture uplift.

Rangitāne Tū Mai Rā (and Kaumātua as appropriate)

• Ensure visitor experiences and storytelling uphold te ao Māori values, perspectives, and mana whenua kaupapa.
• Collaboration on cultural interpretation, events, and visitor education moments connected to whakapapa and place.

Management Team (Conservation, Rangers, Operations, Finance, Marketing, Education)

• Co-design visitor experiences that reflect conservation outcomes.
• Align marketing/communications to the on-site visitor experience.
• Coordinate resourcing, staffing, daily operations, and service expectations.

Visitor Centre Team, Guides, Café & Retail Staff

• Coaching, team uplift, modelling best practice.
• Shared responsibility for delivering an exceptional front-of-house culture.
• Implementation of improved visitor flows, micro-experiences, and customer service standards.

Volunteers and Volunteer Coordinators

• Build volunteer capability and confidence.
• Ensure volunteers play a positive, integrated role in visitor experience delivery.

Administration and Support Teams

• Coordination around reporting, bookings, revenue collection, and feedback channels.

External

Local and Regional Tourism Partners

• Destination Wairarapa, i-SITEs, and accommodation providers.

Community Groups and Schools

• Ensure experiences align with educational goals and community expectations.

Suppliers, Contractors & Collaborators

• Event providers, creatives, designers, tech partners (e.g., interactive interpretation), seasonal activity facilitators.

Strategic Partners, Funders and Sponsors

• Support to develop, justify, and deliver visitor activations tied to funding agreements.
• Build long term affiliations and relationships and build, maintain and manage strategic alignment.

Specific Accountabilities

Below represents an indication of the targeted, and measurable accountabilities that complement the role description.

1. Visitor Experience Transformation

• Develop and implement a 12–24 month Visitor Experience Enhancement Plan with clear priorities and milestones.
• Introduce at least three new visitor experiences or micro-activations in the first year.
• Establish a consistent daily/weekly FOH rhythm (briefings, debriefs, coaching, huddles, quick wins).

2. Culture & Capability Uplift

• Deliver a structured visitor engagement training programme for all visitor-facing staff and volunteers.
• Lead frontline coaching with measurable improvements in warmth, proactivity, storytelling confidence, and service consistency.
• Build a “feedback-positive” culture that embraces change, ideas, and continuous improvement.

3. Storytelling & Interpretation

• Work with conservation and marketing teams to refresh core wildlife narratives and ensure they are reflected in:
  • Guided experiences
  • Signage and interpretation
  • Daily interactions
  • Seasonal programming
• Ensure key wildlife characters (e.g., Prince Tui Teka, Marley, the eel) are leveraged effectively and authentically.

4. On-Site Environment & Service Excellence

• Design and lead improvements to the visitor centre ambience, retail layout, and café engagement touchpoints.
• Identify and address friction points (e.g., queueing, wayfinding, unclear signage).
• Improve visitor flow, welcome process, and overall site vitality.

5. Collaboration & Integration

• Work with marketing to ensure the brand promise matches the on-site reality.
• Collaborate with education and conservation teams to embed wildlife and kaupapa Māori stories naturally into visitor experiences.

6. Visitor Insights & Reporting

• Implement and manage simple methods to gather visitor feedback (digital, on-site, conversations, post-visit surveys).
• Build and implement regular reporting to summarise visitor sentiment, key insights, and improvement actions.
• Track core performance metrics such as satisfaction trends, repeat visitation indicators, and conversion opportunities (tours, retail, membership, donations).

7. Innovation & Special Projects

• Lead seasonal marketing and event planning (e.g., summer, school holidays, special events).
• Trial playful, bold, and creative initiatives, “quick wins” as well as more substantial projects.
• Build partnerships for events, experiences, and community engagement.

8. Financial Sustainability Alignment

• Ensure visitor experiences support revenue growth (visitor numbers, tours, retail, café).
• Partner with ED or nominee on grant-aligned experience deliverables and sponsor-engagement opportunities.
• Contribute to attracting visitors that help reduce grant dependency over time.

Sounds like your kind of awesome.

If you’re ready to help us reimagine Pūkaha and elevate the way people connect with wildlife and with place, we’d love to talk.

To apply email pukahajobs@yahoo.com