Erin Harford-Wright

Frank Engagement director and principal consultant, Erin Harford-Wright, is a seasoned engagement practitioner. Following 8-years’ reporting for national newsrooms, Erin has more than 16 years’ consulting and inhouse experience focussed on aligning project partners and stakeholders, developing community engagement campaigns, and providing strategic issue management advice. 

She’s worked extensively on complex, multi-partner projects across resource consenting applications, local government consultation, infrastructure projects, environmental initiatives and behaviour change programmes. 

Erin is skilled at supporting leadership to understand and manage challenging stakeholder environments, building partnerships with organisations with shared goals, and simplifying the technical into succinct concepts for broad audiences. 

Connecting people is central to who Erin is – connecting organisations to the communities they serve so they can make better decisions, connecting communities to regional projects so their voices are heard, connecting regional leaders to each other so they can collaborate on solutions that make a genuine difference. 

In 2020, Erin founded Frank Engagement to provide strategic engagement advice to local government, central government and infrastructure organisations driving change in the regions. She has since carefully chosen a team of like-minded consultants who share the same passion for raising up communities, protecting the environment and supporting regions to thrive. 

Project Highlights 

As Frank Engagement director:

• Regional Water Security Programme, Hawke’s Bay Regional Council  
• Connecting Tairāwhiti, Waka Kotahi 
• Hawke’s Bay Airport’s terminal construction, Hawke’s Bay Airport 
• Māori Consitituencies, Hawke’s Bay Regional Council 
• Container Return Scheme co-design, Marlborough District Council, Auckland Council + Ministry for the Environment 
• Public Information Manager, including supporting communications responses in emergency events, most notably COVID-19 and Cyclone Gabrielle. 

• 6 Wharf resource consent, and the related capital structure review, investment consultation and share float, Napier Port 
• Sarjeant Gallery refurbishment, Giblin Group + Whanganui District Council
• Fraser Park Sportville, Giblin Group + Hutt City Council
• Len Lye Centre, Giblin Group + New Plymouth District Council 
• Healthy Streams, Giblin Group + Whanganui District Council

Previous Roles 

• Senior Communications advisor, Napier Port 
• Capital Raising consultant, Giblin Group 
• Communications manager, Hastings District Council 
• Journalist, Newstalk ZB, Radio New Zealand and NZME 

Qualifications 

Erin studied politics and literature at Victoria University, before completing a Diploma of Journalism (broadcast) at New Zealand Radio Training School. During her working career, Erin has gained a Certificate of Engagement from the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2), Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (PRINZ) accreditation (APR), she is a certified change manager (Prosci) and has a Certificate in Fundraising (FINZ).