Ana Christmas

MCOR Graduate, academyEX | Former CEO, Forest Bridge Trust | Co-creator, Adapting Together | Pou Ara Whakamua, Nga Maunga Whakahii o Kaipara | Conservation & Community Leader

Ana Christmas leads change at a scale that most people never attempt. As former CEO of Forest Bridge Trust, she drove conservation initiatives that spanned tangata whenua, landowners, and communities across entire ecosystems, holding the relationships, the negotiations, and the long-term vision simultaneously. That kind of leadership, at the intersection of community, environment, and systems thinking, is both rare and genuinely hard to sustain.

A graduate of academyEX's Master of Change and Organisational Resilience, she co-created the Adapting Together leadership programme with Leadership NZ, translating her experience navigating complex change into something others could learn from. She now serves as Pou Ara Whakamua with Nga Maunga Whakahii o Kaipara Development Trust, continuing that work at the nexus of land, people, and future generations.

What she brings to the MCOR programme is the lived proof that the most powerful change happens when you hold community, environment, and long-term systems thinking all at once. She has done it, at scale, and she knows what it actually requires.