Meet The Team

Mark Nelson
CEO

Starting his media sales career in radio in 1990 at the age of 20, Mark quickly became top of his field in radio selling over $48 million in radio campaigns alone. Later in his career he became Mediaworks top rep looking after radio, television and digital sales for some of the New Zealand’s top corporate brands and clients becoming respected in his field. Marks full focus turned to Fresh in 2017 with his passion now lying in collaboration and multi-platform marketing.

Jay Wanakore
Executive Producer

Jay is a family man who has three kids with his beautiful wife Sarah. Together their love of food led them on a journey to compete on the popular reality cooking TV series My Kitchen Rules NZ. Jay is now a published cookbook author, recipe and content creator, food presenter and cooking demo host. He has a background in TV production management and social media marketing and now oversees the full production and management of Fresh.

Stacey O’Gorman
Creative Producer

Stacey is a trained chef, food stylist, passionate recipe writer and cookbook author. In 2012 Stacey birthed the brain-child Meringue Girls with her late business partner Alex Hoffler. Together they opened a bakery in East London and created two best selling cookbooks; Meringue Girls Cookbook & Meringue Girls Everything Sweet , both photographed by the legendary David Loftus. Alongside building her business from the ground up then selling her shares in 2018,  Stacey worked as a freelance food stylist and recipe writer for some top publications in the UK. Guilty food pleasure – buttery, salty pops – always and forever.

Louise Graham
Head of Social Media

Louise has recently joined the Fresh team as Head of Social managing the Fresh social channels and as well as some client’s pages. Louise has worked within the Social and Content world for over 7 years primarily within the fashion industry, though has always had a keen interest in food…creation and consumption! A welcome change, she has enjoyed working alongside such an open-minded team and together ensuring the quality of content that Fresh creates just gets better and better! Though she’s trying to decrease her meat consumption, guilty pleasure is still always a sausie roll!

Ranitea Petard
Client Relationships Manager

Originally from Tahiti, Rani has been working on her Kiwi accent for over 11 years – and failing miserably. Luckily for her, this wasn’t a prerequisite for working at Fresh and her background in E-commerce, Film and catering enabled her to join the team as a prep chef and now as the go-to person for all Fresh clients and media partners. Her ideal meal is a coconut raw fish salad with taro or rice followed by chocolate mousse for dessert, the perfect combo to fuel her love for dancing and martial arts.

Aleisha Adsett
Social Media

Aleisha has a passion for natural and healthy food, and loves creating delicious and colourful vegetarian recipes, especially vegan desserts! After several years working in the Creative Design industry as a Graphic Artist, Aleisha started a family and has two young children. She pursued her love of food and photography by creating recipes and content for her foodie blog and clients from her home kitchen. Now working at Fresh, Aleisha assumes the role of Social Media Manager and handles a medley of tasks. When she’s not at work, she loves spending time with her family at their Bach in Whangamata. Guilty pleasures? Dark Ghana Chocolate and a Milo every night!

Bev Adair-Beets
Executive Administrator

Love this amazing Creative Team, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing it evolve from the beginning to what we have now, wearing many hats along the way. It’s a privilege to work with people with integrity of heart. I’m passionate about people and seeing them reach their full potential. I’ve worked in many creative spaces over the years in events, and as a media consultant and Communications. These beautiful people have taught me that food can be fun and trying new recipes is a new adventure for me, and grown my confidence to try new and different foods.

Carl Leducq-Williams
Content Creator  

Carl is a jack of all trades when it comes to creating content, and a master of one, telling a powerful story. After working consistently over the last 5 years as a Videographer & Editor he has amassed experience in producing Corporate Videos, Influencer Marketing Content, Social Media Content, Interview Segments, and wherever else he could find a story that needed to be told. Carl has a keen eye on the new wave of Social Media which led him to start his next chapter as the content creator at Fresh where he is responsible for filming, editing and creating juicy food content for a hungry audience. His guilty pleasure is an unashamed full pack of Griffins Krispies biscuits with a hot cup of tea.

Chika Deane
Food Writer & Digital Administrator

Chika started writing for the Fresh website in 2014. She studied Food Science in Tokyo, at University and worked in Japanese journalism writing about various topics, as well as food, before moving to England. She moved to NZ with her English husband in 2000 and made NZ her home. Now she supports the creative team with the new recipes and publishes them on the website. Find our recipes at Fresh – I hope you all add fresh.co.nz to your favourites.

Sophie Merkens
Food Writer

Sophie combines her love of photography, stories, travel and food in her work. She’s published articles in many New Zealand and international magazines and is currently working on a travel cookbook. She’s worked in kitchens around the world, picking up tips and expanding her food library. When she’s not writing for Fresh, she’s obsessing about her next delicious meal and spending time hiking, biking and (trying to) surf. Sophie’s guilty pleasure is pizza, most especially blue cheese, walnut and mushroom doughy spelt-flour pizza. She also goes wild for any dessert with rose in it.

Shaun Maxton
Creator

Shaun is on of our Fresh faces behind the lens. Upon Graduating from Waikato University, decided to head overseas and jump into his real passion – film. Eight years later, Shaun has gained experience in the USA working with large clients such as LA Tourism and the LA Clippers NBA team. Shaun understands what it takes to bring video projects together. From there, he has helped many kiwi businesses incorporate video into their overall marketing strategy. Aside from being an avid movie critic, Shaun loves all sports – with hopes to eventually graduate from being a strictly summer-only surfer.

Anaru Church
Digital Administrator

Anaru is one of the newest additions to the team dabbling in data administration, social media and is involved in the content editing process. He has a background in photography and carpentry and runs a wedding photography business alongside his wife. Anaru gets excited about all things creative. He’s passionate about learning new skills and gets excited about seeing people do what they love! Anaru’s guilty food pleasure is his Nana’s home made chocolate mousse, “Nothing compares, end of story”.

Murray
Mr Fixit

Murray is like tomato sauce or salt, you just can live without them. He is the calm presence keeping the office running smoothly and like clock work. He has an infectious smile and always a cheery word. And if you needed anything moved, shifted, delivered, picked up… he is our main man.

Lola
Happiness Creator

Lola sits proudly in the position of veteran security dog and canine therapist at the Fresh Office. She’s working towards her Dogploma in these departments but has yet to understand that delivery men and people with high vis jackets are not a threat. She also suffers from a chronic habit of sleeping on the job most days. Lola’s favorite food is whatever she finds that has been dropped on the ground (edible or not) and has recently taken a liking to fresh mint from the outside garden!

Fresh Recipes NZ
Fresh.co.nz Est. 2004

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