Anna Wright

Anna’s career began in PR before moving quickly into recruitment, first with Madison Recruitment in Wellington, then in-house at ANZ where she expanded into Employment Relations. She later built her own consulting practice supporting retail and SME clients before joining Humankind, where she’s spent the past five years partnering with leaders across sectors including retail, technology, and professional services. This blend of corporate, boutique, and consulting experience gives her a rare perspective on the full employee lifecycle.

Anna is known for building strong, genuine partnerships. Clients describe her as positive, responsive, and someone who makes them feel as if she works full-time in their business. Her strengths span recruitment, change management, and HR foundations, with a particular talent for guiding leaders through restructures and transitions with empathy and respect. She brings pace, pragmatism, and deep candidate care, always balancing business needs with what’s best for people.

Anna has been a long-term partner to Projectworks, supporting their growth from 17 to over 50 employees through thoughtful recruitment and cultural fit. With Wallace Cotton, she’s helped the business grow by 50%, embedding structure, shaping culture, and supporting leadership through major transitions. She’s also delivered impactful work with clients including KidsCan, SuiteFiles, Bridgewest Ventures, and TMNZ, guiding change and strengthening leadership capability

Anna believes life is too short to be in a job you don’t love. She’s driven by creating workplaces where people thrive, leaders are supported, and culture underpins performance. For her, success is when employees feel respected and leaders feel confident, even through difficult processes like restructures or redundancies.

Relational, responsive, and results-focused. Anna describes herself as the stagehand in business, not the one in the spotlight, but the partner ensuring everything runs smoothly behind the scenes. She thrives on variety and adapts easily across industries, acting as a sounding board and trusted partner. Pragmatic, fast-moving, and commercially minded, she quietly influences outcomes while keeping people at the centre.