Kylie McSweeney

Kylie began her career working on the Rugby World Cup before moving to London to support the London Olympics, where she helped coordinate, train, and place a workforce of around 60,000 security personnel. After returning to New Zealand, she moved into HR and later joined Google’s staffing services team, focusing on candidate experience. She then became the sole HR practitioner at Park Road Post Production before spending five years as an HR Business Partner at Weta Digital, supporting around 600 crew across organisational change, culture, and contract negotiations. Most recently, Kylie established the Organisational Development function at NEMA, working closely with the Chief Executive and executive leadership team on leadership capability, organisational transformation, wellbeing, and strategic change.

Kylie is known for bringing calm and clarity to complex environments. She builds trusted relationships quickly, listens first, and helps leaders turn ambiguous challenges into practical actions. Clients and colleagues value her authenticity, curiosity, and ability to challenge respectfully while keeping people engaged and focused on what matters.

Kylie is proud of building NEMA’s Organisational Development team from the ground up and establishing it as a small but high-performing function. She also helped reconnect the organisation to its purpose by simplifying how it was expressed and embedding it across strategy, recruitment, job design, and staff communication.

Kylie believes strong organisational performance comes through people. She is motivated by helping create workplaces where people feel valued, understand how their work contributes, and have energy left for life outside work.

Warm, practical, and highly collaborative, Kylie combines strategic thinking with a grounded approach. She communicates openly, follows through, and gives leaders the confidence to try, learn, and adapt.