Lara Denby

This role has primarily involved supporting the allocation and management of resources for schools.

• Resource Allocation: Ensuring that schools receive the appropriate resources (funding, staffing, materials) based on their needs
• Policy Implementation
• Providing advice to school leaders and boards of trustees on resourcing issues
• Data Management and Reporting: Collecting and analyzing data related to school resourcing to support funding decisions, reporting to senior leadership within the Ministry, and ensuring compliance with government expectations.
• Delivering operational funding for all schools across New Zealand including data collation and sense checking to ensure correct funding is applied to each individual school.
• Supporting Equity in resourcing NZ schools
• Liaison with Schools and Stakeholders: Building and maintaining relationships with school leaders, board members, and other stakeholders

The role has required a good understanding of both educational and financial principles, along with strong communication, problem-solving, and organizational skills.

• Cocktail bartending for Weta FX christmas parties in 2023 and 2024 - 2 events i worked on in total.
• Delivering high quality and expedited cocktail bar and food service to over 1000 guests across two 5 hour events

• Weekly Ordering, and stock management
• Rostering, giving staff a structured environment to work within week to week
• Industry education and training of existing and new employees
• Communication and interpersonal relationship development
• Conflict resolution and deescalation
• Staff health and wellbeing
• End to end event coordination and execution. Ensuring events ranging from 10-1000+ pax are organised efficiently and effectively by liasing with clientelle and outside organisations to ensure expectations are met by both the business and the client or organisation involved.

Events experience in this role included but was not limited to:

• Small birthdays or gatherings from 10-80 people
• Daily live music events and specials, facilitating large crowds and muliple bands playing the venue across a day in some cases curing festivals
• Large scale event organisation and management, including annual festival events such as Wellington Jazz Festival, 'Eat, Drink, Play', Burger on a Plate (WOAP), Great Sounds Great, Cuba Dupa.
• Weddings and wedding receptions
• Specific product launches for a range of breweries across NZ

• Overseeing the management and running of both the cinema and the restaurant/café
• Maintaining a very low expenditure whilst still providing a range of high quality products to patrons
• Creating rigid and functional systems for operations, order of service, and schedule management
• Managing staff conflict and interpersonal grievances
• Events and fundraiser coordination and delivery ranging from 20-300pax - sometimes with coordinated movie screenings and complex time constraints to deliver sit down meals and presentations around film screenings. Often multiple events running at the same time in different cinemas and the in house restaurant

• Providing high quality service to a range of different customers during events ranging from weddings to large festivals such as World of Wearable Arts and movie premiers containing upwards of 1000 guests
• Keeping to a strict schedule and order of service in high pressure professional environments with high level clientele
• Following instructions and memorising detailed product knowledge which changed with every event depending on the stakeholders arrangements
• Fulfilling a range of roles including waitressing, bartending and overall event set up and break down