- I participate in various sports activities for physical activity, camaraderie, and personal growth
- Learning new cooking techniques and expanding my culinary skills
Sarah Ellison
Christchurch,New Zealand
Summary
Experienced technology executive with over a decade of senior leadership and board-facing roles, including leading cross-functional global teams and cloud transformation programmes. I’m experienced with guiding engineering teams through modernisation and change, plus delivering scalable, secure, and customer-focused solutions. I lead strategic partnerships ensuring that together we are exceeding targets and reporting to the executive governance board. Familiar with negotiating and managing vendor contracts, driving growth on revenue targets, managing a complex budget, and collaborating with finance teams to align technology spend with strategic growth and compliance priorities. Broad experience across enterprise IT strategy, managed services, cloud transformation, architecture, and operational leadership. I am known for being people focused, embedding a culture of continuous improvement and operational excellence while delivering business value through technology enablement, strategic execution.
Overview
8
8
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Head of Product – Cloud
Spark New Zealand
10.2024 - Current
- Lead a $240M cloud portfolio within Spark’s Business Products Tribe. I am accountable for strategy, go-to-market execution, stakeholder engagement, and service line leadership. Key focus areas include growing cloud revenue, simplifying our product offerings, building internal capability, and driving the outcomes in our Microsoft strategic partnership.
- Developed and executing a cloud strategy with targets, principles, and priorities that support decision-making deliver on customer outcomes.
- Lead the go-to-market workstream for the Microsoft strategic partnership, aligning internal delivery and external positioning.
- Championed Agile practise across product squads and supported change management initiatives.
- Highly collaborative with excellent communication skills which has enabled me to build strategic relationships across the organisation to align delivery priorities.
- Presented at Spark Accelerate conference and led customer-facing cloud events.
- Managed governance and compliance with All-of-Government and cybersecurity requirements.
- Steered the team through a period of significant organisational change ensuring stability and maintaining focus on strategic priorities.
Chief Technology Officer
Author-it Software Corporation / Docuvera
06.2022 - 04.2024
- Executive team member for a global SaaS company selling into a regulated industry with a focus of growing company revenue, reporting to the board, strategic technology decisions, and delivery of our product roadmap.
- Provided direction and oversight of software engineering, DevOps, operational excellence, architecture, customer support, and cybersecurity. Accountable for compliance, vendor management, risk management, and supporting sales growth.
- With a team of 60+ specialists in New Zealand and globally, I led with authenticity and have a people-first mindset, fostering trust, empowering others, and aligning teams around clear goals and strategic outcomes; I consider people leadership a key strength.
- Ensured priorities are delivered, escalating issues early with critical information to support decision making, and focus on the delivery of business goals while promoting a positive work culture.
- Aligned the organisation to ISO27001 and GxP, supporting pharmaceutical audits and strengthening trust.
- Assisted with the creation and implementation of a quality management system to meet global compliance needs and alignment with ISO standards ISO9001, ISO27001, ISO20000, ISO31000.
- Designed and implemented a global business continuity plan, major incident response process, release management process, data management framework, and risk management framework.
- Managed teams across New Zealand, United States, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and the Netherlands.
Enterprise Architect
Massey University
07.2017 - 11.2019
- Member of the IT Leadership Team where I led technology architecture and strategic planning within the university; producing strategic plans, roadmaps, reference models and business cases that aligned with institutional priorities. I managed staff, lead initiatives, and secured funding.
- Established an architecture practice and built a team from the ground up.
- Presented at conferences on enterprise data modelling, business architecture, and technology strategy in a higher education context.
- Collaborated across the university on business-led projects to advise on technology investments which required strong stakeholder engagement and communication skills.
Education
Master of Management with Distinction -
Massey University
01.2019
Bachelor of Information Sciences with Honours - undefined
Massey University
01.1997
Skills
- Executive leadership
- Leading through change
- People leadership and team development
- Stakeholder engagement and communication
- Cloud and service management strategy
- Risk management and governance
Affiliations
- Member – Institute of Directors NZ (2022 – Present)
- Board Member – Ripyl Education Platform (2024 – Present)
- Co-Chair and Board Member – ManawaTech (2022–2024)
- Co-Chair and Board Member – CAUDIT Enterprise Architecture Community of Practice (2014–2019)
Certification
- 2024 – Comprehensive First Aid
- 2022 – naMBA Strategic Leadership – 8-week executive programme
- 2021 – Mental Health First Aid
- 2020 – ITIL 4 Foundation
- 2014 – TOGAF 9.1
Interests
Timeline
Head of Product – Cloud
Spark New Zealand
10.2024 - Current
Chief Technology Officer
Author-it Software Corporation / Docuvera
06.2022 - 04.2024
Enterprise Architect
Massey University
07.2017 - 11.2019
Bachelor of Information Sciences with Honours - undefined
Massey University
Master of Management with Distinction -
Massey University
Previous Roles
- 2007 – 2014: New Zealand Transport Agency – Senior Business Intelligence Analyst
- 2002 – 2007: New Zealand Transport Agency – Senior Database Administrator
- 2000 – 2002: Fonterra – Knowledge Navigator/Intranet Developer
- 1997 – 2000: Rangitikei District Council – Information Services Officer
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