Our People
Nivation has gathered together a group of educators who share values and approaches.
At its most basic, we love working together, crafting leadership and team experiences for our clients that have long lasting impact. Our network is, like many, based on time spent together in “type II fun” and the personal and professional respect that stems from that. All our people hold high level education qualifications, many are senior assessors in their respective industries, with global leadership education and consultation experience. Humility, integrity and competence are prerequisites for inclusion in this network.
PRINCIPAL
Dave Ritchie
Dave Ritchie (MSc, BPhEd) has a Masters Degree in Entrepreneurial Leadership and has been an experiential educator in the outdoors for over 30 years, working with real people in real places, getting real results.
In his career Dave has worked with a wide variety of groups always with the specific goal of developing leadership and membership capability in others. He has a high level understanding of how groups become teams and a track record of facilitating this process in a manner that demystifies and simplifies.
Dave is an accomplished expedition guide, with broad experience in both polar and non polar environments. He is an assessor and assessor trainer and a PTGA Assessor advisor.
His experience developing and managing tertiary level adventure guiding qualification programmes gives him system level understanding of organisational dynamics. This high level understanding of leader and team dynamics allows him to effectively diagnose patterns and effect change in a way that places individual learning at the centre.
He is an accomplished whitewater paddler and instructor who literally made the movie. He is also the drummer in the band.
PRINCIPAL
Graham Charles
Graham is a teacher, educator, polar guide and polar guide trainer. Drawing on 35 years of building international and professional adventure and outdoor education programmes, guiding, performance participation, safety and operations consulting, leadership teaching and membership coaching Graham is able to structure and facilitate deep learning from any opportunity. His passion for improvement through a continual development ethos and the use of interpersonal feedback models generates profound results.
Graham has been working in polar regions for 19 years as an Expedition Leader, field assistant to science and film crews and sea kayak guide. He has extensive knowledge and field experience in: Antarctic Peninsula – west and east, Sth Georgia, Falkland Islands, Canadian Arctic (NW Passage, Baffin Island), Greenland south, west and east coasts, Svalbard and lesser experience in the Ross Sea and Dry Valleys. He is the founder of the Polar Tourism Guides Association, an international non-profit professional industry association created to provide skills and leadership training and assessment across all platforms of the polar tourism industry. He is a Senior Assessor and Senior Polar Guide.
Graham’s vision and passion for sharing the values of an active lifestyle and outdoor experiences lead to the formation of the Adventure Philosophy expedition team. The books and documentaries of their successful world first expeditions sea kayaking the length of the Antarctic Peninsula (2001), traversing the Darwin Cordillera (2003), circumnavigating Sth Georgia Island by kayak (2005) have been seen around the world.
He lives year-round by adventure principles and in any year can be found in charge of small ship expeditions or guiding private clients in north and south polar regions, training guides, assessing guides and helping the industry develop, exploring remote and inaccessible parts of the globe and teaching leadership at Wharton Business School. He is a dual NZ/US citizen.
EDUCATOR
Jen Riley
Jen grew up tramping (hiking), cooking on fires in the back paddock, floating down rivers and climbing trees. She started kayaking at age 15 and still finds whitewater to be the activity which gives her the biggest smile.
A degree in Zoology, a qualification in teaching English language and an eagerness to see the world led to a decade of travelling. Thoughts of settling down, starting a career and being ‘sensible’ resulted in training as a secondary school teacher and teaching high school; for a year.
Jen worked internationally for NOLS then helped establish the NOLS NZ programme and proctored the first NOLS NZ semester.
Currently she happily balances a variety of outdoor work with being a mum, training for adventure races and growing weeds amongst the vegetables in her garden. She lives in Nelson, New Zealand with her husband, son and cuddly cat.
EDUCATOR
Jo Parsons
Jo has a storied career as a leadership educator. Initially snubbed by her local college for admission to the educators programme, she proved her metal the old fashioned way, eventually returning to direct technical and academic aspects of the same programme.
She carries this “can do, keep it real” attitude into her roles on various community and professional boards. She expects and encourages the same attitudes in her students and works relentlessly for them as they make their way through the many and varied challenges that WLV programmes invariably create.
She is one of Aotearoa’s most highly qualified and experienced outdoor leadership educators - and she has 2 beautiful daughters, Maani (7) and Nemah (5) and a husband (Keith) with a chronic rock climbing problem.
EDUCATOR
Zak Shaw
Zak has a Degree in Outdoor Education and Sustainability and currently works in New Zealand as specialist trainer of outdoor related skills. Part of his role involves facilitating a Diploma programme preparing outdoor guides and educators for global adventure tourism and outdoor education careers.
Zak enjoys facilitating human development and leadership training in the outdoors because he finds the natural environment to provide a highly authentic context. His teaching expertise stems from an extensive outdoor career involving high levels of adventure, uncertainty and risk. As an expert kayaker he has worked in the Arctic and Antarctica and completed exploratory whitewater-kayaking expeditions in remote parts of the world including Tibet, Peru, Bolivia and India and Nepal. In addition to kayaking Zak enjoys mountain biking, diving, mountaineering, canyoning and photography.
Zak and his wife Sal live on a small farm, own and operate a physical therapy business and have two kids named Cooper and Natalie.
EDUCATOR
Lacey Beadle
Working in outdoor education for over ten years, Lacey has accumulated an unparalleled appreciation for what connection can be obtained with oneself, those around you and with the natural spaces and places we move through.
Fostering community and eliciting tangible outcomes in both personal and professional development are what continue to excite Lacey about this career and working with the people she does.
Pocketing a Diploma in Outdoor Instruction and Management, Lacey had the privilege of working for Outward Bound NZ and more recently tutored the outdoor programme at Tai Poutini Polytechnic on the mighty West Coast of New Zealand. Lacey is convinced most issues in this world can be solved with a cup of tea round a campfire, or a bike ride in the sun.