YES is excited to welcome Rachel Peterson to our team as our new Relationship Manager. Rachel will be representing YES within the North Shore community and be a point of contact at the YES office for people who have questions about anything related to disability. She will be able to provide answers to your questions, and connect you to other services.
Rachel has over 20 years’ experience working within the New Zealand disability industry, from grass roots to senior management with both NGO & corporate organisations. She is herself a wheelchair user and mum of two.
Starting her career at 18, fundraising for CCS, she has gone on to become a Senior Disability Advisor, served on the board of the Muscular Dystrophy Association NZ, has represented New Zealand at international consortiums on disability, along with co- founding Disabled Parents NZ. She briefly played on the New Zealand women’s wheelchair basketball team before retiring to become a Mother.
Rachel's passion is education, training for change, offering peer support, mentoring and creating workshops on self-advocacy. Most recently Rachel was the Disability Strategy Co-ordinator to the Waitemata District Health Board. Rachel left this role join Rex Bionics (robotic walking legs) as a product tester and disability advisor, eventually becoming the Project Manager. Rachel left in 2001 to have her second child and while on maternity leave studied interior design, but missed the disability industry. In July last year just after her youngest started school Rachel was nominated and appointed to the Auckland Council Disability Panel providing strategic advice and building relationships for community engagement. Rachel will continue with the council for her three-year term alongside her new position at YES.
In addition to training many large NZ companies in diversity awareness Rachel has worked with and brings to YES her contacts and networks within Manganui New Zealand, Ministry of Health, Needs Assessment and Services Coordination (NASC) and more.
Rachel can be contacted on RachelP@yesdisability.org.nz for any disability related queries.
