About Us

Alex leads the LearnWell team. He’s passionate about teaching and learning and loves what great learning design can do for education. Before joining the team, Alex was principal and has taught many different subjects at a range of different levels.

When he’s not thinking about how to make learning more awesome, you can find Alex running a bass line with his band.

Andrea is the Operations Manager for the print division of the LearnWell team. Over the past 18 years she has worn many hats within the ESA team, most recently being able to expand her knowledge with commercial publishing in the education sector. To ensure that everything runs smoothly she considers herself very lucky to be part of such a great team as it makes planning and organising such a breeze.

When work is not keeping her busy, she treasures spending time with whanau and might be found exploring the beautiful NZ coastlines with her husband and daughter (fishing!).

Louise is the Learning Design Lead for LearnWell. She has qualifications in neuroscience and chemistry and a background working in educational technology for secondary schools.

Louise has had years of experience crafting awesome digital learning resources and guiding other learning designers to do the same. She loves breaking down complex ideas to help learners have that ‘aha!’ moment, transforming all sorts of content into a fantastic learning experience—a process usually fuelled by coffee and sunshine.

Julie has held a variety of roles over her 25-year journey with LearnWell/ESA including Customer Services, Accounts, Sales and Admin Manager, and has a passion for her current role in Sales and Marketing. In the past few years, she has added planning conferences and managing our social media to her skillset.

Julie is in her happy place talking to customers and finding out what we can do to help. Her other happy place is being at Waihi Beach with her whanau and friends, drinking an icy cold sav and blasting the Foo Fighters.

Sue is LearnWell’s Business Development Manager.  Sue will be known to many of you as she has been involved in the Education Publishing and Resources space for many years, she comes to us via: Reed NZ Publishing; Pearson; OfficeMax- as Education Resource Specialist; and ePlatform (Wheelers digital library for schools). She has always been focused on getting the right resource in the right hands at the right time to ensure our ākonga have the best learning experiences. Originally a teacher, she understands the difference well designed, relevant teaching resources can have in the classroom. Sue is also an advocate for New Zealand curriculum-based products.

When not showing off the amazing, broad range of LearnWell products, Sue swims daily at the local beach from mid-September to King’s Birthday Weekend.  At other times she is knitting up a storm for friends, family and for sale at local markets.

Mere is the organiser-extraordinaire for the LearnWell team. If there’s a detail to be spotted, Mere will spot it! She’s worked in education for many years and there’s not a problem Mere can’t solve.

When she’s not keeping the team organised, Mere can often be found with her marching team - where even the steps are organised!

Malcolm is LearnWell’s Data Scientist and leads our work in all things technical. If you want to see Malcolm’s eyes light up, just show him a new ICT tool… Malcolm’s had more careers than your average teenager has messages on their phone, including as a senior leader in schools and an audio engineer and he brings all of these skills to his role.

With a newly found passion for kayaking, Malcolm can often be found near the beach.

Sally is a Learning Designer with LearnWell. She joined the team in 2021, having worked in a number of other roles at Open Polytechnic. Her experiences in communications, media, real estate, human resources and healthcare give Sally a diverse background which enables her to contribute heaps to the LearnWell team.

With a great interest in food, Sally has also completed a chef’s apprenticeship. Sadly, working remotely means she can’t always show up to the office with baking – but the rest of us live in hope that she will one day!

Angus is the Lead Typesetter at LearnWell and on his second stint. The first was after retraining following a career in museum exhibition design and installation. The gap was filled by time at a learning design and publishing companies. Then returning to ESA progressing to the lead typesetter role.

Qualifications in fine arts, teaching and computer publishing enable Angus to contribute to the LearnWell team on many levels.

Angus’ spare time is filled with travel to far flung places, quiz nights, dabbling in painting of canvas’ and the family home. (whisky appreciation).

Barnaby is part of the production team which works on the design of LearnWell’s printed books. Covers, page layouts – it’s a job that requires some creativity and a certain attention to detail.

With over 20 years’ experience in educational book publishing, Barnaby is still finding new challenges at LearnWell.

Qualifications in fine art and design as well as in the academic field have given Barnaby the skills to contribute to the continuing success of the company.

Pietro has been a part of the ESA/LearnWell Production team for 20 years. He has studied Electronics Engineering, Computer Science and 3D Animation.

He loves all scientific subjects, however he has a strong love for Maths & Logic. His attention to detail and being a bit of an “eagle eye” helps immensely in this job.

A computer nerd at heart he really enjoys his IT Support role, and then gets to use his creative streak with Marketing material and template design.

In his spare time he loves spending time with his family & kids, perfecting his Charcoal Kebab recipe and likes to dream one day he will be the next Michael Jordan.

Trevor is the Warehouse Manager for LearnWell. He has held this responsibility for over 27 years and shows no signs of slowing down. His organisation and his determination to accomplish tasks as efficiently as possible is a major asset to the LearnWell team.

Outside of his warehouse duties, he loves to spend time with his family, particularly his grandchildren. He is also well-versed on photography and recreational shooting.

Jo has been freelance editing and proofreading for ESA/LearnWell since 2006, but more frequently since 2015. After completing an English degree, a postgraduate Diploma in Drama and a Diploma in Secondary Teaching, she worked in-house as a magazine sub-editor and then for 7 years as an in-house editor at Pearson Education. She has been freelancing since 2003 editing, proofreading, narrating and acting.

Phyl has been editing and writing a range of workbooks and study guides, specialising in Mathematics, for over 25 years. She oversees the process of taking a publication from the initial manuscript stage through to the final product.

Prior to her role as editor, Phyl taught Mathematics and English in schools in Victoria, Australia and in Auckland, New Zealand before taking time out of the classroom to raise her family. She has also had many years’ experience in one-to-one private Mathematics tutoring.

Phyl holds an MA with First Class Honours, majoring in Pure and Applied Mathematics, from the University of Auckland, along with a Diploma of Secondary School Teaching from Auckland Teachers’ Training College.