Our tutors are the heart of Toi Ohomai | Te Pūkenga and whānaungatanga is part of everything we do here. As students of Toi Ohomai | Te Pūkenga, you’ll feel a sense of family, of welcome.

Our friendly learning spaces and smaller class sizes will give you confidence as you gain new skills that will lead you into the future, and our tutors will be there for you every step of the way.

Your success is what we’re all about!

  • Mel Paton

    Mel Paton

    Faculty of Primary Industries, Trades and Infrastructure


    Swapping the boardroom for greener pastures 

    After growing up on a farm and building a career in advertising, Mel Paton’s love for the outdoors and a desire to help her son’s eczema led her back to her roots. 

    Mel grew up in Rāhui Pōkeka (Huntly), and her attraction to the advertising industry was to turn boring, unappealing TV… Read full profile

  • Riley Claxton

    Riley Claxton

    Faculty of Business, Design and Service Industries


    Riley mainly teaches the graphic design courses at Toi Ohomai and specialises in teaching techniques and design skills for Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. He finds this very rewarding and looks forward to meeting students and helping them to reach their creative goals.

    Riley is also a bit of an all-rounder and has taught many different… Read full profile

  • Kaveeta DuttKaveeta Dutt

    Kaveeta Dutt

    Faculty of Business, Design and Service Industries


    Kaveeta Dutt is the Academic Lead for the Information Technology courses at Toi Ohomai. 

    Kaveeta has a Master of Education from the University of Otago, a Postgraduate Diploma in Education and Professional Development from Victoria University of Wellington and a Bachelor of Science Information Systems from Brigham Young University in… Read full profile

  • Brent Cannard

    Brent Cannard

    Faculty of Primary Industries, Trades and Infrastructure


    Brent has been teaching forest operations for more than 15 years, picking up a range of forestry certificates along the way, as well as certificates in adult teaching, management, and occupational health and safety.  

    "The forest industry has changed as it has become more mechanised and we’ve responded by setting up new mechanised… Read full profile

  • Robert Flores

    Robert Flores

    Faculty of Business, Design and Service Industries


    Robert teaches computing and IT courses at Toi Ohomai, skilled in Wide Area Network (WAN), Local Area Network (LAN), Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP), Voice over IP (VoIP) and Network Management

    His goal is to ensure graduates are prepared for a wealth of opportunities in the information technology sector once they leave Toi Ohomai.… Read full profile

  • Shelly McGowan

    Shelly McGowan

    Faculty of Business, Design and Service Industries


    Shelley teaches computing and IT courses at Toi Ohomai, specialising in software programming, with a particular focus on programming languages such as VB.Net, C#, Pascal, C, C++ and Delphi. She has also taught papers in the field of Robotics, Business Computing (Microsoft Office products) and Interface Analysis. 

    She has a Bachelor of… Read full profile

  • Murray Foote

    Murray Foote

    Faculty of Business, Design and Service Industries


    Murray teaches computing and IT at Toi Ohomai, particularly topics related to business structures and operations, human and computational systems interfacing, artificial intelligence for information acquisition and analysis.

    He completed a Master of Computing at Unitec in 2008 and his current research activity is design and fabrication… Read full profile

  • Andrew Chapman

    Andrew Chapman

    Faculty of Business, Design and Service Industries


    Andrew teaches programming, web design and development, and project management. He also supervises student projects at level 6 and 7.

    He has a Master of Education from Massey University and his teaching experience has spanned a range of educational settings and countries with primary, secondary and tertiary roles in New Zealand,… Read full profile

  • Ben Wilcock

    Ben Wilcock

    Faculty of Business, Design and Service Industries


    "I’m lucky to be able to teach in an area I’m very passionate about – music," says Toi Ohomai creative tutor, Ben Wilcock.

    Ben holds a bachelor’s in Music and his work as a composer and performer has appeared on more than 30 albums.  

    He also co-founded Thick Records NZ and performed at a number of big music festivals around the… Read full profile

  • Kyle Sattler

    Kyle Sattler

    Faculty of Business, Design and Service Industries


    Kyle teaches visual arts, design and creative technologies at Toi Ohomai. He's a multimedia artist and musician with a Master of Visual Art from Wintec.

    His recent work has focused primarily on sound and video as well as exploring the influence of rhythm and flow on the human experience.

    He has a keen interest in alternative music… Read full profile