About us
Kathy Lloyd, Waka Kuaka founder & lead consultant
Kathy Lloyd, B.A., BVSc. - Waka Kuaka founder
Our founder Kathy Lloyd hails from the rural coastal northern peninsula of New Zealand, steeped in Māori and early European history and surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea. She is now based in the central part of New Zealand at the top of the South Island. With a focus on exports, Kathy has over 20 years working in specialist areas of regulation in the food, animal product, production sectors - including over 10 years negotiating bilateral food safety and animal health standards with overseas markets.
After graduating in both social science and veterinary science, Kathy worked in animal and food science regulatory roles and worked for New Zealand’s Food Safety Authority (now Food Safety New Zealand, part of Ministry for Primary Industries). Kathy’s wide experience working in regulatory and market access roles gives her an appreciation of the challenges and change that our food sector has to grapple with. She served as a Market Access Counsellor for 11 years, after working as an animal product export verifier, engaging with both industry, standard-setters and policy-makers as well as with trade officials, government regulators and importers in South East Asia and North America. She has a vast amount of experience researching, negotiating, publishing and clarifying government export and market access standards, as well as successfully managing many official audits by overseas regulators. Her work has focused on a wide range of overseas markets including the EU, Russia, USA, Mexico, Caribbean, and South East Asia.
Kathy has been involved in providing training and mentoring in a wide range of areas including export food standards, electronic export health certification, regulation of halal food certification, market access negotiation and animal welfare investigation & enforcement and veterinary nursing. All of these roles have involved working with people, many from diverse backgrounds and cultures.
New Zealand’s future will depend on our ability to produce and export food in years to come. Waka Kuaka was established in 2017 to provide a range of technical and professional services in the food regulatory space and we look forward to having you on board the journey!