Strategies, policies and plans you can trust

I work with councils and not-for-profit organisations across New Zealand, developing plans and other documents for you, or training your team members to use AI without losing ownership of their work.

You get clear, concise documents that support decision making and implementation.

Strategic planning

Your challenges

You lead strategic planning work in a council, agency or not-for-profit. You may be juggling several reports, development of a new strategy and the consultation process for a policy review.

You are accountable to elected members, a board or funders for the documents created by your team, whose work is often affected by restructures, legislative changes or funding decisions.

And now AI has arrived and you’re not confident that everyone is using it in ways that will deliver accurate documents you can rely on.

Here’s how your day can look when you work with me.

Receive documents that reflect what stakeholders said, with thoughtful analysis to support decision-making.
Walk into a meeting with a draft document you are proud to present.
Spend your time on thinking, implementation and relationships, not on fixing documents that aren’t ready to go on an agenda.
Leave work at 5pm because your team’s projects are all on track to be completed on time.

How I can help

Strategic planning

When you want strategic thinking about your issue

If you have work to be progressed and no staff member available to take ownership of the process, I take care of one or all of these aspects:

research and report writing
stakeholder engagement
feedback analysis
writing strategies, policies and plans.

You get a document you can rely on, produced by someone who understands what you need.

Strategic planning

AI training

When half your team is using AI and the other half won’t touch it.

I can help your team develop a shared, practical way of working with AI.

Workshops include using AI to support specific strategic planning activities such as report writing, engagement planning and feedback analysis, as well as customised AI training to meet your specific needs.

You gain confidence that the documents landing on your desk will meet your standards.

Workshops

About me

Hi, I’m Debra Bradley. I spent 19 years at Nelson City Council in resource management and strategic planning roles, and the last 12 providing services for councils and not-for-profit organisations across New Zealand. I’ve used AI in my own planning work since 2024, and I now train teams to do the same.

You do not have to explain what a deliberations report is, or what a consultation document needs to achieve. I already understand your processes, stakeholders, funders and constraints, and the judgment calls the work requires.

As a result:

You review a report summarising months of community input, without having to rewrite it.
You read a draft policy from a staff member who used to avoid AI, and it’s concise, well-structured, and clearly represents their thinking.
You present to councillors or your board without worrying that the analysis won’t hold up under scrutiny.
At a committee meeting you are asked how your team is using AI. It’s easy for you to summarise the training you arranged, and how your team is now using AI on a daily basis.
A long-time staff member retires, and their knowledge continues to be available to the team in a searchable library.

The next step

If you’ve got a document due, or a team using AI in many different ways, please get in touch. We can talk through where you’re at and whether I’m the right person to help.

Contact me

Testimonials

“I want to acknowledge your superb analytical skills, ability to hone in on the issues and easy report writing style. A pleasure to read. The recommendations are spot on.”

“Thanks for your huge contribution to the local government sector through your direct policy work, training and raising the quality of policy analysis.”

Clare Barton

Mark Tregurtha

Group Manager Environmental Management, Nelson City Council

Policy Manager, Department of Internal Affairs

“Debra was a delight to work with. A great communicator, and able to understand and incorporate ideas and information easily. I would not hesitate to recommend Debra’s services.”

“We have made really good progress and our elected members have been impressed with the simple, clear language you have brought to the document. Thank you!”

Ellie Young

Amanda Bradley

Community Coordinator, Volunteer Nelson

General Manager Policy & Governance, South Wairarapa District Council

“Debra has twice presented her AI for the modern-day editor workshop to IPEd editors, with both sessions selling out.

She showed us how we can use generative AI for different aspects of our work and encouraged us to make up our own minds about how we might want to use (or not use) it. Her demonstration of how we can write our own AI policy based on a risk assessment framework was particularly valuable.

Her workbook is fantastic and packed with clear instructions and examples from different genres for editors to experiment with. Debra provides ample time for people to work through examples in the workshop itself and was on hand to answer questions and troubleshoot.

I’m keen to have Debra back again and recommend her training to people who want to learn more about using generative AI for writing tasks in their workplace.”

Deborah Shaw

Former President, Editors Aotearoa New Zealand – a branch of the Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd)

Debra provided a series of AI prompt writing workshops for our team of 28, all of whom work in technical fields involving complexity and lengthy processes. The feedback from the team was that the sessions were very relevant and useful for their work. Being able to compare experiences some time after the initial workshop helped reinforce the learning and provide new ways to apply AI in our work. Debra’s approach was clear, engaging, and tailored to our needs—she made a complex topic accessible and fun.

In short, Debra’s AI prompt writing workshops were engaging, practical and inspiring. Our team left with clear tools to boost creativity and efficiency – high recommended!”