Andrew Wilks: Director of Sustainability, Victoria University of Wellington

For this member spotlight we are delighted to feature ACTS Vice-President (New Zealand) – Andrew Wilks.

Andrew is the Director of Sustainability at Te Herenga Waka | Victoria University of Wellington and has been on the ACTS board for over 6 years. Andrew says that he joined as a member of ACTS initially because although there were good connections amongst a lot of the sustainability folk in the NZ institutions, “I really valued learning about the things happening over the ditch.”

What’s your favourite thing about ACTS?

In the early days, the ACTS network was really important for peer support. Many of us were the single sustainability person in our institutions, so connecting with others who were facing the same challenges was really important. Now, many of us are working as part of sustainability teams. That cross-sector networking is still important but it feels like it’s more about sharing best practice now, rather than war stories.

What’s your biggest professional accomplishment so far?

I was pretty proud of the work I did last year to bring all the NZ Universities, Te Pūkenga and our 3 Wānanga together to document how climate change will impact the sector over the rest of the century through the use of scenario mapping. It turned out to be a much bigger project than I anticipated, but a great learning opportunity and highly collaborative.

You can view the joint report ‘Climate Change Scenarios For the Aotearoa New Zealand Tertiary Education Sector Scenarios’ here.

What’s something about you not many people know?

I sucked my thumb until I was 17. When I moved out of home to go to University I was so embarrassed I forced myself to stop, but by then it was a pretty tough habit to break. Foolishly, I shared this story with my daughter who now takes great delight in pointing out my hypocrisy when I try to get her to stop sucking her thumb.

What did you want to be growing up?

I wanted to play basketball in the NBA. Surprisingly, that dream didn’t come to fruition. Now I am left living vicariously through my 11-year old son, whose team I coach. He’s much better than I ever was at that age, so maybe I’ll ride on his coat tails to the NBA.

Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn here.