Dame Farah Palmer, DNZM, of Palmerston North, for services to sport, particularly rugby
Dame Farah Palmer (Ngāti Maniapoto, Waikato) is a three-time Rugby World Cup winning captain of the New Zealand women’s rugby team (Black Ferns) and has held a variety of governance roles since retiring as a player in 2006. Dame Farah was professional development manager for the Manawatū Rugby Union, an independent member of the Māori Rugby Board, member of the Women’s Advisory Committee of the International Rugby Board, and research consultant for New Zealand Rugby. She became the first woman on the New Zealand Rugby Board in 2016 and was elected Deputy Chairperson in 2021. She currently chairs the New Zealand Māori Rugby Board and is President of the New Zealand Rugby Museum. In 2022, she was appointed as Pou Ākonga Executive Director – Māori Student Success at Massey University and previously was Associate Dean Māori for Massey Business School from 2018. Her research and service focusses on the intersection of Māori and gender identities in high performance sport, sport for development, organisational and leadership contexts. She was a member of Te Manahua New Zealand Universities Women in Leadership Programme Committee from 2015 to 2020. She was a member of the Ministerial Taskforce reviewing Alcohol Advertising and Sponsorship in 2014 and was a founding Trustee for Manukura, an education programme with a Te Ao Māori approach to excellence in sport, culture and education. She has held several mentoring and patron roles with education and public sector organisations. Dame Farah is a member of the Sport and Recreation New Zealand Ihi Aotearoa Board.