Administration Team

Director Executive Programmes

ian.lafferty@otago.ac.nz
Mobile +64 21 662 961
Office +64 3 479 8165

Nationality: Scottish
Qualification/s: Bachelor of Engineering (Hon), Post Grad Dip BA, MBA

Ian has more than 20 years experience working in organisations in New Zealand, Australia, Asia Pacific and Europe. He has held senior management roles in a number of different sectors such as telecommunications, software, education and not-for-profit. His key focus areas have been sales & service, market development and strategic change.

Prior to migrating to New Zealand Ian held a number of senior positions with BT in Europe, Australia and Asia.

As Country Manager, BT Thailand, from 1996 to 1998 he was responsible for developing a strategy for the fledgling business, securing new licences from the Thai regulators and winning and protecting some valuable contracts with multi-national customers leading to a doubling of revenues in two years.  During this period, Ian was elected to the executive committee of the British Chamber of Commerce and elected as chairman of the sub-committee on telecommunications.

From 1998 to 2001 Ian was Regional Director for Marketing and Sales Operations at Concert Asia Pacific (a BT/AT&T joint venture) based in Sydney and Singapore. He developed and implemented a successful market growth strategy and brought together a team of well-respected subject matter experts who provided much needed specialist technical expertise to the company’s regional operation. 

In 2001, Ian took up the position of Regional Director, Conferencing and Education Solutions at BT Asia-Pacific, based in Singapore. He launched both businesses from zero and developed a sales and service capability which included a 12-person multi-lingual audio and video conferencing service centre. He led a multi-cultural sales & service team with more than 20 members located throughout the Asia-Pacific region, winning more than 50 customers in the first two years.

Ian moved to New Zealand in 2005.  He spent his first two years in NZ running  marketing and business development at a not-for-profit organisation then two years as CEO of a Wellington-based software company before joining the University of Otago in April 2009.
In a previous life, Ian was a lecturer in electronics and communication engineering at Singapore Polytechnic.