Kirsty Burnett, Director

Director of Future Partners, Kirsty has dedicated her career to international development. She has lived and worked in developing countries for more than 30 years — including over 20 years in the Pacific — and experienced a myriad of cultures and political, economic, and security situations. Kirsty’s work has taken her to at least 20 countries in the Pacific, Asia, and the Middle East.

Having worked for the New Zealand Government, international development NGOs, UN agencies, the private sector, and an international development consultancy, Kirsty understands the reality and challenges of implementing successful long-term projects and emergency humanitarian relief projects. She understands donors’ priorities and their various funding modalities and business processes. Kirsty has sat on the governance boards of the New Zealand Council for International Development and Volunteer Service Abroad.

From 2005 to 2011, Kirsty worked for the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) in Wellington and Honiara. As an independent consultant, she has been a pre-approved supplier of project design and monitoring and evaluation (MERL) services for MFAT consistently since 2014. She has completed nearly 100 project design, project management, review/evaluation, and project improvement assignments for MFAT and organisations receiving MFAT and other development partner funded organisations. These assignments have involved working with New Zealand government departments, crown research institutes, private companies, UN agencies, international NGOs, and Pacific regional agencies and governments. Kirsty is very familiar with MFAT’s business processes and procedures and helps her clients understand and use them in their projects.

In 2022, Kirsty established Future Partners to:

• provide a full range of interlinked international development project-related services

• strengthen the links between organisations that focus on improving the lives of people in developing countries

• build a team of Pasifika individuals and organisations who can take on international development work

Kirsty is committed to developing the skills of the consultants and organisations with whom she works in developing countries; she regards them as true partners. Each member of the Future Partners team dedicates time to developing the skills of others, supports our clients to develop their networks, and donates a small proportion of their income to an international development or humanitarian cause.

Kirsty is an expert in designing practical projects that can be implemented and monitored to achieve the right results for the people who will benefit from them. Her ability to engage the right players at the right time, take account of relevant issues such as climate change, the needs of the more vulnerable, and tackle risks and issues as they arise, means the projects she works on have good ‘buy-in’ and stay on track.

Although Kirsty has an agricultural background, she has designed, managed and reviewed projects in most sectors, including climate-change adaptation, community development, customs, disaster-risk reduction, education, fisheries, violence against women and children, health, water and sanitation, fisheries, labour mobility, law and justice, public-sector reform and governance, renewable energy, taxation, transport and other infrastructure.

Kirsty is qualified in:

• PRINCE2 project management methodology

• Better Business Case methodology

• partnership brokering 

• editing and proofreading