Strategies, policies and plans you can trust

I work with councils and not-for-profit organisations across New Zealand, writing the documents myself or training teams to use AI without losing ownership of their work.

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

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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.

You want to:

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 hours 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.

Get your time back

If your projects are moving slower than you’d like, it’s rarely a question of skill or commitment. Strategic documents need long stretches of uninterrupted thinking, and that’s the hardest thing to protect when your days fill up with meetings, urgent issues and questions that demand a response.

There are two ways to get that time back. I can take the document off your hands and work on it without the interruptions you have to deal with. Or I can work with your team to show them how to use AI consistently and carefully on some of their tasks. Either way, AI speeds up some of the steps (such as sorting feedback, structuring drafts, spotting patterns) and frees up time for the tasks we need to do ourselves, including listening, judgment and making the final decisions on documents.

How I can help

Strategic planning

When you have a document to complete and a deadline to meet.

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.

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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.

I provide workshops on using AI to support all of the activities listed above or create customised AI training for your specific needs.

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

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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.

Here is what that looks like for the people I work with:

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.

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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."

"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."

"You are an absolute star and we really appreciate the order and efficiency you bring to our deliberations reports."

"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 … Debra's approach was clear, engaging, and tailored to our needs."

"Debra's workshop was a fantastic introduction to understand and explore the ways that we can use AI to support our work. While I had already been using AI from time to time, Debra's structured approach for writing prompts has really allowed me to understand how to interrogate AI faster and with more accuracy as well as broadening my horizons about what AI can be useful for."