Our tutors are the heart of Toi Ohomai and whānaungatanga is part of everything we do here. As students of Toi Ohomai, you’ll feel a sense of family, of welcome.
Our friendly learning spaces and smaller class sizes will give you confidence as you gain new skills that will lead you into the future, and our tutors will be there for you every step of the way.
Your success is what we’re all about!
Swapping the boardroom for greener pastures
After growing up on a farm and building a career in advertising, Mel Paton’s love for the outdoors and a desire to help her son’s eczema led her back to her roots.
Mel grew up in Rāhui Pōkeka (Huntly), and her attraction to the advertising industry was to turn boring,… Read full profile
Riley mainly teaches the graphic design courses at Toi Ohomai and specialises in teaching techniques and design skills for Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. He finds this very rewarding and looks forward to meeting students and helping them to reach their creative goals.
Riley is also a bit of an all-rounder and has taught many different… Read full profile
Kaveeta Dutt is the Academic Lead for the Information Technology courses at Toi Ohomai.
Kaveeta has a Master of Education from the University of Otago, a Postgraduate Diploma in Education and Professional Development from Victoria University of Wellington and a Bachelor of Science Information Systems from Brigham Young University… Read full profile
Brent has been teaching forest operations for more than 15 years, picking up a range of forestry certificates along the way, as well as certificates in adult teaching, management, and occupational health and safety.
"The forest industry has changed as it has become more mechanised and we’ve responded by… Read full profile
Robert teaches computing and IT courses at Toi Ohomai, skilled in Wide Area Network (WAN), Local Area Network (LAN), Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP), Voice over IP (VoIP) and Network Management
His goal is to ensure graduates are prepared for a wealth of opportunities in the information technology sector once they… Read full profile
Murray teaches computing and IT at Toi Ohomai, particularly topics related to business structures and operations, human and computational systems interfacing, artificial intelligence for information acquisition and analysis.
He completed a Master of Computing at Unitec in 2008 and his current research activity is design and… Read full profile
Andrew teaches programming, web design and development, and project management. He also supervises student projects at level 6 and 7.
He has a Master of Education from Massey University and his teaching experience has spanned a range of educational settings and countries with primary, secondary and tertiary roles in New… Read full profile
"I’m lucky to be able to teach in an area I’m very passionate about – music," says Toi Ohomai creative tutor, Ben Wilcock.
Ben holds a bachelor’s in Music and his work as a composer and performer has appeared on more than 30 albums.
He also co-founded Thick Records NZ and performed at a number of big music… Read full profile
Kyle teaches visual arts, design and creative technologies at Toi Ohomai. He's a multimedia artist and musician with a Master of Visual Art from Wintec.
His recent work has focused primarily on sound and video as well as exploring the influence of rhythm and flow on the human experience.
He has a keen interest in alternative… Read full profile
Dale is a creative arts tutor for the Bachelor of Creative Industries, with a particular focus on graphic design, from print based to screen-based outcomes.
Prior to joining the Toi Ohomai whānau, he spent three years working in the bustling city of London. The highlight of his career was working in the UK where he… Read full profile
