Netball New Zealand has appointed Jennah Wootten as its new chief executive, ending a six month search for a permanent leader and handing one of the most demanding jobs in domestic sport to a long time Auckland administrator with a major events pedigree.
Wootten will officially start in the role on 12 August, taking over from interim chief executive Jane Patterson, who has held the organisation together since former boss Jennie Wyllie resigned in December 2025 after nine years. Patterson will stay on through the early part of the Silver Ferns Commonwealth Games preparation to make the handover as smooth as possible.
The appointment was confirmed by NNZ on Thursday and arrives at a difficult moment for the country’s largest women’s sport, with the ANZ Premiership broadcast deal still unresolved, the future shape of the domestic competition from 2027 onwards undecided, and the high performance programme still finding its feet after a turbulent 2025.
Wootten joins from Aktive, the Auckland sport and recreation trust she has led as chief executive since 2021. Before that she ran the World Masters Games 2017, was director of cricket for the Women’s Cricket World Cup hosted here in 2022, and held a senior role in the delivery of the 2011 Rugby World Cup. She also started her own playing career on a netball court at Swanson Primary in West Auckland, a detail she made a point of mentioning at the announcement.
Speaking to 1News, Wootten was open about how the last twelve months have looked from the outside. “From the outside looking in, I’ve felt for the organisation, I’ve felt for the community. I think it looks like it has been incredibly tough for everyone involved,” she said. “Today’s announcement with me is another step forward, and I’m sure that together with the netball community we are going to be able to work through those challenges.”
That tough year included the very public suspension of Silver Ferns coach Dame Noeline Taurua in September 2025 after players raised concerns about the high performance environment, and her subsequent reinstatement. The crisis took a heavy toll on the board, with chair Matt Whineray and three other directors stepping down in February. New chair Alastair Carruthers, an experienced arts and sport governor, was brought in to steady the ship.
Carruthers was clear that Wootten arrives with a full inbox. He pointed to the competition NNZ faces for audience and for sponsorship, and to the work still to be done on what domestic netball looks like from 2027. “We look forward to her leading the organisation into its next chapter,” he told reporters, and described his new chief executive as someone who has consistently delivered at the highest level of New Zealand sport.
Wootten did not duck the commercial questions either. She talked about needing to find “new and innovative funding opportunities” and said the priority had to be making sure the product itself was “incredibly attractive to fans.” On her early focus, she said her first job was “connecting and listening to all stakeholders” before any big calls are made.
That is no small task. Netball still has around 150,000 registered players nationwide, more than any other women’s team sport in the country, but the gap between participation and paying fans is wide, and broadcast revenue has slipped well below where it sat a decade ago. The ANZ Premiership is yet to confirm a long term broadcaster, and there is real uncertainty over whether the league will continue in its current six franchise format, return to a trans Tasman competition, or shift to something else entirely.
The next big test is on the court. The Silver Ferns are deep into preparation for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in July and August, and a strong campaign would give Wootten momentum heading into the role. Catherine Hall’s recent foot surgery has added a fresh selection complication, and Dame Noeline Taurua’s group is still settling on its best combinations after a stop start year.
Wootten was respectful when asked about the coach. “I have an enormous amount of respect for Dame Noeline,” she said, signalling she is not coming in to relitigate last year’s high performance review. The smarter read is that she sees her role as the commercial and structural rebuild, while Taurua keeps the on court programme moving.
There is also a generational angle worth flagging. Wootten is the first NNZ chief executive in some time who started her own playing journey in a local primary school programme. Wyllie spent more than a decade inside the organisation before becoming chief executive, but Wootten arrives with a foot in netball’s grassroots, a foot in major events, and a track record at Aktive of getting Auckland’s many sport agencies to actually talk to each other.
There is more detail in the full RNZ writeup of Wootten and Carruthers laying out their thinking, and the NZ Herald has published a longer profile of the pair on workplace culture and the future of the ANZ Premiership.
For now, the message from Carruthers and Wootten is the same. The last year was rough, the challenges in front of Netball New Zealand are real, but they believe the sport is too big and too important in the New Zealand sporting calendar to drift any longer.
What do you make of the appointment? Is Jennah Wootten the right person to rebuild Netball New Zealand, and how should NNZ handle the ANZ Premiership decision? Let us know in the comments.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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