To be a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit:
BAREMAN, Mrs Sarai-Paea (Sarai)
For services to football governance
Mrs Sarai Bareman has been contributing to football internationally and in New Zealand for a number of years.
Mrs Bareman was initially the Finance Manager for the Football Federation of Samoa and then Chief Executive Officer between 2008 and 2014. In 2014, she became Deputy General Secretary of the Oceania Football Confederation. In 2015, she was appointed as the only female member of FIFA’s Reform Committee, advocating for increased numbers of women in leadership and the prioritisation of women’s football. Consequentially, the first FIFA Women’s Football Division was established in 2016 and she was appointed as FIFA’s first Chief Women’s Football Officer, overseeing the delivery of the Women’s World Cups, the development of the game across the 211 member countries and increasing the number of women at all levels of football. She was instrumental in hosting the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in New Zealand and Australia, the most attended women’s sporting event in history with a record number of attendees in New Zealand for a football match, men’s or women’s. That record was broken three times during the tournament, with the final number sitting at 43,217 attendees. Mrs Bareman launched the first ever global women’s football strategy in 2018, encouraging empowerment through football and growing the game.
To be a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit:
TYSON-NATHAN, Ms Pania, MNZM, JP
For services to Māori and business
Ms Pania Tyson-Nathan (Rongomaiwahine) was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2018 for her services to Māori and business.
For three decades, Ms Tyson-Nathan has been dedicated to advancing Māori economic development across various domains including community, business, and government sectors. She was a member of the Māori Economic Development Board, Ministerial Advisory Group on Trade, and is currently on the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Tourism Council, the Advisory Panel Defence Policy Review, and the Rongomaiwahine Iwi Trust. She has made significant contributions to promoting the growth and development of individuals into prominent leadership positions. She has been Chief Executive of New Zealand Māori Tourism since 2008 and has focused on highlighting the unique opportunity that a Māori experience offers visitors domestically and internationally. In recognition of her contributions to repositioning Māori tourism as deeper and more meaningful, she was named in the top 50 Global Tourism Innovators in 2021. She was awarded the Māori Woman Business Leader award by the University of Auckland in 2018. Ms Tyson-Nathan was recipient of the Te Tupu-ā-Nuku award for Business and Innovation at the 2020 Matariki Awards and was inducted into the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame in 2022.
HONOURS
Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, New Year 2018