Tory Whanau
Mayor of Wellington since 2022
Tory Awatere Whanau (born 1983) is a former New Zealand politician. She was elected mayor of Wellington at the 2022 election, but did not seek re-election in 2025. Previously she served as the parliamentary chief of staff for the Green Party.
Whanau was the first person of Māori descent to be mayor of Wellington.
Early life and education
Whanau has ancestors from Pakakohi and Ngāruahine. She was born in Porirua in 1983 and grew up in Cannons Creek, Porirua. Whanau moved with her family to Pātea at the age of 8, later attending New Plymouth Girls' High School. Whanau moved to Wellington as an adult to study, and in 2003 won $1.39 million in a Lotto draw, which she used to pay off her parents' mortgage, support her family, and travel.
Whanau graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in media studies from Victoria University of Wellington in 2006 and a Postgraduate Diploma in Business and Administration in Communication Management from Massey University in 2012.
Career
After graduating from Victoria University of Wellington, Whanau worked for the New Zealand Film Commission as a business affairs and short film assistant.
“Tory Whanau” enters the record as mayor of Wellington since 2022. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tory, Whanau and Mayor can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q113015236. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1983, 2022, 2025 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tory Whanau” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.