Celia Wade-Brown

Celia Margaret Wade-Brown (born 12 July 1956) is a New Zealand politician who served as the 34th Mayor of Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, from 2010 until 2016. Wade-Brown was the third female mayor of the city, replacing centre-right Kerry Prendergast. She defeated Prendergast by 176 votes in the 2010 single transferable vote mayoral election. Wade-Brown won a second term in 2013. She was the second mayor of a major New Zealand city to have been a member of the Green Party, after Dunedin's Sukhi Turner, but she stood as an independent candidate. Wade-Brown did not contest the Wellington mayoralty in the 2016 local election for a third term. Early life Born in Paddington, West London, to a British military officer father Paul Wade-Brown, Wade-Brown grew up in a council flat. She attended The Holt School in Wokingham, Berkshire, England. After school, she took a gap year in Cape Coast, Ghana, then earned an honours degree in philosophy from the University of Nottingham. She started her professional life with IBM in the United Kingdom, and moved to Wellington in 1983.