Kiri Gillespie is the Assistant News Director and a Multimedia Journalist for the Bay of Plenty Times, covering local politics in Tauranga.

Kiri Gillespie is the Assistant News Director and Multimedia Journalist at the Bay of Plenty Times. You could say she’s a people person. She worked in hospitality and tourism in Rotorua before embarking on a career in journalism. Having cut her teeth in newsrooms in Rotorua, Wellington and Gisborne, Kiri joined NZME in 2010, based in Tauranga. In 2011, she led coverage of the Rena sinking and the environmental disaster that followed. She has covered some of the biggest issues affecting the Bay of Plenty. Kiri mostly covers Tauranga's civic and political landscape and the growing pains the city is experiencing as its population grows. Being a voice for the underdog is a big part of what drives her. As the whakatauki goes: He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. “What is the most important thing in the world? The people, the people, the people.”