Meet the Team - Jamile Costa Santos
Posted on Tuesday, 10 March 2026
Meet Jamile Costa Santos
Quality Assurance Coordinator at Waitara
Jamile is Waitara's Quality Assurance Coordinator. She works closely with teams across most areas of site to check for any issues or faults with products, or anticipate any issues they may have relating to product quality. She works with the site's Quality Assurance Advisor when product needs to be sampled or checked against standards. Her team also carries out pre-shipment checks in the coldstore, where pallets are inspected to make sure the product is in the best condition before it's sent out. Jamile says her goal is for customers to receive the product and go ‘wow’!Jamile loves what she does, and has always enjoyed working with food and quality systems. While she was in university, she won third place in an entrepreneur competition for a chemical-free fruit salad. First and second were both teams, and she entered alone, so she counts it as a win! This prize money helped her buy her first computer and get her driver's license. She has a Master's in quality systems, and after university she worked in Brazil and Angola in food safety and auditing.
After living in Angola, she moved back to Brazil, but finding a job proved challenging - she was overqualified for the smaller companies, and without being able to speak English the bigger companies wouldn't hire her. So she made the move to New Zealand in February 2020 and committed to learning English through online classes - right before the world went into lockdown! Fortunately, many of her classmates didn't attend the sessions, so she often had three teachers helping her for up to eight hours a day, and she was able to improve quickly.
She worked in Hastings, Auckland, and Warkworth, before settling in Taranaki and joining the ANZCO team in 2024. She's been on the move for many years, and finally feels like she's found her place and is keen to settle down and make Taranaki her home. While she misses her family and friends from her country, she says it's worth it because she loves working for ANZCO and doing a job she finds rewarding.
She's also been surprised at how big and diverse ANZCO is - especially how many different things the business does, and how amazing it is to see the whole chain working together.
Outside work, Jamile enjoys gardening which she finds therapeutic and a great way to unwind after a busy day. She always used to wonder why people loved gardening, but now she fully understands! When she's not gardening, she enjoys getting out into nature, trying different food, watching moves, and listening to music.
Fun Facts
- Sweet or savoury?
Savoury - Beach or mountains?
A beach that's close to the mountains! - Text or call?
Call - What are you currently working towards?
Getting my residency - What skill would you like to master?
Learning languages easily - I already speak Portuguese, English, and a little Spanish - What was your first concert?
Men at Work in Brazil in 1998 - What cuisine would you eat for the rest of your life?
Brazilian cuisine