Global leaders championing climate action

As a mother, an entrepreneur and a big vision thinker, Lisa describes herself as creative, crazy and often a powerful explosion of energy. Through her work at Kete Kai, Lisa has been reimagining the food system of New Zealand to ensure that the stats of 1 in 5 New Zealanders living with food insecurity dramatically change. Lisa is on a mission to end hunger by 2030 through meal kit affordability,...

Lillian describes her life as a curly path of adventures, with her most recent focused on founding Figure Group and Huatau. When Lillian and founder of Entrepreneurial Women with Purpose, Catherine van der Meulen first connected the conversation evolved into a learning experience to unpack the idea of periods of deep thinking to redesign, solve and challenge the way things have always been done.&n...

Marina spent her early career as a booking agent at a modelling agency and soon recognised that beyond the beauty of the models there were also internal struggles and began to have conversations that would go on to shape Beautiful Minds. Beautiful Minds is a global organisation, which tackles the tough topics surrounding young people’s social, digital and wider world. They bring them to light in a...

Cristina spent most of her life as a film producer and creator, however with the great passion for this life role, it was taking away much needed time from herself and for her children. As a single mother of two she needed to make the challenging decision to step away from the known to have more flexibility of time. Her role at Ray White has given her life balance with a values aligned organisatio...

Ranjna Patel is the founder of Takami Healthcare Group and The Gandhi Nivas family violence prevention programme, who provide healthcare services to the highest needs communities in New Zealand.  Recognised as the 2021 Innovator of the Year and a finalist in the New Zealander of the Year Awards, Ranjna is constantly challenging the status quo and boundaries for how things have always been don...

In a powerful opening to the connection with Deborah, she shared her Pepeha (a way of introducing yourself in Maori) that aligns her mountain, her river, her roots and creates a deep sense of being. As a school leaver, Deborah wasn't able to fulfil her desire to do a fashion and textiles degree and instead followed the path of an Engineering degree that gave her a great love of systems, which has...

Tory Archbold founded TORSTAR in her 20's, and without giving away her age, many years later and after an incredible career, accolades and global recognition, but also personal trauma, Tory decided to hang up her publicist heels. After feeling like she always wore two masks, she experienced an incredible break through to find herself, and invested in self care to break the patterns and knew there...

Roxy is the founder of Dress for a Night, a dress rental business that was created after a realisation of not wanting to spend a fortune on a dress you would wear once, and knowing the impact of fashion on our beloved environment through the cycle of waste. When Covid hit and all events across Australia were cancelled, Roxy's business was driven into a minus on the balance sheet. But through her e...

As the CEO of Your Food Collective and mother to 5 small humans, Lauren knows the value of time and space, to create and activate change. Lauren is driven by curating a positive environmental impact even though she often feels challenged by the path through trials and tribulations, learnings and the experiences but ultimately having the guts to step off the edge. Through her faith and belief in wh...

Nikki Hind is Australia's first blind fashion designer, a mother and a gentle disruptor activating change through her work at Blind Grit. With a strong sense of purpose being to enable and value people who live with a disability, she found that fashion was the most powerful way to communicate this message.  Nikki has incredible strength after living with the feeling of feeling totally invisib...

Becky Cashman is recreating who she is each day, but with a thread of commonality with her life being devoted to the divine and a strong sense of belief that we are all connected in a 5D way. After living a life of adventure as a river and mountain guide, Becky landed in New Zealand only to meet the beloved sand fly and endeavoured to create a product and a range of products from essential oils th...

Dianna Somerville left her home town of Wagga Wagga, Australia to drive war ships in the Navy thinking she would never return to regional Australia.  But after meeting her husband she returned 15 years ago and now advocates entrepreneurship, innovation and regionalisation that enables people to think openly about living and working in the regions of Australia.  Through her work at Bridge...

As a former organisational psychologist, Helen is a leader of diverse functions within the frame of MYOB.  Knowing that MYOB is a very different organisation than when she first joined 3 1/2 years ago, she feels it has grown, transformed and reshaped in a rapidly evolving tech world.  Helen looks at leadership as 3 key components. Head, Heart and Hands ensuring a strategic alignment of p...

Dr. Michele Dickinson spent a long time as one of the only female engineers in a male dominated world and often felt quite lonely, had to work three times as hard, and was often dismissed as the lead engineer on a project. Michelle launched Nano Girl Labs as a social enterprise bringing profit and purpose together to create a dynamic and evolving organisation measuring the business both financiall...

To enable Elle to get over her fear of rejection through connecting with people, she joined an Improv Theatre group, after realising that part of being an entrepreneur and business woman would involve sales and cold calling to get herself out into new spaces.  But it was the need for spaces to solve her own problem that she launched the New Zealand arm of Space to Co. - the Air b&b of com...

The notion of nurturing the seed and it will blossom is something that Candice attributes to her Maori heritage and that has been engrained in her throughout her life.  Growing up with 7 siblings and a single mother, Candice recalls the struggle, which has helped shape her resilience and strength.  Although she didn’t thrive in the education system, through hard work and persistence Candice was ac...

Rosie defines herself as someone that is passionate about empowering women and supporting them to optimise on under-utilised assets.  Rosie has lead a series of different lives, across different industries and in different countries, but could never get comfortable with the negative impact of the affects on our beloved planet.  After moving solo to London, Rosie launched "Our Closet" - a...

Nikki Douglas has always held a strong constitution to the planet, knowing that we are all part of the earth and the wondrous ecosystem that it is.  With service being in her core, Nicki has held roles in the Department of Conservation and now at Te Awara Lakes Trust in leadership roles, often as the only indigenous woman in a male dominated environment.  Through empathy and the ability...

Hilary Walton is a strong advocate to the next generation that you don’t just grow up to be one thing and that you can never pick the way you go as often these paths find you.  As a trained psychologist, Hilary worked for the London Olympics in her first people management role and felt completely out of her depth. She felt she failed to apply some of the fundamentals of being human in a compl...

Kaarin is taking the lead this year on the UN Women Aotearoa New Zealand and global campaign -16 days of Activism against Gender Based Violence.  #OrangeNZ #16days Gender based violence comes in many forms including emotional violence, physical violence, control and financial and in many parts of the world even more extreme.  Through empowering initiatives that enable women’s equality, g...

Ingrid is a contemporary leader who is constantly evolving and analysing what kind of leader she wants to be, and has adopted a much more collaborative approach to when she first joined MYOB. Moving away from the notion of "leading the team out to battle" to learning the power of influence, Ingrid has a strong moral compass and one that is intent on ethical alignments. With considerable research u...

Anita dropped out of school at 13 and spent many years working with the team at Nutrimetics.  When the 3rd party contractor was no longer able to fulfil their commitments, Anita put her hand up and said that she would take over the opportunity.  After consulting with her family, she decided to take the leap and immersed herself into launching the business.  Over the years they have...

As a socially minded, environmental advocate and change maker, Christina encourages us all to adopt practices of the past to enable us to go forward.  From leading the EnviroClub at school to leading organisations to change the way we do business, Christina is passionate about supporting companies and customers in behavioural change, enable informed decisions, creating carbon neutral operatio...

With a strong call for action focused on creating a positive impact to ensure that millions of non recyclable coffee cups don’t end up in landfill, Nada calls for us to challenge our own beliefs on waste and the negative impact that our one coffee cup or our one sushi take away packaging can create. Again Again is a cup lending system that after 2 1/2 years is curating a new system that creates a...

As a great lover of learning, Anne - Marie has always been a big picture thinker with a more recent calling to Human Rights. After working in both the private and public sectors she partnered with two global Human Rights experts to curate the Human Rights Measurement Initiative. In exploring the notion of innovation she describes it as innovating a process, co creating and human centred design. Al...