The Female Career. Trailblazing New Zealand women share their career journeys – Details, episodes & analysis

Do you want to think more strategically? Have you been told that you need to lift yourself out of the operational space to think more futuristically?

Strategic thinking is something that frequently comes up in our coaching conversations. In this episode, we offer you our thoughts, advice and practical tools that will help you to think more strategically and progress your career.

We cover:

• What is strategy? Why does it matter?
• 3 ways to think more strategically
• Key tools you can use to build a strategic mindset

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Find out more about The Female Career and the services we provide, including leadership coaching, career coaching and gender pay gap analysis on our website.

We’d love to hear your feedback. If you’d like to get in touch you can email us on hello@thefemalecareer.com.

Image credit: Christina Morillo

It's not easy to juggle a career with being a parent. In today's episode, five New Zealand women share their experiences and insights into how they make it all work. They talk about fitting work around their kids' schedules, what happens when family and work intersect, running a business while looking after a small child, and their hopes and dreams for more gender balanced parenting and work roles. We hope the thoughts of these women are useful and inspiring for you:

• Miriana Stephens (Ngāti Rārua, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui), Leader of wellness business AuOra™, Director of Wakatū Incorporation - and mum of 4
• Alliv Samson, Co-Founder and COO of EdTech app Kami - and mum of 1
• Rhiannon McKinnon, CEO of KiwiWealth - and mum of 3
• Jacqui Magure, Clinical Psychologist, Science Communicator, Media Contributor - and mum of 1
• Megan Scott, Director at PwC - and mum of 1

Follow us on Facebook and Instagram, or sign up to our newsletter to receive career insights direct to your inbox using the form on our website.

Find out more about The Female Career and the services we provide, including leadership coaching, career coaching and gender pay gap analysis on our website.

We’d love to hear your feedback. If you’d like to get in touch you can email us on hello@thefemalecareer.com.

Anya Satyanand has spent the last two decades on a haphazard journey that's been all about equipping, emboldening and inspiring young people, entrepreneurs and leaders to actively create a more hopeful world. She is a recovering teacher, an erstwhile youth worker, and an independent director of an ethical investment company.

In her work for Leadership New Zealand, Anya supports, equips, empowers and inspires people who are interested in growing the future of Aotearoa - a future that is just and abundant, peaceful and participatory.

Anya talks about:

• The challenges and urgency of being a leader today
• Her professional crisis of becoming a parent
• How appointing a personal board can help you grow in your career

🎙 “I have ended up in this place some days I think by accident, but most days I think because I believe in this work of resourcing , acknowledging, affirming, encouraging, inspiring leaders about their own capacity to be the change that needs to happen in the world right now."

Gemma Miller of GG Jewellery is a talented goldsmith, who transforms precious heirloom jewellery into contemporary pieces you want to wear. She's also one of the co-founders of The Makers, bringing together over 20 jewellers from across NZ on an online retail marketplace.

Here, Gemma shares her career story, including:

• How a 'non-linear' accident helped her discover her passion for jewellery at age 27
• How it's an ongoing challenge to balance creativity and running a business
• How she created a community of jewellers to support each other
• That it's ok to not know what you want to do as a career, and to keep asking questions until you discover what makes you happy

Emily is a specialist insurance lawyer who has worked in NZ, Australia and the UK. She's been a Partner at Wynn Williams since 2011 and is a key member of their Dispute Resolutions team. She's also a strong advocate for women at work.

Here, she shares some highlights and challenges from her career journey, including:

• Why she finds law to be both creative and fun, and how her science background has helped her as a lawyer
• How she manages the juggle between being a partner in a law firm alongside being a single Mum and a widow
• How she's navigated her way through burnout and bullying in her career
• How she feels part of the fabric of Christchurch after being involved in resolving so many post-Earthquake insurance claims

Listen to The Hon. Ruth Richardson share the intriguing and focused story of her career.

Ruth Richardson rose to international prominence in her role as a reformist minister of Finance in New Zealand in the 1990s - the first and so far only woman to hold this role. Following her political career, Ruth has worked extensively in New Zealand and internationally as a Public Policy Consultant and Board Director. She currently holds a number of Directorships including NZ Merino, Synlait Milk and Bank of China (NZ) and has previously served on numerous Boards including Jade Software, the Reserve Bank, Oyster Bay and Wrightson.

In this interview she shares the story of her career, including:

• Declaring at age 15 that she wanted to be a politician and then strategically pursuing this career path
• As a change agent and reformist, why she's focused on being respected, not being liked
• How important family is to her, with a new granddaughter born the morning of the interview!

Wyndi Tagi dropped out of teacher's college at age 21 when she became pregnant with her first child. She now runs WE Accounting, employing 15 people across New Zealand and Samoa, and helping SMEs to thrive. She is also involved in a wide range of charitable work, with a focus on bettering the statistics for Māori and Pacifica people. On top of her busy working life, she's a Mum of 5, a keen sportsperson, and holds a black belt in Karate! We hope you enjoy hearing her talking honestly about the story of her career, which includes:

• The challenges and preconceptions she's faced as a Māori woman in business
• How she responds when people assume her husband runs the business, rather than her
• How she coped after both her Dad and Grandfather passed away in 2017, and when she was diagnosed with breast cancer
• Her take on work-life balance and how she juggles having 5 kids, her business, and her Board and charitable work

Jo Fair is the former Global Head of Human Resources for Fonterra, a company of 22,000+ employees. Her career journey has taken her around the globe to Europe, the Americas and Asia. In 2019, Jo left the corporate world to found FutureWork Studio, supporting organisations to re-imagine the world of work. We hope you enjoy listening to her inspiring career story, which includes:

• The huge cloud of self-doubt she felt when she first made the shift from HR to a line role
• Why she believes women should know there's no magic rule book for leadership and business
• How she's handled stepping into the entrepreneurial world, after many years in a global corporate
• Why her proudest career moment involves her daughter figuring out what her Mum actually did for a job
• And that it's ok not to be superwoman!

As is sometimes the way with virtual recordings, the audio quality varies in this interview. Please don't let that put you off listening though - Renee has such an interesting story!

How do you decide whether to make the leap into a new career? Can you incorporate multiple passions into your working life? How does historical sexism impact on the experiences of women at work today?

Dr Renee Liang, a second-generation Cantonese New Zealander, blends her passions for medicine and the arts. A paediatrician with special interest in community and youth health, she is also Asian Theme Lead for the landmark longitudinal study Growing Up in NZ.

Alongside her medical career, Renee also works as a poet and playwright. She has written, produced, and nationally toured eight plays, and has made operas, musicals, and community arts programmes. Her poems, essays, and short stories are studied from primary to tertiary level. In 2018, Renee was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

🎙 “We feel it’s a good thing to have balance, but it’s also a good thing to be passionate about lots of things and to draw energy from lots of things, so long as it makes you burn with something to do it.”

Image credit: John Rata

Tracey Ryan is Managing Director New Zealand for engineering, design and advisory company Aurecon. She is responsible for the leadership and performance of 850 people across five locations. In this podcast we talk about:

• The importance of bringing compassion, empathy and integrity into your career
• Finding the courage to get uncomfortable
• Why workplace diversity is critical to innovation and problem-solving

Tracey’s career to date has been focused on business growth, leading enterprise-wide multi-disciplinary teams and creating inclusive and engaged cultures. She has held senior leadership roles in several global professional services companies.

Tracey’s technical STEM background and 25 years international professional services experience makes her incredibly passionate about getting more young women and girls to choose STEM careers. She is Deputy Chair for Infrastructure New Zealand and Chair of the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) Sustainable Development Committee.

🎙 “Earlier on in my career, I was often the only female in the room, and that meant that bringing a different opinion or different way of thinking. But I do think the reality is that that has moved on quite significantly because the complexity and the uncertainties and the challenges that we are faced with, requires that entire diversity of thinking. And I don’t mean it from a gender perspective, I really do think that inclusivity across our workplace and our workforce is going to drive that innovation, that eminence and that creativity to be able to deal with the complexity of the issues we’re trying to solve.”