Global leaders championing climate action

Heather is a woman who is all about human connection but firstly through connecting to who she is, by allowing space and time to think and reflect. After 25 years in her role at ASPECT and Advanced Skin Technology, she is clear about her path, what her values are and discovering the things that matter, and has chosen things along her journey to meet her values. Knowing that we are stronger together, even through pivots and change, she is a strong advocate to ensure there is always a mutual win with fair, just and equitable behaviours in the decisions she makes each day. Although she is a strong believer in risk, ensuring that the risks are calculated, well thought out and are acting with intent for the greater good of the world and supporting people to be the best versions of themselves. With a strong call for action to act locally, care for your community that will ultimately have a wave of impact on a global level.

As a passionate mother of two, a vet, a farmer and founder of The Whole Story, her journey is a culmination of life experiences all coming together to who she is today.  With a strong focus on the agricultural industry and driving it forward through the lens of sustainability, it is often surrounded by controversy and negativity through a lack of understanding and fear.  Even when she often is faced with push back from the industry as it challenges their core value set, Becks pushes forward with a deep sense of kindness and an openness to living a life of purpose.  With her purpose being to Inspire sustainable change from the ground up, Becks has engaged in stimulating thought process, times of deep thinking and allowing the words that shape her to flow through her, to build on the foundations of that purpose. She knows to be the best version of herself each day needs to be Active, Outside, Connected and Human (keeping it real). Although she often feels that the staircase seems challenging especially to tackle at once, she encourages all women to step forward disabling the risk of doing nothing at all.

As a Maori Indigenous Woman, Rachel is an advocate for gender equality with a strong focus on empowering indigenous women, an innate characteristic that she embodied as she grew up, and observing the roles of women in her community. Launching Rise2025 Global, Rachel left the safety of her corporate role and jumped into the unknown as something didn't quite fill her cup. The stats for women in leadership were dismal, she always took her mistakes as learnings and often called it out for women to let the ladder down for other women. Through daily mindful walking, the practice of gratitude and reciting the Maori Karakia - prayers used to invoke spiritual guidance and protection, Rachel has a big year ahead lead by growth, scale, opportunity and partnerships. As the co-author of Take Your Space a book for all women, supported by interviews with 14 women and their secrets to success. A 2020 Westpac Women of Influence, Global category finalist amongst other international accolades she continues to lead the way for Indigenous women. https://www.onetree-house.com/product-page/take-your-space She calls on all women to make and create space for other women, through support, coaching, mentoring and connecting and leading the next generation with great role models.

After working for 10 years in the Public Service, Chrissie had the curiosity to combine and bridge her Western Learnings & Maori Learnings from her upbringing and discovered that her passions ultimately lay in the combination of the two. Through change and evolution, listening and learning, appreciation of cultural differences, Chrissie used the notion that as a Maori woman that you "weren't expected to achieve much" as a catalyst and motivation to strive even harder. Chrissie has a passion in supporting the Equality of Rights in supporting Indigenous People with a disability to be able to ACCESS employment, health care and education. With a strong call for action - Chrissie calls on our community to Not be afraid to ask, ask hard questions, be curious to dig deeper and find comfort in uncomfortable places and spaces.

As a successful, savvy and influential woman of the world, Nikki has lived through layers of trials and tribulations, learnings and experiences to get to where she is today.  Nikki believes you need to fail to know who you are, and was often called stupid and that she had no value and hit an all time rock bottom in her late 40’s and entered a dark time in her life.  With a mantra of belief to start every day like it’s the beginning, Nikki is now working to support emerging entrepreneurs and business women to align their business desires to the needs of the world and its prosperous future.

Camia is an architect at heart with the soul of an entrepreneur. With 2 masters under her belt, she always had a passion for the evolution of cities and landed in Christchurch after the earthquakes. She however, didn't just take the traditional lens of development and developed the evolution to the age of belonging, where people could connect and build a deep sense of community. With her current project development focused on Collett's Corner they are curating a building with a difference. A People Powered Property Development with its purpose rooted in the Lyttelton community it serves and is supported by the hundreds of people across Aotearoa who collectively own it. Since inception, the project has been shaped together with the community. During this project, Camia has become increasingly aware of anxiety which shows up as electricity in her body. Knowing that anxiety is something that many people struggle with, we dug a little into this topic and how she has learnt after 5 years of deep practice to listen to it and tune into it to know that when she is anxious something is out of alignment. She spends 2 hours a day walking or cycling knowing that her creativity arrives in motion, when there is blood flowing through her body, reading mind food books to nourish and grow her spirit and being careful about her behaviours to ensure she is working to be the best version of herself.

Eva Pemper founded the brand EP Wines with a desire to continue her family legacy in the wine industry from the 80's in Croatia. With courage and bravery naturally in her blood, Eva took the leap to move to NZ leaving her family and friends and starting again, with Eva believing that both courage and bravery are two key pillars of success and propelling forward. A key driver to her success as a female winemaker in Marlborough through the challenging year of 2020, has been through continuous learning and development, to rethink her business, learn from others who had done it before and embracing the digital world.

Founding Sharsies alongside 6 other diverse mindsets, Brooke and the team at Sharsies are on a mission to create a Financially Empowered Generation to support people to engage with their financial futures.  Brooke always wanted to be an entrepreneur after engaging in the Young Enterprise Scheme at school, has a strong focus on building High Performance teams, lead by the fear of not doing something meaningful.  As a people centric organisation, Brooke has a strong focus on supporting the next gen of leaders to be brought alongside them and creating space for them to flourish.

Mandy was fortunate to grow up in a rural upbringing which she feels has had an earthing impact on her to be able to support the work that she does to lead family and whanau into a new way of being.  Taking design principles, fitting into a digital space, having diversity of teams and factoring in interventions.  All of these have culminated into the change and transformation space.  Mandy believes that personal and professional development in unison is key to our growth for the future.

Jennifer Mills is the founder of Jennifer Mills & Associates and has often been described as taking the more difficult route, bucking the system and open to failing which has crafted her true entrepreneurial spirit, within a legal frame. She has always been challenged about being a female at the leadership table with a collective of internal politics within the organisations she was part of and feels that women lack the support network to empower them for the future.  With a strong sense of purpose and a belief that it is an evolution of our growth that comes from our inner being, she is courageous, caring and determined to live as a whole human.