The Italians have never really treated coffee as a casual affair. It is ritual, performance, social glue, mild personality test and, always, an acceptable reason to stop everything you are doing. So it makes perfect sense that Bialetti and Dolce&Gabbana have looked at the humble morning brew and thought, “Yes, […]
Bindi Norwell runs New Zealand’s largest primary healthcare network with an innovator’s impatience and an operator’s discipline. A profile of a leader who decided early what kind of boss she’d never be. “Early on, I felt like I had to be the expert in the room, I needed to be […]
For Catherine Goodwin, leadership is not about preserving a family legacy unchanged. It is about earning the right to carry it forward – knowing which standards should endure, having the courage to challenge those that should not, and creating enough space for the next generation to do things differently and […]
Miraka Davies opened the Journey To Excellence stage with a waiata and a rebrand, then spent half an hour demonstrating that resilience has nothing to do with keeping it together. The first thing Miraka Davies did as keynote speaker was introduce herself, which was awkward, because she was also the […]
Thirty years in technology sales have taught Sita Proud that negotiation is not a boardroom event. It is a mindset, and women are better equipped for it than they think. Sita Proud learned to negotiate at about ten years old, in a saree shop in India, watching her mother commit […]
Andrew Nicol has interviewed 100 New Zealand leaders about AI. His verdict: most of us are strumming a guitar we have never practised, then blaming the guitar. Andrew Nicol opened with a confession from a Fiji sailing holiday. He wore his prescription sunglasses onto the boat, knowing better. He ducked […]
The day closed with Miraka Davies back in the MC chair, steering Sita Proud and Rosanne Graham through a conversation ranging from feedback and imposter syndrome to mothers, motorbikes and steak. Asked what had stuck with her from the day, Proud pointed to Andrew Nicol’s letter to his children. “I’m […]
Sixteen years ago Di Foster was given twelve months to live and told to put her affairs in order. She declined, had a chat with Death over green tea, and built a framework for living intentionally instead. Di Foster opened by admitting that the six-year-old inside her, the one who […]
From down to the wire phone calls to opera at the pyramids, Innovative Travel founder Robyn Galloway has spent 35 years proving that the strongest negotiating position is a relationship you built before you needed it. Robyn Galloway’s first recorded negotiation was a failure, and it was with her mother. […]
Host Joy Reid gathered Di Foster, Robyn Galloway, Andrew Nicol and Rosanne Graham for a closing kōrero on apologies, imposter syndrome, fruit salad, and why nobody should aim to win 100 per cent of a negotiation. Joy Reid opened by confessing she had scribbled Rosanne Graham’s ten lessons “on scraps […]
At the 2026 Met Gala Joey King wore a custom Miu Miu tulle column dress embellished with cascading silver crystals, featuring a pink leather halter neckline and pink georgette train inspired by the iconic Miu Miu Spring/Summer 2010 collection. She finished the look with light pink satin mules. Gigi Hadid […]
Arches are one of the most over-flogged design trends of the decade. So why does Melbourne’s award-magnet Thomas Street Residence make them look like the future? Oh the arch. Somewhere around 2019 it escaped from architecture school, got itself a TikTok account and has spent the years since flogging itself […]
It’s difficult to find five-star luxury experiences that include everything from a Michelin dining experience to a UNESCO heritage status wartime bunker. This is something you think you might be able to swing in Europe perhaps in some European village, but you can actually find it much closer to home […]
Nolan’s IMAX 70mm mind and time bending behemoth, The Odyssey has landed and inspired people to start rereading those Greek classics. But before we start getting all hero worshiping about Odysseus, the Matt Damon rendition or otherwise maybe we should remember that he is a man who kept finding excellent […]
If there were an Olympic sport for politely following up proposals, I’d quietly fancy my chances of making the podium. One of the more unexpected lessons I’ve learnt since starting my own consultancy is that some of the biggest projects I’ve ever “won” have never actually begun. Most new opportunities […]
Eighty-two per cent of New Zealand businesses now use AI. Almost none of them can feel it. Expert speakers at the M2 AI Summit in Auckland spent a day explaining why the missing ingredient is not the machine. Here is the state of play, courtesy of the Productivity Propelled report […]
We are living through the oddest phase of the AI story so far: everyone is using it, almost nobody can prove it is working, and the technology itself has quietly changed underneath us. A day in Christchurch with nine speakers made sense of it. There is a peculiar contradiction sitting […]
You’re in Tokyo, you’ve done teamLab, marvelled at the fish market and hung out with The Strangers rockabilly group at Yoyogi Park. You’ve also heard some Chicago-style blues at an Ebisu bar, sung karaoke in an obscure booth with some other random travellers and petted a cute bundle of fur […]
For Michelle Herlihy, CEO of Speirs Finance Group, leadership begins and ends with people. Michelle runs a near $1 billion lending business that supports thousands of New Zealand companies, yet when she describes her role, the financial metrics come second. The real work, she says, is human. “I would sum […]
While Chorus is focused on maintaining the digital infrastructure that powers New Zealand, Chief People Officer Jo Mataira is dedicated to the human elements that power the organisation. Having spent over a decade with the telecommunications giant, Mataira has seen the company through a period of immense structural change, yet […]
Sara Johnson leads one of the biggest trade-facing businesses in the country as CEO of ITM, New Zealand’s largest independent building supply network. On paper, the scale is substantial: a co-operative of more than 90 stores nationwide, backed by 26 Frame & Truss plants, serving everyone from local builders to […]
Alaina Luxmoore and Heather Polaschek of RUSH have spent years navigating industries that have not always made space for women. What they have been a part of building together showcases what genuine support in leadership actually looks like. Alaina Luxmoore is Director of Marketing at RUSH, Aotearoa’s leading digital design […]
Change, by its nature, can be unsettling within an organisation. Korrin Balmain often explains it with a simple analogy. “Imagine leaving your car at a valet car wash, when you get it back, the seat has moved, the mirrors are different, and the radio station has changed. You would stop […]
Wendy Nowell-Usticke has spent long enough in beauty to know when an industry is overcomplicating things. In a world that thrives on excess, multi-step routines, endless launches and ever-changing trends, she has found herself moving in the other direction. That shift did not come from trend forecasting or a sudden […]
Over Easter, my partner and I attended our friend’s Icelandic wedding. A beautiful couple finally tied the knot. During the speeches, the sister of the groom referenced their family as a “randy Scandy family”, which tickled me enough to want to get in on the action with my own punny […]
There is a reason indoor-outdoor living never really goes out of style. Done well, it gives you the best of both worlds: the comfort, polish and intimacy of a beautifully considered interior, with the freshness, light and unrestrained ease of the natural world. Sometimes, that means drawing greenery, daylight and […]
There is a little bit of an irony in the art world in that most of it is made far away from where most people see it. Not in grand institutions or under flattering track lighting with a waiter drifting past holding a tray of exotic mollusc hors d’oeuvres and […]
These days, the travel industry is brimming with algorithmic social feeds, tracked ads, apps and online booking systems, but Robyn Galloway is living proof that nothing can replace true human experience, expertise and passion. As the founder of Innovative Travel, Galloway has led her company through the massive technological and […]
Let’s be honest, the auto industry has a habit of talking to the wrong person. More often than not, it’s women who are actually running the show when it comes to the family vehicle. We book the appointments, coordinate the drop-off, figure out what’s urgent versus what can wait, and […]
Auckland’s social set recently descended upon The Shy Guy to usher in the “Summer of Sour,” celebrating the debut of the BATCHED Lychee & Yuzu Sour. The venue, a private members’ club known for its velvet-lined luxury and a “no-photography” rule that usually keeps its secrets safe, made a rare […]
If you’ve ever watched the early seasons of Downton Abbey and thought, “Yes, I too would like my weekend to include a grand staircase moment, ornate lighting and a lot of curved polished wood,” The Clements in Cambridge delivers that exact energy, but without the entangled inheritance plots and intergenerational […]
Keira Knightley is back on a boat, but this time there are no pirates, wacky mutant sea villains or Johnny Depp channelling his best inner Keith Richards. Two decades after she first strode across a Disney soundstage in a corset and tricorn hat as Elizabeth Swann, the British actress who […]
When talking to Tracey Ryan, you quickly get the sense she has lived several careers in one lifetime. Chief Executive of Aurecon New Zealand, she sits at the intersection of engineering, infrastructure and national strategy, but her story starts a long way from project boards and government forums. It begins […]
Fusion5 is a big ship. It began as a small Wellington venture and has grown into a trans-Tasman technology services company of around a thousand people. It implements core platforms, runs managed services, integrates data so decisions move faster, and is increasingly known for getting AI out of slide decks […]
People often talk about leadership in terms of scale. The size of a business. The size of a transformation. The size of a mandate. But for Hannah Walton, the most meaningful measure is not scale at all. It is the human experience behind the numbers. It is how older New […]
Dawn Engelbrecht is no stranger to building scale. She grew a six-child after-school programme into 183 locations with 58 franchisees in New Zealand and branches in Australia, Canada, England, Ireland and South Africa caring for over 9,000 children a day, then brought that experience to Kitchen Studio, where she now […]
“You Win or Lose in the Second Half.” For Lisa Oakley, founder of People Associates, the second half isn’t about age or timing — it’s about renewal. It’s proof that you can rebuild, reimagine, and rise stronger from the toughest seasons. The first half might knock you down or strip […]
James Laughlin is a high performance leadership strategist and executive coach based in Christchurch. A seven time world champion musician, he coaches elite teams and senior leaders, including work with Canterbury Rugby. He hosts the Lead On Purpose podcast and translates mindset science into practical leadership tools. Ali Harper gives […]
Michelle Batchelor is the CEO of Life Plus NZ, Preston and Blythe, and Little Life, with deep experience across healthcare, staffing, and recruitment. Before the boardroom she competed internationally as Michelle “Pressure” Preston, winning multiple titles across Muay Thai and boxing. She pairs high performance habits with practical people leadership […]
Danu Abeysuriya is the founder and CTO of Rush Digital. Under his technical leadership Rush has delivered large scale platforms and applied AI systems used by millions, including software used daily by one in ten New Zealanders. He is known for turning cutting edge research into practical products and for […]
Peri Drysdale is the founder of Snowy Peak and Untouched World, and the founder of the Untouched World Foundation. She built a global knitwear business from a home start, pioneered possum merino innovation, and grew a brand recognised internationally for quality and sustainability. She is a long standing advocate for […]
Ali is joined by Peri and Michelle for the panel discussion and gets straight into the takeaways. “You’ve both faced very stressful moments where it’s make or break. What’s in your toolkit that gives you the stamina to keep going?” Peri doesn’t hesitate. “For me it’s all about energy.” She […]
Above: Russell Clark, The Shearer’s Wife, 1952. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, promised gift of Greg J Moyle Foundation through the Auckland Art Gallery Foundation. For most of us, a visit to Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki is an occasional weekend outing. For Greg Moyle, it became a […]
Pictures Courtesy of © Glen Luchford Earlier this northern autumn, Milan quietly reminded everyone why it still sets the pace in fashion imagery. At 10 Corso Como, Glen Luchford’s first solo exhibition, Atlas, pulled three decades of work into one space and one mood. It has now wrapped, but the […]
Back in the 70s, before cold stainless steel and chrome became the metal hue of choice for any modern household, bronze and brass ruled the roost. If anything could be cast in an off-gold alloy, it was. From tapware to door handles to lighting, even to those weird bronze pineapple […]
On a sunny April afternoon in New York, a small crowd gathered in Washington Square Park. There was no announcement, no stage, no hoopla. Just a woman with damp hair and an acoustic guitar. The voice was unmistakable. It was Lorde, playing a new song called What Was That. The […]
Some people spend years figuring out what they want to do. Not Maria Jose Alvarez. “I was one of those weird 13-year-olds who knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life,” she says. “And I’m now doing it.” Raised in a small rural town in southern Chile, Alvarez’s […]
As the CEO of Skills Group, Rosanne Graham oversees a national education provider that spans 27 industries, serves 23 thousand learners, and is reshaping itself for a future defined by both human capability and technological change and is helping create the future of industry leaders of tomorrow. In the role […]
Jodie King is the Chief People Officer at One New Zealand, and leads a team responsible for the culture, capability and performance of circa 2,500 employees, while also helping steer one of the company’s boldest ambitions to become one of the most AI-enabled telcos in the world. It is a […]
Justine Gladwell-Hunt’s career has been anything but predictable. Moving from the UK to New Zealand, taking on roles across different industries, running a marathon on a whim with barely ten weeks of training, and most recently stepping into the role of National Compliance Manager at Raine & Horne New Zealand, […]
