Christine Kearney on Resilience, Leadership and Finding Opportunity in a Tough Economy
Long before boardrooms, Christine Kearney trained in ballet: a discipline built entirely on making difficulty look effortless. It’s a fitting origin story for a woman who has spent her career perfecting the same art in business. She cut her teeth in five-star hospitality, starting her hotel career at The Ritz in London and becoming one of the youngest female directors in Langham’s history at just 27. She then took roles as Operations & Marketing Director, and later GM, at Webb’s – New Zealand’s storied auction house – where she sharpened her eye for value, provenance and presentation under pressure. Today she is Partner & CEO of PH Digital.
On paper, it’s an unlikely lineage: ballet barres, luxury hospitality, commercial strategy. In practice, it’s precisely the alloy that makes her formidable – poise as something trained, not simply worn. “I’m a businesswoman first, then a marketer,” she says. And the distinction isn’t modesty, it’s method.
The Upside of Downturns
Ask her to describe the current marketing landscape and she doesn’t reach for the language of trend reports. She reaches for something blunter: demanding. “Budgets are under the microscope and every marketing dollar has to prove itself,” she says. “We’ve seen a real shift away from brand fluff towards performance and ROI.”
It’s the kind of climate Christine sees less as a threat than an opening. Right now, business confidence is low, and pressure is everywhere. But there’s a truth few people say out loud: hard markets can be a good thing. They’re painful, yes. But they force a kind of growth that boom times simply don’t. “You can’t rely on momentum,” she says. “You have to earn every sale. You have to know your numbers inside and out. You have to truly understand your customer. You have to lead.” The cracks that were easy to ignore in good years get exposed: in operations, in strategy, in teams. That can feel brutal. But it’s also a gift, because fixing those cracks now is what builds something stronger for later.
The instinct in a tightening market is to hunker down, cut costs and wait it out. Christine sees that as the luxury of comfort, not the necessity of survival. “Pressure forces you to scrutinise every process, pivot to maximise efficiency, and refine your systems,” she says. “You don’t just survive. You position yourself to win.”
Reading the Room
Where Christine distinguishes herself is in her refusal to be carried along by sentiment. Listen only to headlines right now, and you’d conclude Kiwis had stopped spending altogether. The data across PH Digital’s own client book tells a subtler story: many categories are still growing year on year. What’s changed isn’t appetite, but discernment. The money hasn’t vanished. It has simply grown more particular about where it lands.
“That’s an important distinction,” she says, “because it means the market hasn’t closed. It’s just stopped rewarding mediocrity.” One client, a global lifestyle brand whose once-exceptional growth had plateaued, needed no reinvention, only rigour: “We audited everything, stopped the wasted spend, rebuilt the structure and realigned the messaging to what their customers actually cared about.” Within four weeks, revenue was up 270% month on month.
Composure and Comms
Christine doesn’t romanticise where her resilience comes from. Her family weathered real hardship when she was growing up, but she traces her steadiness directly to her mother’s unshakeable optimism. “I was taught that nothing could hold me back. Not circumstance. Not pressure. Not fear.”
That doesn’t mean she mistakes resilience for stoicism. “Have a reaction. Feel the feelings, express the emotion,” she says. “Resilience isn’t the absence of a reaction. It’s how fast you move through it, back to base level, so you can push forward.” It’s a philosophy she’s had ample occasion to practise, multiple surgeries for endometriosis sit among the private battles she’s moved through while building businesses. Optimism, in her framing, isn’t a disposition but a decision. “Being positive without moving is just wishful thinking.”
It’s this same discipline she’d hand to any woman stepping into a CEO or leadership role in this climate. Know your numbers completely. “Nothing builds credibility and confidence in a boardroom faster than complete command of the numbers.” Don’t wait to feel ready; there is no perfect moment, only the discipline to move and refine as you go. Be exacting about transparency, too. Having led teams through both lockdowns and the current “downturn”, she’s learned that shielding people from the full picture is the more comfortable instinct, and the wrong one. “Over-communication becomes your greatest ally,” she says. “Everyone needs to be crystal clear on where we’re heading, what the priorities are, the challenges, and the opportunities.”
As CEO, she is the emotional centre of the business, and culture is not something that can be delegated. Hers is shared closely with business partner Toss Grumley and PH Digital’s senior team; no win, in her account, is ever singular.
And finally: guard your self-belief as the asset it is. “The leaders who go furthest aren’t the ones who never wobble,” she says. “They’re the ones who recover fastest.”