It was an evening to celebrate progress, as well as discuss what’s yet to be achieved, as 120 Kiwi women gathered at New Zealand House for our International Women’s Day event.

Run by the New Zealand Business Women’s Network and KEA, this year’s event shone a spotlight on Kiwi in sport, featuring a formidable panel of sportswomen to explore the IWD theme for 2022; #BreaktheBias.

With views of the London skyline as a backdrop, the audience was kept refreshed as they mingled, with beers from Wellington brewery Yeastie Boys and gin and tonics from Cardrona distillery. Kiwi themed nibbles prepared by Rhonda Scott of Escence catering were handed around before the panel discussion got underway.

Leadership coach and writer Mary Fenwick was our MC for the evening, steering the conversation between our panelists; Katie Sadleir, Rebecca Smith, Sene Naoupu and Jonelle Price, and facilitating questions from our audience.

Steph Lee was sitting in the 02 preparing to get on stage to dance in Ed Sheeran’s opening performance at the Brit awards, when she had a moment.

“I had Adele literally two metres to my left and Olivia Rodrigo two metres to my right, knowing I was about to go on stage for Ed Sheeran, and I thought to myself, ‘wow, I’ve made it’,” she says.

Steph describes the three days of rehearsing earlier this year, leading up to the event itself; a spectacle involving pyrotechnics, flying dancers and a surprise appearance from British rock group Bring Me the Horizon, as “epic”.

“That was the first time that I actually felt like I had made it in the industry,” she says. “I was just trying to soak it all in.”

Having moved to London in June of 2019, Alice had six months on the ground before the pandemic hit. It was what could be described as either the best or worst timing, but regardless, she’s not looked back.

With a passion for journalism from a young age, Alice studied Media and English Literature at Victoria University in Wellington and then Journalism at Canterbury University. It was while she was studying at Victoria and writing for the Salient – the university's student magazine – that she made her writing debut. This was an opinion piece on how we are spending too much time on our phones – she now jokes that her screen time has definitely doubled since those days! It was off the back of this feature that she was offered a position in their news team. As she became what she describes as ‘somewhat obsessed’, her path forward suddenly became obvious.