Our first board will build on our mission to learn, connect and inspire Kiwi women.
The New Zealand Business Women’s Network (NZBWN) is excited to announce its first working board, bringing together a group of successful Kiwi women. Following 11 years of connecting Kiwis predominately in London and more recently in New Zealand, the board aims to continue to deepen and grow its membership in the UK, New Zealand and across the world.
Our Why
Our mission is to help develop women. We connect Kiwi women, predominately in the UK, to enrich and develop their experiences We bring our members together to learn, connect and inspire each other, through events, programmes, sharing experiences, personal introductions and flying our flag with pride. We are a network of likeminded, resourceful, 'can do' women, we cross all ages and industries and ultimately we speak the same language, #wespeakkiwi.
We value giving back, being open to all, collaborating and supporting each other.
Our Board
In 2016 we began a review to ensure we operate sustainability. From that review we became a social enterprise with the purpose of developing women. The natural progression was to create a governance structure to create a strong leadership. We also wanted to ensure we could create a sustainable model to build our network and help us to connect with as many Kiwi women as possible. Towards the end of 2019 we began the search for our first board.
Our former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark spoke to us in April 2019 and one of her key messages was we all need to do all we can as leaders to help women up the ladder from behind. Inspired by this, and reflecting our purpose and values, we set up the board with the aim of helping more women take on leadership roles and ultimatley land more seats in the board room. This means we've developed a board structure to support this - by giving women their first chance to take on a board role, coupled with regular training and mentoring, we hope to see them further develop their careers and take on other board roles in the future.
We recently met two inspirational Kiwis Hannah Wrathall and Alice Marsh. They both come from opposite ends of NZ but they’ve been brought together by a desire to help millennials succeed in taking actions on issues they care about, through creating social enterprises, leading transformational cultural change and platforms to bring issues to the forefront. Hannah gave us some insight into what they are doing to help inspire people to make their dreams a reality.
What did you want to for a career when you were young?
For most of my childhood I wanted to be an actress (it’s never too late, right?). Alice wanted to be an optometrist (she has never had great eyesight!)