After experiencing one university term in the UK, Rebecca returned to her family in Auckland unable to understand why anyone would want to live in London as it was ‘so terrible and boring’. So it is quite ironic that, fast forwarding a few years, Rebecca is known to her many readers as Runawaykiwi and regularly blogs on how to get the most out of London life, including ‘coffee, culture and how to survive this crazy city’.

But that’s only one aspect of Rebecca’s London life – in her corporate life she is a business analyst for The Travel Corporation and she also makes and sells iconic jewellery under the name Zeal & Heart (www.zealandheart.com)

So how did that all come about? Rebecca says she made a ‘questionable life decision’ by studying to be a tax accountant, and after one year in her job, her mum suggested that as she wasn’t happy she might as well try England again.

As a teen in Wellington, Emma was convinced she didn’t like camping, after going on school camps in less than waterproof tents. So it may seem a little surprising that she co-founded Adventure Queens, a women’s adventure community set up with the aim of ‘delicately smashing down’ the barriers that prevent women from heading off on adventures.

In July 2017, Emma and co-founder Anna McNuff began by organising 50 women around the UK to go wild camping as part of ‘Wild Night Out’ – a night under the stars with fellow wild women, led by a volunteer queen. Emma’s group of half a dozen or so women camped out in the Chilterns. “I hadn’t met them before but in a short space of time we were sharing and enjoying experiences with people who had recently been strangers.”

Now there are over 6,500 women in the Adventure Queens community with 33 local Queen groups in the UK and beyond. Throughout the year, four in-store workshops are held at Arc’teryx London and four campouts at wilderness campsites around the UK, supported by Kathmandu. Plus there is a £2,000 Adventure Queen grant to help send one woman off on her first big adventure. Last year’s winner, 55-year-old Sue Barrett ran, swam and cycled 1,500 miles along the spine of the Alps from Trieste to Monaco.

Emma says, “The focus is on getting women outdoors. Some members have grown up with the outdoors experience but don’t have others to go on adventures with. And some want to get into outdoor adventures but don’t know where to start.”

Toni Fyvie first came to the UK on a two-year visa thinking she’d return home after one. Little did she know that she would land herself a job in the music industry, promoting the Rolling Stones and Madonna, and meet her Canadian boyfriend, now husband. Suffice to stay, she extended her visa. 

After five years in London, Toni worked in Australia, Amsterdam and Vancouver, before eventually settling in Montreal for the next 8 years with her husband. In Montreal, Toni worked in property marketing for a company that sold property in resort destinations throughout North America and prided itself in being the leader in selling property before it was built.  But after the global financial crisis struck, they were asking themselves: ‘how do you sell real estate at a discount without losing the value of what you’ve created?’ This was Toni’s challenge for the next year and a half. 

In 2010, Toni’s husband was head-hunted for a role in Paris and they decided to continue their nomadic lifestyle by making the move back to Europe. For the duration of the next two years, Toni was unable to work due to visa restrictions. Instead she made the most of the experience by learning the language and immersing herself in French culture. However, moving straight from a demanding job in Canada to a supporting role in Paris caused Toni to suffer from an identity crisis. Almost overnight, she was no longer a career woman. She was a 40-year old woman asking herself ‘what the hell? Who am I?’ She had to find ways to work through it and so Toni set up a blog and wrote about her experiences in France. She had befriended an American lady with a food tour business who was looking for someone to try new restaurants with. Toni wrote articles such as ‘How to do a 1 Michelin Star Restaurant on the Cheap’ for family and friends. Initially she found writing challenging. Despite a notable career in marketing, Toni’s strengths were in strategy. She had never considered herself a creative-type, certainly not a writer. That was always something she could brief on, but not something she thought she could do. But she enjoyed it.