SUPREME WINNER AND

Business Enterprise

Cecilia Robinson

Cecilia is the founder and creator of two of New Zealand’s most successful start-ups: My Food Bag and Au Pair Link. Au Pair Link was ranked in the Deloitte Fast 50, named among the Kenexa Best Workplaces and won HER Business Best New Business and Best SME awards. That business was sold in 2012 and in 2013 Cecelia co-founded My Food Bag. 

My Food Bag has become a household name in just four years, growing from a start-up to a team of 120, with revenue forecast to exceed $135 million for this financial year, and is preparing for an IPO within three years. The business has recently launched new products including My Express Bag, My Bargain Box and My Gluten-Free Food Bag. Cecilia was named Next Magazine Businesswoman of the Year 2014, EY Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2013, and HER Businesswoman of the Year 2012.

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Arts & Culture

Denise L'Estrange Corbet

Denise and her co-founder have created in WORLD an iconic New Zealand creative business with six boutiques across the country. WORLD was the first local fashion brand to be given a full retrospective at the Auckland Museum and has also been collected by Te Papa and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. It is also New Zealand’s most philanthropic fashion brand, supporting a wide range of local and international charities with both money and fundraising support.

Denise is an ambassador for the IHC Art Awards, Diabetes New Zealand (Auckland) and the Mental Health Foundation. She was the initiator of a Starship Foundation children’s t-shirt fundraiser that raised $225,000 in six weeks and personally raised over $100,000 to build a school in Tanzania. Her personal story of depression via the Like Minds Like Mine campaign helped open up the discussion about mental health in New Zealand. Denise has been made an Honorary Fellow from UCOL for her work in fashion and charity and a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to fashion.

Board & Management

Anne-Maree O'Connor

As the Head of Responsible Investment for the New Zealand Superannuation Fund since 2006, Anne-Maree has helped move responsible investing from a sideline activity for institutional investors to a part of their mainstream investment strategy. Under Anne-Maree’s leadership, the Superannuation Fund provides responsible investing resources to ACC and the Government Superannuation Fund Authority. In 2016 the Super Fund won the ESG Institutional Proficiency Award at the Asian Investor Institutional Excellence Awards. 

Prior to this role Anna-Maree worked for 15 years across Europe serving on numerous committees, boards and expert panels. She has worked extensively with the United Nations participating in the UNPRI-UN Global Compact, the UN Global Compact – Business for Peacebuilding and the UN Peacebuilding Commission, among others. She also sits on the policy committee for the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment.

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Community & Not for profit

Lisa King

After finding out that 29% of New Zealand children live in poverty and thousands go to school without lunch every day, Lisa launched Eat My Lunch in June 2015. For every lunch you buy, Eat My Lunch gives a lunch to a Kiwi kid in need. In two years, Eat My Lunch has given around 450,000 healthy lunches to kids in 46 low-decile schools in Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington. Each day it provides for 13% of kids in need in Auckland and 6% nationally. 

Lisa won the Women of Influence in Business 2016 award and was a finalist in the NEXT Woman of the Year 2016. She was also given a Local Hero award in both 2015 and 2016. Eat My Lunch won the Excellence in Social Innovation award at the 2015 New Zealand Innovator Awards, the Communicating Sustainability award from the NZI Sustainable Business Network, a Local Hero Medal at the 2016 New Zealand Local Hero of the Year awards and won three categories at the 2016 TVNZ Marketing Awards.

Diversity

Minnie Baragwanath

At the age of 14, Minnie was diagnosed with Stargardt’s, an incurable disease that causes deteriorating central vision. Told to expect not to have a career, family or full life-span, Minnie went on to start Be. Accessible, a social change agency shifting how Kiwis value accessibility and demonstrating the contribution that can be made by those with access needs. One of the organisation’s programmes is Be. Leadership, a year-long leadership programme that’s been completed by over 100 leaders with access needs. Be. Employed, another programme, places tertiary students with access needs into jobs. It is achieving outstanding results because it matches qualified students with great employers, giving the students the opportunity of fully-paid internships or full-time employment.

Minnie has been affecting social change for New Zealanders with disabilities for over 20 years, including working in the media and for community and policy development in local government. She has received a Sir Peter Blake leadership award, was a finalist in the New Zealander of the Year award in 2017 and is a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

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Global

Siân Simpson

Sian is director of community at Kiwi Landing Pad, where she helps take New Zealand technology to the world. In the past three years, Sian has worked with over 2,000 New Zealand businesses, met with over 3,000 entrepreneurs and grown the New Zealand tech community from 200 to over 4,000 members. She is also helping the YES foundation and North Harbour Club set up a Youth Innovation Centre on the North Shore of Auckland as a champion for the future of work and community.

Prior to her role at the Kiwi Landing Pad, Sian worked for 90 Seconds and Pure SEO, and was one of Vodafone’s top retail sales reps at her time with the company. Sian was the winner of the North Harbour Club’s prestigious AIMES award for innovation and technology in both 2015 and 2016, a Women of Influence Emerging Leader Finalist in 2015, and Global Finalist in 2016.

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Innovation, Science & Health

Hinemoa Elder 

Hinemoa leads Māori strategy at the Centre of Research Excellence for the Ageing Brain, with over 200 researchers at the cutting edge of research from the laboratory to the community. She was the first to articulate a Māori theory of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and develop two evidence-based resources for Māori with TBI – an area where Māori are over-represented. These published resources, ‘Te Waka Oranga’ and ‘Te Waka Kuaka’ have drawn interest from a wide range of other fields. She is now working on augmented reality and gamification of these resources to bring them right into the hands of whanau.

Hinemoa has also worked as a youth forensic psychiatrist, during which time she identified the need to provide resources to assist these taiohi, their whānau, health workers, lawyers and judges with information about the needs of these young people in order to set them up for better outcomes and to reduce recidivism. These tools are now being used in TBI rehabilitation services for those who also have offending histories. In addition, this work has led to Hinemoa’s role as consultant to a special project at Oranga Tamariki, helping to develop assessment tools.

Public Policy

Rebecca Kitteridge

As one of only 13 woman chief executives in our public sector management section, at the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Rebecca runs an organisation that deals with some of the most sensitive information in New Zealand. Prior to this role she spent six years as Secretary of the Cabinet and Clerk of the Executive Council, within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. She served under four Prime Ministers and four Governors-General in that role. 

During her time at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rebecca negotiated and drafted the Principles of Partnership, a joint statement that underpins the partnership between New Zealand and Tokelau. While Secretary of the Cabinet, she also led work among the 16 realms that share the Queen as Head of State to change the laws of succession so that girls and boys could inherit the throne equally. In 2014, Rebecca was appointed as a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, in recognition of her service to the Queen as Cabinet Secretary and Clerk of the Executive Council. 

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Rural

Professor Nicola Shadbolt

Having a strategic perspective on global agribusiness has been the focus of Nicola’s career for more than 30 years. She is a professor of farm and agribusiness management. She is the New Zealand representative in the International Farm Comparison Network in Dairying (IFCN) and is the editor of two international journals. She has been contracted by both the OECD and the EU for research and workshops and is frequently invited to speak at international conferences on strategic issues in agribusiness. 

Nicola has facilitated the Icehouse Agribusiness course, judged numerous ‘Farmer of the Year’ competitions and co-authored the textbook ‘Farm Management in New Zealand’. She was the Massey University partner in the joint venture that developed and delivered the Food and Agribusiness Experience and was the first woman elected to the board of Fonterra. She and her husband have developed their farming business from scratch into a $27 million enterprise.

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Young Leader

Sharnay Cocup

Sharnay is the founder of the Taupiri Youth Group Trust, a Taupiri Community Board member, Taupiri School Board trustee and PTA member. She started the Taupiri Youth Group Trust to restore the Taupiri Mountain track, a historically important track for Waikato Tainui which hadn’t been maintained properly for 20 years. She is a member of the Waikato Trout Committee and the youngest in the whole Waikato District to be elected to a community board. 

Sharnay won a Kiwibank Local Hero medal in 2016 and the Like a Boss category at the Waikato District Youth Awards, where her group also won the Champion of the Earth category. She won the Top Volunteer Youth of The Year award for 2016 and Taupiri Youth Group was named Youth Champions at the New Zealand Youth Awards 2017.