SUPREME WINNER AND

Community Hero

Jackie Clark

The Aunties is an organisation that provides support for women who are survivors of domestic violence. It supports Te Rōopu O Te Whānau Rangimariē O Tamaki Makaūrau; The NZ Prostitute’s Collective; the emergency housing team of social workers for the Salvation Army; a youth justice worker and her clients; social workers from Family First, Strive, several other community organisations; and a homeless shelter in Manurewa.

Jackie Clark is the aunty in charge of The Aunties, established eight years ago when she realised there was a need for an intermediary to be able to quickly provide support for individual women affected by domestic violence. She collects clothing, buys groceries (women send her their shopping lists) and pays bills for many of life’s essentials as well as some of the little things that bring women and children joy. 

The Aunties Charitable Trust is now supported by a network of 50 active aunties (women and men) who have made a huge difference in the lives of hundreds of women and children.   

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Arts & Culture

Miranda Harcourt

Miranda Harcourt began her acting career in the early 1970s and has twice been awarded Best Actress at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards as well as receiving a New Zealand Suffrage Medal in 1993. Miranda won the NZ Film and TV Awards Best Short Film and has been a finalist in both the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories. She has received the Media Peace Prize and a WCC Safer Communities Award.  

Miranda was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to theatre and the community, and has received multiple awards for her film and stage performances and film directorship. Miranda is on the board of Film New Zealand, is co-founder of After Image Films and was head of New Zealand’s acting school, Toi Whakaari, for seven years. She is the founder, director and acting coach at Wellington’s performing arts school, Rata Studios, providing a professional acting and artistic programme for emerging New Zealand talent. She also works at Arohata Prison in Wellington, helping the women record themselves reading books to be sent to their children. 

BOARD & MANAGEMENT

Dr Farah Palmer

Dr Farah Palmer is a senior lecturer in the School of Management at Massey University, a director of the university's Māori business and leadership centre, and a former captain of New Zealand's women's rugby union team, the Black Ferns. As Black Ferns captain, she led the team to three successive World Cup titles between 1998 and 2006. During her captaincy, the Black Ferns lost only once, and she was inducted in World Rugby’s Hall of Fame.

In 2007, Farah was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order or Merit for services to women's rugby and sport. In 2016 the Women's Provincial Championship was renamed the Farah Palmer Cup, and Farah also became the first woman to be on the NZ Rugby Board in its 124-year history. She was a unanimous choice by NZ Rugby's voting members and also became the chair of the NZ Māori Rugby Board. Farah is also a trustee for Manukura, an alternative education programme for students from years nine to 13 with a sports and Māori approach, and a member of the Ministerial Taskforce reviewing alcohol advertising and sponsorship.

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Business Enterprise

Angie Judge

Inspired by a passion for history, art and science – and with a background in software engineering – Angie Judge is a technology entrepreneur bringing artificial intelligence (AI) to the world’s cultural institutions. She is the founder of high-growth big data analytics company Dexibit, which works with museums across the globe, including Smithsonian, London’s National Gallery and our own Te Papa. Dexibit worked with the National Gallery to create a unique tool that uses AI to predict exhibition attendance – it has been 92 percent accurate and dramatically improved exhibition-hosting decision-making. As a result, the company received two Hi-Tech awards in 2018: The Duncan Cotterill Most Innovative Hi-Tech Software Solution Award and The ATEED Most Innovative Hi-Tech Solution for the Creative Sector Award. 

Angie works with schools, non-profits and volunteer efforts to encourage young women into STEM careers. This includes motivational speaking, mentoring and working with incubator and accelerator programmes like Flux, Mahuki and Kōkiri.

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Diversity

Sarah Lang

In 2016, Sarah Lang founded the Women’s Infrastructure Network New Zealand to influence and grow the visibility of women in the infrastructure industry. Since then she has grown the network to six chapters, with a total of over 800 active members. Her influence has helped drive the number of women attending the annual Building Nations conference from five percent to over 25 percent last year. 

Sarah has established many Māori employment initiatives including the Iwi Business Consortium, the Māori Graduate Placement Programme, Ngati Whatua Iwi Industry Employment Programme and Ti Hiku Employment Initiatives. Her work has seen the placement of over 200 Māori employees into jobs across Northland and Auckland. Sarah has also championed the rights of the homeless, establishing the Regional Homelessness Taskforce.

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Global

Sarah Vrede

As the first woman to head the New Zealand Debt Management Office, Sarah Vrede has had responsibility for the New Zealand government’s largest financial entity – debt to a value of around $80 billion. She also has sole decision-making responsibility for the New Zealand Export Credit Office; its trade credit insurance transactions have enabled Te Pari to increase sales of livestock handling equipment to the UK, Invivo Wines to increase turnover growth by 71 percent between 2016 and 2017, TracPlus to sell tracking systems to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and Maven International Ltd to provide education services in Oman. 

Recent letters of credit transactions have supported Sacred Hill Vineyards in exporting wine to Poland, NZ Natural Juice in supplying juice to a major Taiwanese supermarket chain, and a recent contract bond guarantee has enabled Pacific Engineering Projects to build a wastewater treatment plant in the Republic of Palau. Sarah is also a mentor and an advocate for gender equality and pay parity in the organisations where she works.

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Innovation, Science & Health

Prof Wendy Larner

Professor Wendy Larner has recently been appointed the president of the Royal Society Te Apārangi – only the second woman and second social scientist to hold the post. Her academic career has focused on globalisation, governance and gender; she is recognised as the founder of the field of research now known as post-structuralist political economy. She is a fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi, the Academy of Social Sciences (UK) and the New Zealand Geographical Society. 

Previously, Wendy was the first provost of Victoria University, where she founded a new Faculty of Health. Recently UK’s Royal Geographical Society awarded Wendy the Victoria Medal in recognition of her research on globalisation and political economy – joining a list of previous winners that includes Sir David Attenborough and Captain Robert Falcon Scott. 

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Public Policy

Charlotte Korte

One of three founders of Mesh Down Under, Charlotte Korte is a ‘mesh warrior’ who supports and advocates for people who have been injured by surgical mesh, in New Zealand and around the world. Mesh Down Under, along with Women’s Health Action (WHA), has been working since 2012 researching information pertaining to surgical mesh issues, informing surveys highlighting the lack of consent and inaccurate information presented to patients. 

Charlotte has been instrumental in securing meetings with healthcare influencers from MPs through to the Health and Disability Commissioner. She has also worked writing submissions on mesh to the European Union as well as to Australian, Scottish and UK parliamentary inquiries into mesh. This year Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said, “I appreciate Mesh Down Under’s dedicated advocacy on this issue. You have raised awareness, provided an invaluable community of support, and helped advance regulatory change.”

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Rural

Rebecca Keoghan

After completing a degree in medical science and managing labs in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, Rebecca Keoghan returned to the West Coast and purchased the family farm. A fifth-generation dairy farmer, Rebecca is director and general manager of Westland Milk Products, chair of its Health and Safety Committee and on the Shareholder Relations Committee. She is also a director of Pamu Academy, which promotes health and safety leadership. 

Previously Rebecca managed seven large dairy farms for Landcorp, she has been director of Buller Holdings, chair of the West Coast Plunket Board, a team leader for the New Zealand Dairy Industry awards and a member of the OSPRI Regional Committee. In 2016 she was named Dairy Woman of the Year and in 2017 she was named a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to business. 

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Young Leader

Maddison McQueen-Davies

At the age of 16, Maddison McQueen-Davies was shocked to discover that many children in the Manawatu/Tararua region were attending school in worn-out and leaking school shoes. She started an initiative called Share a Pair NZ, which regifts donated second-hand school shoes and sneakers to children in need. Maddison organised collection points in her region and she collects, sorts, cleans and sanitises the shoes. 

More than 500 pairs of shoes had been donated by the end of April this year, with more than 250 passed onto struggling families. Share a Pair has over 500 followers on Facebook and Maddison has run print and online advertising campaigns to promote the cause. Maddison also has a passion for science and technology and was a recipient of a Eureka! Trust award.