Editors Letter – July/August 2019

At near 500 seats, our June 21, Journey to Excellence event has been our largest yet. So far, we have had hundreds of New Zealand corporations, businesses, entities and thousands of individuals take part, but the momentum seems to be growing still. This indicates a couple of things to me. Firstly, that we are doing something important. Secondly, that there is a lot of work to do still. One of our recent guests highlighted the extent of the journey in a response to one of our keynote speakers, Sam Stubbs, who with his not-for-profit Kiwisaver fund, Simplicity, is putting pressure on the companies that make up the NZX50 to create a pathway towards diversity and inclusion.

Anyway, this guest stood up and said… “My daughter is 25 and when she was five, men were saying, ‘We have daughters; the world is going to change. I will back them.’ And now, 20 years later, I am bored. That’s all.”

This frustration is understandable. When you look at the numbers – two female CEOs out of fifty CEOs that make up the NZX50 – any parent of any daughter might well feel bored or even angry at the lack of change.

My daughter turns five next year and I am very conscious of how the world will be when she is 25. I am optimistic though. I think the world is changing, and like our events, the momentum will build and will become an unstoppable force. There are many contributing factors to this momentum. It is the angry parents of daughters, it is the organisations like Simplicity, and it is the founders like our coverstar, Hatch’s Kristen Lunman, who inherently knew how to build a diverse and inclusive culture from the ground up. Here’s to the Journey and those that are making it happen.