Blog Archives

I perpetually struggle with deciding whether I want to make a big change in a small part of the world, or a small impact that is broader. Part of the reason I have such a diverse range of roles…

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I have to admit that I am a political junkie. I am really looking forward to the seventh of November and spending the entire evening glued to a TV or computer screen, following election results. My own political views…

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I’m lucky enough to sit at governance tables across infrastructure, technology, health, insurance and manufacturing. Economics, business models and balances of power are moving at once. After a couple of years playing with emerging technology and sitting around tables…

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I started my working life as an electrician. Too lazy to pursue my original plan of becoming a doctor, I took the easier route: dropped out of school and did an electrical apprenticeship instead. One of my early managers,…

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I spend a fair bit of time these days wondering when I’ll stop being useful on the boards I sit on. Not in a morbid way, more as a discipline. It’s the same question worth asking in any job,…

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As a teenager, I discovered cycling, and it changed my life. Thanks to the Kennett brothers, the Wellington siblings generally regarded as the godfathers of mountain biking in New Zealand, I stumbled into what was then a very nascent…

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My parents were refugees in this country and, despite both having qualifications where they came from, they both had to retrain here and take on different low-level jobs to keep their heads above water while they had to. My…

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I grew up in Wellington and as a kid spent a bit of time in the wonderful greenbelt that surrounds the city. Back then, while there was relatively abundant plantlife, a walk or jog up there was a fairly…

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As I sat down to read board papers on Saturday night, I had a quick scan of the news headlines and the first article I came to was about a young police officer who was critically injured in the…

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One of the wiser governance people I’ve had the privilege of working with once told me that, as a professional director, you should always try to be a cleanskin. By this she meant that people should never be quite…

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