What’s your role at Creative HQ?
I’m the Head of Operations, the rest of the Operations team and I are the roots under the multiple branches of work that Creative HQ delivers. My primary focus is on ensuring the company and all those in it are fully equipped with what’s needed to run the business and deliver our various projects and programmes. That includes planning, resourcing, budgeting, contracts and agreements, relationship building, and on occasion helping to put together pieces of work and deliver it.
It’s my job to be across everything and everyone, and it constantly surprises me just how much logistical info my brain can actually hold. Everyday brings a different challenge and I enjoy it so much.
You are very involved in the Refugee & Red Cross community, can you tell us a bit more about that?
My awareness of the refugee crisis and the resettlement situation in New Zealand was very limited until I helped some friends set up a home for a family being resettled here in late 2015. I started researching, talking and meeting people, discovering that there was a wonderfully diverse group of people living amongst us in the form of the refugee background communities. They bring so much goodness to Wellington and I wanted long time locals to see that, and be able to easily meet and support them.
So I started Hapori – a social change movement that connects established and new Kiwi’s through community events, with a particular focus on welcoming the socially isolated, vulnerable and former refugees through shared meals. I took the project to Startup Weekend last year and that gave it a huge boost, I was able to form a really great team for the weekend who helped me make a plan, build a beautiful website, and really get things rolling. Hapori is now partnered with the Red Cross and I work closely with them on both that and some other initiatives. It’s so rewarding, and work I feel really privileged to be a part of. www.hapori.co.nz FB:@sharehapori
What would the Creative HQ team say your superpower is?
A psychic like ability to organise things before people realise they need them, Domino meets Jean Grey.
What was your biggest accomplishment for the month of July?
My husband and I did something we swore we wouldn’t do again and have bought another run down house to renovate and live in. It’s 20% dread and 80% excitement to move into a new area, get back on the tools and polish up those wooden floors. We’re proud to be onto our second reno – and No, we don’t watch The Block and we’re not entering the next season!
Share something that inspires you…
At the moment I can’t get enough of IDEO’s resources on Human Centred Design. I love the practice of looking to the people with the problem to form solutions, by truly understanding their sit
uation deeply and seeing the issue through their eyes. Next week some of us are attending the Singularity University Summit in San Francisco and we’re going to visit IDEO on the Pier while there. There are great free resources here & courses that you can do with the online community here.
From a more personal note, I read How to Be Here, Rob Bell’s new book over summer. It was really inspiring. It looks at how to discover the right path for yourself and your passions. I’m not normally into the self-help book kind of thing but this was a really great summer read. In Rob’s own words he wrote the book ‘… to help us live like we’re not missing a thing.’
And finally, show us your desk…
This the usual, I’m an unashamed neat freak!
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