SUPREME WINNER AND
ENVIRONMENT

Professor Bronwyn Hayward

Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Canterbury; director of the Sustainable Development and Civic Imagination: Hei Puāwaitanga Research Group

Professor Bronwyn Hayward is recognised internationally for her expertise on sustainability, climate change and youth. She leads a UK economic and social research council-funded project to understand how young people in cities can live flourishing, sustainable lives and co-leads Deep South National Science Challenge: Mana Rangatahi: supporting young Maori and Pacific New Zealanders with whanau, to lead climate action. She was the only New Zealander on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees and serves on the IPCC’s core writing team. 

Bronwyn has been a trustee on the Spark Foundation and Givealittle. She was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2021 for services to political science, particularly sustainability, climate change and youth, and a Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year Local Hero 2019. She was the joint inaugural recipient of the UC College of Arts Conscience & Critic of Society research award in 2014, and received the UC 2019 Supreme Sustainability Award.

Category sponsored by

Arts & Culture

Qiane Matata-Sipu

Founder and Creator, NUKU

Qiane Matata-Sipu has produced award-winning works within the arts and media industries for nearly 20 years. NUKU is a creative, social impact, storytelling movement profiling 100 Indigenous women through photography, audio podcast, video, live events and a self-published book. NUKU invites wāhine to look at the world through a different cultural lens: one made by and for indigenous women mā hine mō hine kia hine. NUKU uses the arts to enhance self-confidence and reduce the impacts of racism discrimination and social exclusion.

Qiane is a co-founder of the SOUL Protect Ihumātao campaign and its communications lead. She presented evidence and negotiated with the government, peacefully marched to parliament, co-led the globally-recognised occupation, and communicated and developed strategies to reach resolution for Ihumātao.

Through her involvement with Ihumātao, Qiane is a whānau representative to Te Kiingitanga (Māori King movement). She was also a chairperson for Makaurau Marae Hauora kōmiti and currently supports Te Ahiwaru hapū, delivering outcomes for health initiatives and screening programmes.

Category sponsored by

BOARD & MANAGEMENT

Cassandra Crowley

CEO, Te Arawa Management Limited and Independent Director

Cassandra Crowley works to support the aspirations of Māori, Pasifika, youth, migrant, and refugee women. She is Chair of Taranaki DHB, Deputy Chair of Waka Kotahi (NZ Transport Agency), Chair of KLC, voluntary chair of Nisa, member of the (interim) Health NZ Board, and a director of Aratu Forests, Skills Consulting Group, Ngati Manawa Developments and Western Institute of Technology. She works to support employee diversity and promote opportunities for women in all organisations she’s involved with. 

Cassandra has grown Te Arawa’s balance sheet from $24m to over $107 million in under four years. This included purchasing an iconic Bay of Plenty business in receivership: Maketū Pies. In its first year under Cassandra’s guidance, it turned over a small profit, but more significantly 40 staff kept their jobs, representing 13% of the town's households. 

At Aratu Forests, the company also launched an initiative to restore native ecosystems that were not suited to logging, improve practices and setting new environmental standards on the east coast, at the same time increasing its use of Māori owned businesses. 

Category sponsored by

Business Enterprise

Jessie Wong

Director, Yu Mei

Jessie Wong founded leather goods label Yu Mei in 2015 after struggling to find a bag that could carry her essentials. Since then, Jessie has grown her team to 16, built a wholesale network of 37 stockists, and opened three stores. NZ Trade & Enterprise recently featured Yu Mei as a success story for building omni-channel retail and pivoting during lockdown; highlighting how the brand sold 600 units in 17 minutes during an online event in 2020.

In 2020, Jessie rallied her business networks to raise $51,590 for the Wellington City Mission through the ‘Bags for All’ collaboration. The first-of-its-kind initiative offered Yu Mei bags for sale at the Mission’s second-hand store, generating funds and awareness. Jessie devised a novel way of maximising returns for the charity, spreading the production costs across a number of Wellington businesses via sponsorship, leveraging her brand, community of customers and business networks.

Jessie has big ambitions for Yu Mei to become an innovative regenerative brand and is currently working to build scalable end of life solutions into Yu Mei's product life cycle.

Category sponsored by

Community Hero

Dr Bernadette Pinnell

General manager, Compass Housing

Bernadette Pinnell is working to improve the social and economic circumstances of people reliant on public housing and the communities in which they live, by ensuring social sustainability issues are given attention in urban development. In 2015, she established Compass Housing Services New Zealand, a social enterprise and registered charitable community housing organisation, with the goal of delivering high-quality affordable housing in mixed tenure communities. Working with iwi, private and public sector agencies, she has attracted $400m in funding to deliver new public housing properties across Auckland and more recently Whanganui, Palmerston North and Wainuiomata, providing high quality housing for over 500 residents.

Compass Housing offers a range of community development activities for residents designed to foster social inclusion and personal development, contributing to 96% resident satisfaction levels. Bernadette is also a founding board member of the Urban Development Institute of NZ and is working with regional bodies to improve planning and delivery models for affordable housing.

Category sponsored by

Diversity

Dana Youngman

Network executive, Sky Television

Dana Youngman is a champion of diversity in the New Zealand screen industry - working for over 20 years to provide a voice for Pasifika and other minority communities in primetime. In her role at Sky, Dana has secured long-running news show Tagata Pasifika its first ever primetime viewing and commissioned several NZ firsts - Pasifika-made drama series Teine Sa, Chinese bilingual drama Inked along with a Pakistani Iranian comedy Raised by Refugees.

In earlier years, Dana produced New Zealand’s first Pasifika documentary for primetime television – Life After Footy, Legends of the Pacific. This was the first Pasifika-made content to be nominated for an NZ TV Award in the Best Sports TV category. Previously, at TVNZ, Dana created the first children’s Pasifika animation series, Legendary Polynesia and co-created TVNZ’s first bilingual Māori lifestyle series, Whānau Living.

Dana is one of three New Zealand members of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (Emmys) and her hit series INSiDE won a 2021 International Emmy.

Category sponsored by

Innovation, Science & Health

Professor Beverley Lawton

Founder and Director, Centre for Women’s Health Research – Te Tātai Hauora o Hine

Professor Beverley Lawton is an internationally recognised expert in women’s health. She addresses health inequity by driving kaupapa Māori (by Māori, with Māori, for Māori) research innovation to transform health services, systems and policy across Aotearoa and around the world. She was recently congratulated in parliament by Associate Minister for Health Dr Ayesha Verrall for her team’s input into the government’s decision to approve $53m funding for an HPV self-test cervical cancer screening programme – a method she has been advocating for in the media and other forums for many years.

She founded and leads the Centre for Women’s Health Research—Te Tātai Hauora o Hine at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, where she mentors a team of researchers and provides research positions, training and development. The centre plans to screen more than 4,000 women for cervical cancer prevention by 2023. 

Beverley is an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

Category sponsored by

PRIMARY INDUSTRIES

Tia Potae

Whānau Ora navigator, Tokomairiro Waiora 

Top wool handler and wool classer Tia Potae has been in the shearing industry all her life, representing New Zealand in Wool Handling in 2005 and 2013.  She is a rural navigator for Tokomairiro Waiora, a Kaupapa Māori Health Service providing Whānau Ora services in South Otago. During the 2020 lockdown, she developed an online service for wool, forestry and fishing industry workers who find it difficult to access services after hours, and has helped workers access the Wage Subsidy Scheme. Her rural navigator programme was a response to a Te Pūtahitanga o Te Waipounamu 2019 survey of wool harvesters which found they needed better access to health and social services.  

Tia has a small business, Taki Toru Woolshed Services, where she runs her own training programme. In 2018 she wrote a training booklet, and over the years has been contracted to training entities such as Elite Wool Industry Training and WOMOlife to support their training regimes.

Category sponsored by

Public Policy

Melanie Mark-Shadbolt

Deputy Secretary Māori Rights and Interests, Ministry for the Environment

Melanie Mark-Shadbolt joined the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) in 2018 as chief advisor Māori. She leads a team delivering gains for Māori rights and interests, across MfE and Government. Her approach changed the role of the Treaty partner, notably in addressing environmental issues. She was subsequently appointed deputy secretary Māori rights and interests. 

A priority for Melanie is building the competency of public servants to engage with Māori effectively. This saw the creation of MfE’s Te Ao Hurihuri, Māori capability strategy. Through Melanie’s leadership and vision Tūmatakokiri was also formed to lead Treaty partnering, Māori engagement, capability and science for MfE. Tūmatakokiri was a finalist for the 2021 public Service Māori Crown Relationships Award, and Diversity Works Mātauranga Māori Award.

Melanie has been chosen for Crown-led committees on kauri dieback, myrtle rust, Predator Free 2050 and science acceleration, in addition to the boards she sits on. 

Category sponsored by

Young Leader

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries

Diversity Champion for Young Women in Business and Law

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries co-founded the Women in Law mentoring programme in 2019, which has supported more than 500 women and increased the diversity of entrants into Auckland Law School and the legal profession. The programme includes a confidential selection process to support diversity, and pairs mentees with senior female students to provide support. It is the largest student-led mentoring initiative for wāhine at the University of Auckland. Kate has helped launch similar programmes in the University of Auckland Business School, Global Studies Faculty and in India.

Kate is the Co-President of Women in Business which launched a pilot programme in 2021 for 60 women students, providing career opportunities in male-dominated pathways including supply chain, digital and corporate finance. She won EY Global Corporate Finance Woman of the Year 2021 from a pool of nearly 3,500 women worldwide. Kate was also named on IFSA’s global 25 under 25 list.

After finishing University, Kate has launched Moodi, a mental wellness brand for women.

Category sponsored by

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

Dame Silvia Cartwright

Trailblazing jurist, New Zealand’s first female High Court judge and second female Governor-General

Dame Silvia was born in Dunedin and she graduated with a LLB from Otago University in 1967.

After several years in private practice, she embarked on a judicial career that culminated in her appointment to the High Court - the first woman in New Zealand to achieve this.

In 1987 and 1988, Dame Silvia chaired the Commission of Inquiry into the Treatment of Cervical Cancer and Other Related Matters at National Women's Hospital (the Cartwright Inquiry).

She was a member of the United Nations committee monitoring compliance with the United Nations Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1989 and Principal Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2001 and received the Queen's Service Order in 2006.

After completing her tenure as Governor-General in August 2006, she took up a position as a trial judge on the United Nations Tribunal investigating war crimes in Cambodia.