Katie Bhreatnach is a big believer in keeping it real.
As she sat talking in her car outside a stadium where her youngest daughter was playing basketball in the Aims Games this week, she reflected back 16 years when she was a breastfeeding, working mother.
While people often implied doing that was impressive, she was ‘‘real’’ about the challenges of juggling a newborn and a career.
Back then, she admitted she was tired and was only able to feed her eldest daughter because her husband was bringing the baby into the office.
‘‘By being real, we let other people have permission to be real too,’’ she said.
Sometimes there was a tendency to look at the 1950s housewife-type role and successful businesswoman role and believe women should be able to do both.
‘‘I struggle with that. By definition, you are setting yourself up for failure,’’ she said.
Ms Bhreatnach had a much more hybrid role and she did not consider it particularly balanced. Sometimes she was focused on work and at times, recalibration was required and she did not always get it right.
But her three daughters, aged 12, 14 and 16, got a lot out of their mother working, including a role model, and they were resilient and independent.
On Tuesday, there were lots of other things she could have been doing, but she decided to watch basketball. That did not mean she was not doing work, but she was making time for things that were of value.
‘‘I don’t call that work-life balance, I call that making choice in where you put your time to make things work,’’ she said.
Eldest daughter Anahera is in her penultimate year of high school and will follow in her mother’s footsteps and enrol at the University of Otago in 2027.
Ms Bhreatnach credited choosing to study at Otago as one of the most pivotal life choices she made that had the biggest impact.
She had never been to the South Island before turning up for tertiary studies.
She also had no idea what she wanted to study but it was in Dunedin that it all started, in terms of the possibility, ambition and curiosity.
While in the city last week for a Global Women event, she was invited by Prof Jacinta Ruru to speak to Maori students.
She could still remember the day while she was at university herself, that it was announced a Maori law lecturer would be joining the department.
It had been amazing for her to watch Prof Ruru’s career unfold.
It was an emotional experience for Ms Bhreatnach (Ngāti Whakaue) to talk to the students as they asked about
her time at university.
Turning her mind back to those experiences and how they shaped and formed her was ‘‘more of a joy for me than them’’, she said laughing.
‘‘It was really quite a beautiful moment.’’
She was the first person in her family to attend university and it ‘‘opened up a whole world of possibilities I didn’t know existed’’, plus there was the social aspect and her closest friends were those she had met at university.
With no set pathway in front of her, Ms Bhreatnach said that meant not closing herself to possibilities that came along.
And some of the things she had done during her career had been quite radical.
An experienced director in the areas of business, strategic leadership, transformation, law and governance, she has worked in a diverse range of organisations as an executive leader.
Those included ASX100, Fortune 500, the public sector and start-ups in sectors as diverse as food, fast-moving consumer goods, financial services, technology, aviation, sport, education and telecommunications.
She has undergraduate degrees in law and arts from the University of Otago and a master’s degree from Trinity College in Dublin.
It was early in her career that she applied for a job at the Crown Solicitors Office in Belfast, Northern Ireland, despite having no connections there.
It coincided with thousands of police officers taking a class action and she stayed on to work on the Bloody Sunday and Billy Wright inquiries.
She loved living in Belfast, a place she described as ‘‘stuck in time’’.
She became somewhat of a celebrity, being the first person to work in the Northern Ireland office not from England or Ireland.
She worked as a lawyer for the first decade of her career in New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Australia.
It got to the point where she found the work she liked doing the most was much closer to business strategy. She moved to work in companies and found her stride a little more.
While there might be a stereotype of a lawyer telling you what the rules were and what you could not do, she preferred the idea of understanding the rules so they could be navigated effectively.
She had some fantastic opportunities and she loved learning, being in different environments and driving business strategy.
Her career broadened and she was given the opportunity to try governance and found she enjoyed that too; the ability to have that ‘‘birds eye view’’ and help companies drive strategy and have a good understanding of the risk aspect, but not feel constrained by that.
She has been on the board of Te Wānanga o Aotearoa for the past decade and she is chairwoman of The Trusts Arena board in Auckland. She is also on the board of Dunedin Airport and has other governance roles.
Through that governance process, she became a Global Women member and she was invited to join the board before stepping into the chief executive role in January.
Global Women is a collaboration of New Zealand’s most influential women leaders to promote inclusion and diversity for improved societal and economic growth, with a membership of more than 400 women.
The organisation includes Chapters of Change, a group of some of the most influential chief executives and chairpersons throughout New Zealand working together on accelerating gender diversity and other diversity initiatives.
Chapters of Change is marking 10 years with a gala dinner on September 25.
Global Women has delivered leadership programmes and it was exploring a partnership with a global business school, looking to accelerate some of its online offerings.
Ms Bhreatnach felt privileged to lead the organisation, saying she was there to have as much impact as possible.
‘‘I’m open to working with anyone who has an interest in accelerating gender diversity and inclusion.’’
Throughout her career, she has championed the advancement of women in leadership, embodying her passion for empowering others and ensuring intergenerational progress.
‘‘I want to see my three children thriving in this country and see all children thriving in this country. If you look across any of the things I do, that motivates me.’’
Diversity was essential for good business.
‘‘If you don’t have an organisation that looks like the consumer or customer or clients you serve, then you’re missing a trick.
‘‘There’s countless research to support if you have a diverse range of people sitting around the board or executive table, you make better decisions and your business does better. Everything I’ve experienced in my life shows that to be true.’’
When she first started working at food company Danone, she realised it was the most multi-cultural workplace she had ever worked in.
She got a ‘‘masterclass’’ in the tremendous value a rich range of perspectives around the table provides, as well as some of the skills required to lead a highly diverse team.
Recent quarterly labour statistics showed a wage increase for women and she hoped that was a trend that would continue.
There was no shortage of focus on ‘‘trying to shift the dial’’, but there were systemic issues that were hard to shift.
While there were also organisations with a long way to go, that was not due to a lack of care.
She cited Port of Auckland chief executive Roger Gray and the improvement made during his tenure, including the ‘‘You Don’t Have to be called Steve to be a Stevedore’’ campaign.
He was a good example of a leader at the bottom part of the table, but that was not due to a lack of focus or care, he had done some fantastic work with unions. ‘‘I think we have to meet people where they are at,’’ she said.
At the inaugural Global Women event held in Dunedin, Ms Bhreatnach spoke alongside Prof Ruru and experienced directors Rowena Davenport and Trish Oakley.
As well as a range of women, it was also attended by head girls from local schools and that was particularly inspiring for Ms Bhreatnach.
Being on the board of Dunedin Airport, she had a particular interest in the importance of the regions, not just as spaces for innovation but also as a hub for talent.
‘‘You don’t have to be in Auckland or Wellington to have that national level of impact,’’ she said.
One of the schoolgirls wrote to her saying what a profound impact the event had on her and that ‘‘gives you so much great hope’’, she said.
Her own daughters were all ‘‘wildly different’’ from each other and, while extremely excited that her eldest was going to the University of Otago, it certainly was not a requirement.
‘‘It’s about the fact I wanted them to go away – to find your trible, learn and meet new people, new ideas and new things and you decide who you want to be. That’s part of life really,’’ she said.
As for her own future plans?
‘‘Who knows? Not having a fixed view on what one will do in life, when something good comes along and it seems interesting and you see yourself making a positive contribution, you’re open to it, right?’’
