M2 Magazine Podcast

Dr. Alia Bojilova is a performance coach for SAS Soldiers and Olympic athletes. During her time with the UN Dr. Alia and her team were taken hostage in Syria. She kept her cool and negotiated the release of her team without harm. She works with Movac Ventures and assists companies in building cultures of adaptability and innovation. A performance coach for SAS Soldiers and Olympic athletes. During her time with the UN, Dr Alia and her team were taken hostage in Syria. She kept her cool and negotiated the release of her team without harm. She also works with Movac Ventures and assists companies in building cultures of adaptability and innovation.

M2 Editor Andre Rowell Interviews Jovan Pavlicevic from SquareOne, an app that kickstarts kids financial journeys. This is an entirely new financial sector major players completely overlooked. Pavlicevic talks about his journey starting the business as well as where New Zealand's at in it's own financial journey.

Find out more at https://m2now.com/

https://getsquareone.app/about

Bindi Norwell, Group CEO, ProCare

Bindi is a visionary leader with more than 25 years’ experience working across a range of sectors including health, property, professional services and telecommunications. Bindi brings extensive commercial leadership and governance experience, is highly strategic, and has proven expertise in leading organisational diversification and growth strategies, leveraging technology and innovation, transformational change, and organisational redesigns, to enable successful, thriving and sustainable businesses. Bindi is currently the Group Chief Executive of ProCare, a leading healthcare provider. She is passionate about health and wellbeing, and relishes the opportunity to utilise her strategic and leadership strengths to improve equitable health outcomes for all New Zealanders. Prior to ProCare, Bindi was Chief Executive of REINZ and she has also held various executive roles across New Zealand, Australia and the UK. Bindi is currently a Director for CareHQ, Chair of the Fresh Minds Board and Deputy Chair of the Auckland Branch of the Institute of Directors. Prior to this she has held various governance roles including with Whakarongorau Aotearoa, EMA, Marketing Association and Warehouse Group. https://www.m2woman.com/journey-to-excellence/

A panel featuring Professor Marjo Lips-Wiersma, Rawinder Singh, Sharon Harrison and Susan Peterson.

M2woman Journey to Excellence develops Business Professionals to be leaders driving change in Diversity, Sustainability & Resilience to strengthen New Zealand.

This popular event is an all inclusive Friday afternoon with lunch, networking, expert speakers sharing insights. A great opportunity to connect & grow with your key staff & clients, develop business leadership skills & network with like-minded people.

For more information: https://www.m2woman.co.nz/journey-to-excellence/

Susan Peterson - Director Susan is an experienced business leader with a particular interest in helping companies to drive growth through technology, innovation, and organisational culture.

Susan is currently the chair of Vista Group International and a director on the boards of Mercury Energy, Xero, Arvida and Craigs Investment Partners. Susan is also a member of the Board of Global Women.

Susan’s past directorships include ASB Bank, Trustpower, Property for Industry, The NZ Merino Company Limited and Compac Sorting Solutions. Susan is also a past member of the New Zealand Financial Markets Disciplinary Tribunal, the IHC board and the National Advisory Council for the Employment of Women. Susan was a finalist in the 2014 Westpac New Zealand Women of Influence Awards.

Professor Marjo Lips-Wiersma - Professor of Sustainability and Ethics leadership at Auckland University of Technology

In her role as Professor of Sustainability and Ethics leadership at Auckland University of Technology, Marjo aims to reach people with the sustainability message in ways that create hope and agency and strengthen the will. To that end she has also co-created the Map of Meaning International charity which supports meaning makers globally. In her teaching and research she combines academic insights with practical experiences from a variety of sources, including being a qualified permaculture practitioner.

Jacinta FitzGerald - Chief Executive of Mindful Fashion

Jacinta is a sustainability activator, passionate about the power of business to create positive impact. Building on more than 20 years experience in the clothing and textiles industry, in 2015 Jacinta founded Make.Good, a consultancy that works with innovative global and local businesses to drive forward the sustainability agenda. Jacinta is currently Chief Executive of Mindful Fashion New Zealand, the peak body for sustainable fashion and textiles in Aotearoa, an organisation on a mission to create a thriving and full-circle future for New Zealand's clothing and textiles ecosystem.  find out more at: https://www.m2woman.com/jte-summit-presentations/

Founded Pure SEO in the digital marketing landscape, and co-founded iCompare, a go-to platform for insurance comparison and is the creative force behind Toru Creative. As an author, he penned the definitive guide “How to Get to the Top of Google Search: A Practical SEO Guide,” positioning himself as a thought leader in the industry.

Join us live at our next event at http://m2summit.com/

Founded RUSH Digital in 2010 and has led its technology teams in developing world-first solutions for global companies such as Microsoft, Disney, Google, Samsung and Nokia. Local clients include: Metservice, Watercare, Foodstuffs, Te Whatu Ora, Z Energy & Public Trust.

Join us live at our next event at http://m2summit.com/

Known for founding the Pop-up Globe, which attracted audiences of over 750,000 people in Australasia. A multiple-award winner, including a Sir Peter Blake Leader Award, he’s been the executive director at Emmy-nominated Auckland creative digital agency Gladeye. His latest project in collaboration with Gladeye seeks to redefine storytelling through AI and immersive experiences.

Join us live at our next event at http://m2summit.com/

Haren is the Head of Enterprise Greenfield segment at Amazon Web Services (AWS). Previously, he led the Territory business for AWS in ASEAN and has held a number of senior roles within technology and consulting businesses across Asia Pacific.

Join us live at our next event at http://m2summit.com/

National Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft ANZ, Lee advises government and commercial organisations on digital strategy and the economic, innovation and social impact of cloud scale technology. He is primarily focused on artificial intelligence, language models and machine learning. Lee heads Microsoft’s Office of Responsible AI for ANZ. He sits on the NSW Government Artificial Intelligence Review Committee and on several boards supporting technology innovators and public policy groups.

Join us live at our next event at http://m2summit.com/

Founder & CEO of Arcanum, which specialises in helping finance teams increase their productivity with AI. Asa has nearly a decade of experience working with applied AI and has led Arcanum to work with well known startups and enterprises in New Zealand and internationally.

Join us live at our next event at http://m2summit.com/

Sam is a security industry veteran of over 25 years, passionate about building extreme resilience into information systems. Working internationally, with particular focus in the UK, Europe, Asia Pacific and the United States, he has worked with government, finance, and other mission-critical industry sectors. Sam has built some of the world’s largest web security systems, holds multiple patents, and is the technical founder behind RedShield’s technology stack.

Co-Founder of Soul Machines, a ground-breaking high tech company of AI researchers, neuroscientists, psychologists, artists and innovative thinkers; re-imagining how we connect with machines. Greg also co-founded PowerbyProxi a company that was sold to Apple in 2017. Soul Machines works with celebrities like: Jack Nicklaus, K-Pop legend Mark Tuan & NBA All Star Carmelo Anthony.

Join us live at our next event at http://m2summit.com/

CEO & Founder of FranklyAI, a pioneering Generative AI startup established in 2020 and is a Business Director at Beca which has evolved into one of New Zealand’s premier users of Generative AI, recording over 150,000 interactions in just the last few months.

Albert is a Professor of AI, Director of the Te Ipu o te Mahara AI Institute at the University of Waikato and Co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence Researchers Association (AIRA). His research focuses on Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Science, and Machine Learning for Data Streams. He is the co-author of a book on Machine Learning from Data Streams published at MIT Press.

Join us live at our next event at http://m2summit.com/

GM Analytics & Insights for Woolworths Group with both local and group accountabilities. Kari leads a full stack data, analytics and insights capability responsible for driving analytics transformation and enablement end to end. At the group level, she is responsible for leading a culture transformation around data via the Woolworths Data Academy and sustainability analytics.

Join us live at our next event at http://m2summit.com/

Emily is Research Director for emerging global leader in AI for Insights, Yabble, with over 15 years’ experience applying the latest in best practice to big brands including Foodstuffs, Sky TV and Coca-Cola.

Co-Founder of Ambit who automate customer service with smart Digital Employees. With recent advances in AI mean this is here now, and understanding it is essential as we go into a world of unprecedented change. Ambit clients include: Tower, Vector, Pulse, Hallensteins & The Warehouse Group.

Join us live at our next event at http://m2summit.com/

How to Embrace Automation & AI to Boost Productivity for Competitive Advantage” – Karl Budge (SailGP) & Alan Marks (Oracle)

SailGP, the exhilarating high-tech sport, has captured the world’s attention with its intense racing, record-breaking speeds, and iconic global venues. As a startup organisation, SailGP pushes the boundaries of technology in sailing, leveraging advancements like machine learning to introduce the championship as a groundbreaking global sports circuit.

Join us live at our next event at http://m2summit.com/

Read the interview here: https://m2now.com/lee-child/?swcfpc=1

The future of food is here. This interview was recorded live at the M2 Success Summit with Amos Palfreyman - CEO & Co-founder of Miruku.

https://m2now.com/

Read more at https://m2now.com/

Read more at M2now.com

read more: https://m2now.com/the-first-great-wanderer/?swcfpc=1

Read more at M2now.co.nz

find the full episode on https://m2now.com/

Journey to Excellence presented by M2woman Magazine, is a live immersive event set to help individuals and businesses work through challenges and inspire solutions in this everchanging New Zealand work landscape. This is a four part series where we deliver the insights of our speakers from our May 7th, 2021 Event.

Journey to Excellence presented by M2woman Magazine, is a live immersive event set to help individuals and businesses work through challenges and inspire solutions in this everchanging New Zealand work landscape. This is a four part series where we deliver the insights of our speakers from our May 7th, 2021 Event

Journey to Excellence presented by M2woman Magazine, is a live immersive event set to help individuals and businesses work through challenges and inspire solutions in this everchanging New Zealand work landscape. This is a four part series where we deliver the insights of our speakers from our May 7th, 2021 Event.

Journey to Excellence presented by M2woman Magazine, is a live immersive event set to help individuals and businesses work through challenges and inspire solutions in this everchanging New Zealand work landscape. This is a four part series where we deliver the insights of our speakers from our May 7th, 2021 Event

A little over a year ago, champion New Zealand downhill mountain biker, Brook MacDonald lay in agony, semi-paralysed and unable to feel his legs on a Quebec mountain for five hours, waiting for a helicopter to arrive. Brook had sustained a serious spinal injury when he crashed during his first practice run at the World Mountain Bike Championships.

In October of this year though, Brook was in Austria competing at the World Champs. We talk to him about the gruelling year of recovery in between these two moments, the power of resilience and what it is like not to have fear.

We all know the world’s gone digital, but tech has much more going on beyond our LED screens. Breaking down the increasingly relevant and exciting world of deep technology at the M2 Summit on Thursday 20 May was Imche Fourie, head of Outset Ventures, who sat down for a fireside chat with our editor, Andre Rowell.

Fourie began by sharing with the audience her observation that, nowadays, “'tech’ has become synonymous with digital technology”, which excludes the contributions of ‘deep technology’. Fourie gave us a simple definition of deep technology, describing it as the “physical manifestation of science and engineering”, naming relevant fields such as quantum computing, synthetic biology and artificial intelligence.

As diversity becomes increasingly important in every facet of our world, what we think we know about the idea of ‘culture’ is quickly evolving. Breaking down the impending future of ‘cultural collision’ and how it is affecting our work and personal lives at the M2 Summit was Nuwanthie Samarakone, founder of ICE.

Samarakone introduced the idea of cultural collision, the coming together of individuals and ideas from different cultures and using these differences to create something new. She stated that its effects are both invisible and visible, and it while presents challenges in the short term, the future presents exciting opportunities.  She identified the main obstacle to harnessing these potential advantages as inclusivity, or lack thereof, stating, “without inclusivity, there is no diversity, there is no cultural collision.”

What exactly does one do after they sell their business for $500m? Vaughan Fergusson, founder of Vend, dropped in for a fireside chat with our editor Andre Rowell at the M2 Summit on Thursday 20 May to give us the insight and impart with some wisdom on just how he grew his business to that astonishing value.

Fergusson first candidly reflected on the reactions of people around him following the sale of his company, Vend, remarking that he felt a general sense support and positivity for his big payout, as opposed to any sort of jealously; “the thing I’m sensing the most is that people are so proud of what we’ve achieved”. He remarked that this might be attributable to the ‘open book’ attitude about the long, up and down road he and the company had travelled along the way; “we’ve shared it with everybody as we’ve went, and maybe people feel like they’ve been on the journey with us, and they’re like ‘they did it, they got through’.”

Fergusson also noted that this goodwill could be partly due to the close connection workers built with the brand made possible through allowing employees to invest in company shares, something which was not common practice at the time. He recognised the faith many of his former employees had shown in his by investing in the early stages of the business and professed joy at seeing them reap the rewards of the sale; “It’s really nice getting the messages from people being like, ‘I just bought a house’. That’s awesome!... You helped build a half a billion-dollar company so now you get to share in the prize as well.”

Sometimes, it's in our most trying times that we find inspiration. This was the case for Melissa Davies, Founder of Holdmine, who shared with us her devastating, but hopeful story at the M2 Summit on Thursday 20 May.

Davies was flying high in the corporate world, until one phone changed everything. “It felt like my world stopped,” said Davies, recalling the phone call from her brother where she received the heart-breaking news that her father, at just 55 years old, had passed from a sudden heart attack. She admitted the news affected her in ways she didn’t think possible; “Here I was, this ‘boss bitch’... ‘I can do the hard things; stuff can come at me, and I’ve got this.’ Oh, how I did not have this.” Davies grief and stress were compounded by the unexpected revelation that she had been named executor of his estate. What came next was what Davies described as “the hardest thing (she’d) ever had to deal with”. She revealed she spent the next two years of her life in “what felt like a full-time job, managing and trying to honour this person that I’d admired without them there to guide me through it”.

As AI development advances further year by year, the question of what separates us from our creations becomes more pressing. Talking the M2 Summit audience on Thursday 20 May through this fascinating, complicated and a little bit scary territory was behavioral scientist Dr. Sydney Savion. Sitting down with our editor, Andre Rowell, the two used the 2016 science fiction film Ex Machina as a discussion point for where we are at with artificial intelligence and, maybe more importantly, where we’re headed.

Savion began by breaking down the differentiating features of AI (artificial intelligence) and EI (emotional intelligence). “For me, EI is the intersection of cognition and emotion”, Savion explained. “It is the capacity for us to be self-aware of our own feelings and emotions, and that of another, and use that to navigate a plethora of social situations and conflicts.” Savion drew a clear distinction between this and AI, which she described as a demonstration of “the claim that human intelligence can be so precisely described that we can actually create a machine to simulate it”.

In a disrupted world of media where millions of pieces of content are being created every minute, there's a lot to be said for slow information. Knowledge that has been compiled over years of research and experience and test against the ebbs and flows of trends and fads and some of the best vessels for that knowledge are still good old books. Someone who has built her life around a quest for insights through books is Shine Bookstore founder, Angela Mepham. We talk to her about what goes into curating her library and why in the digital age you still can’t beat a good book or two.

For so many of us, the first COVID lockdown was a real stifler of our productivity and motivation, and a really scary time for small business owners who faced the threat of losing their livelihoods. However, some of us were able to find ways to create, innovate and make a big difference in helping others during this tough time. One of those people was Sarah Colcord, who sat with our editor and M2 Summit host, Andre Rowell, for a chat about her brainchild, Chooice. She broke down how it all started, the impact it has made for business and consumers in Aotearoa, and the uncertain future of her company.

Colcord’s story began like so many others in the first week of level 4 lockdown back in March, 2020; laying in bed, watching Netflix, fretting about the future as her business immediately began to feel the brutal effects; “I had a surge of phone calls, cancelling all of the contracts I had for the year”. Colcord estimated that the total sum of the losses from those cancelled contracts was around $100,000. “I was definitely quite distraught, you could say, quite anxious”.

If you were to make a list of guaranteed, instant money-making industries, I’m not sure how far down you’d have to go before you reached the umbrella industry, but I’d imagine it wouldn’t be near the top. It’s in an industry, that in order to really succeed, you’d have to come up with something truly innovative. Greig Brebner, founder of Blunt Umbrellas, knows a little bit about that, and he gave his story to a captivated M2 Summit audience on Thursday 20 May.

Brebner kicked off with a little straw poll, asking “can I get a show of hands of people who actually own a Blunt umbrella?” What followed was quite remarkable, as what had to be over three quarters of the room immediately raised their hands. This had a have been a humbling sight for Brebner, who remarked that, while the perception might’ve been that Blunt Umbrellas had burst on the scene as an ‘overnight success’, “the reality for Blunt is, it took us ten years to get our overnight success”. He then began to unpack his remarkable topsy-turvy professional journey, from his youth mucking around in his dad’s workshop, to the top of his industry.

While riding the dizzying highs and lows of short-term stock trading often draws most of the interest from the younger generation, commercial property investment still stands as one of the safest bets on the investment market. However, the problem of the day is that young people don't have the knowledge to get themselves in the game. Matt McHardy, Head of Investor Relationships at fund management company PMG, sat down with our M2 Editor and M2 Summit host Andre Rowell on Thursday 20 May to talk about the state of the game for young people in commercial property investment and what their role is in getting more young people involved.

We might not think of it as a big deal when compared with more urgent diseases or medical conditions, but asthma has become a concerningly significant presence in Kiwis lungs. How has this happened? Well, Asthma NZ CEO Katheren Leitner broke down the causes, effects and what we need to do to turn the tide in a powerful keynote at our M2 Summit on Thursday 20 May.

While we will likely always be restricted by our own mortality, humans have, seemingly forever, spent immense amounts of time and resources searching for the proverbial fountain of youth and clamouring ways to prolong their lives. As we head into what he calls the ‘coming era of longetivity’, anti-ageing expert Greg MacPherson took to our M2 Summit stage on Thursday 20 May to help us “dive down the rabbit hole of cellular ageing” and caught us up to speed to where we at in the world of anti-ageing and posed the simple but incredibly layered and thought-provoking philosophical question: “what's the point of extending life?”.

New Zealand’s workforce of temps and contractors are a vital part of the economy yet are not able to access the same level of support and training as permanent employees. Contracting and temporary workforce company, Emergent has set out to change this in in terms of mental health support for its temporary workers with its partnership with Clearhead, a mental health social enterprise and the launch of a mental health app. We talk to Debbie Tuck, consulting director of Emergent about the vulnerability of our temp workforce and the extra pressures caused by Covid, lockdowns and job insecurity.