Businesses going global

Listen to our three panelists share their advice on;

• Shipping – including what to bring home and the best ways to do so, whether to pack up things yourself and what that could mean for insurance cover and what to expect from customs once your things arrive.
• Finding a home – should you buy from offshore using an agent or friends and family to check out places? Or is it better to rent first? Plus, what the are the advantages of renting furniture vs renting an Air BnB?
• Settling in – what to expect, how long it will take for you to feel ‘at home’ and what can you do before your arrive to make things easier on yourself and your family.

Chantelle Nicholson

Chantelle Nicholson is a multi-award winning chef, owner of Apricity Restaurant (Michelin Green Star 2023) in Mayfair, former chef-owner of now-closed and much-loved Covent Garden restaurant Tredwells (the recipient of a green Michelin star in 2021) and All’s Well, a ‘pandemic pop-up’. One of the leading female voices in the UK’s hospitality industry, Chantelle is an advocate for seasonality and sustainability, championing veg-forward cooking through both the restaurant and her cookbook, Planted. She is a passionate advocate for women in the food industry and a lot of the principles for her menu creation came from growing up in New Zealand surrounded by amazing produce, being in nature and really being connected to where food came from and how it gets onto a plate. 

Chantelle always offers time and insights to incoming NZ businesses, supports NZ Inc activities, including creating bespoke menus and catering for visiting NZ ministers and Prime Ministers. Originally from NZ, and a trained lawyer, Chantelle is committed to creating a more sustainable future across her operation and activities, whilst also being an independent board member for ReLondon and a Food Council member for City Harvest. She is also an Ambassador for Chefs in Schools.

Christopher Yu

With a background in both law and accounting, Christopher practised tax litigation at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Wellington prior to moving to London in 1999. In 2002 Christopher left the City where he worked as a solicitor in investment banking to start a niche fragrance distribution business for luxury candle pioneer Diptyque. From there he went on to found 

United Perfumes, launching high profile fragrance brands around the world. United Perfumes have designed and consulted on launches for Paul Smith, Orla Kiely and Berkeley Hotel.Christopher has been instrumental in leading luxury business operations from creation, development, production, distribution & retail. 

Christopher is dedicated to understanding supply chain and sustainability issues, and is exceptionally proud of his NZ heritage and upbringing, shaping his drive, determination & mindset that it brings to the table for him in a global business arena. Passionate about the arts he sits on many Theatre Boards in London and throughout his life has always given back, be it teaching English as a second language as a 16 year old to newly arrived immigrants to New Zealand, to 2023 where he is utilising his success, connections and passion to support other Kiwi businesses to achieve success offshore. 

Tina Waru

Tina was raised in Taranaki, New Zealand before moving to Australia, she grew up in a creatively driven community where her family lineage was heavily involved in the performing, visual and literary arts of New Zealand. Starting her career as a makeup artist in the fashion industry, she later began working within the Australian health and education sector, where she helped develop initiatives empowering Australian aboriginal and Global indigenous communities. 

In 2011 she founded the Global Indigenous Runway Project in Melbourne to encourage and create opportunities for Indigenous, Maori and Pasifika youth in the creative world.The mission evolved into Global Indigenous Management where the organisation pioneered the world’s first Indigenous Fashion Runway events for First Nations designers. These events have locally and globally been showcased in the Melbourne fashion week and Melbourne fashion festivals. Tina Waru has helped lead this platform for indigenous youth with great success supporting more than 1800 young people and her company has been widely praised for its efforts supporting indigenous youth, receiving many awards. 

Alexia Hilbertidou

Alexia is the founder of GirlBoss NZ – NZ’s largest organisation for young women. In 8 years, GirlBoss has grown to 17,500 members and programmes have been implemented in more than 100 schools across New Zealand, Australia and the Cook Islands. Her own mission is to get women to the boardroom table, and she believes the decisions made while young are crucial in paving the way.

Alexia has spoken at some of the world’s largest conferences such as The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and One Young World, sharing stages with speakers such as Richard Branson, HRH Meghan Markle, and JK Rowling. She has been named New Zealand’s Gender Equality Ambassador at the World Expo, a National Geographic Explorer, and a Facebook Leadership Fellow. Alexia studied Leadership for Change at the University of Cambridge and holds a Masters in Emerging Technologies. She has achieved more than 30 Awards for her work, including being named the Pacific Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Forbes 30 under 30, Semi-Finalist for Young New Zealander of the Year. She was also awarded a Queen’s Young Leader Award for Services to the Commonwealth by Her Majesty, The Queen, at Buckingham Palace. She was selected from over 20,000 nominations and is the youngest Commonwealth Citizen to hold this honour.

The 10 day expedition brought together conscious travellers from 20 countries around the world, with a variety of interesting perspectives and ideas on how individuals and companies could become stewards for the environment and create real and meaningful change. The expedition was led by a group of ‘stewards’ experts and industry leaders who have long been advocates for sustainability and climate care. These stewards included the likes of Kiwi icons Sir Graham Henry and World Class New Zealander Peter Hilary who was on his 43rd visit to the continent. Peter says the opportunity to bring people to a place and really show them what’s going on is incredibly powerful.

“You’re immersing a whole group of people in this wondrous place, and everyone’s been hugely impacted by that experience. For example, the last morning we had there was quite frankly as good as it gets. You’ve got mirror-like water and icebergs and beautiful mountains all around and whales breaching, it was a truly incredible Antarctic experience. On board the ship you effectively have this forum, a whole group of people who have an interest in the environment and a huge range of speakers bringing different aspects of their knowledge to the party. I think one of the most significant things was that opportunity for conversation and discussion. It just galvanised within me the fact that you not only need to be on board, you need to do something, each of us can do our little part, and sometimes they can be quite big parts.”

The 10-day expedition had a full schedule, with trips off the boat to explore the vast surroundings, lectures from the expedition staff on wildlife, the history of Antarticia and the changes being seen due to climate change and also a number of guest lectures and workshops which examined what individuals and businesses could do to lessen their global footprint.

World Class New Zealander and Boma founder Kaila Colbin says as a CEO the opportunity for her to meet a number of leaders and listen to their global perspectives was a great tool to force self examination.

“Being on the ship with people from different walks of life made it way more interesting, and provided a lot more opportunities for exploration. An experience like this forces us to question what our beliefs are, what our motivations are, what our ambitions are, our preconceptions about the world. We don’t often get opportunities for this sort of pattern interruption from our daily lives. Being in a context like Antarctica, having that shared experience with people creates bonds that I believe make us more open to hearing and experiencing where someone else is coming from.”

Also on board were two researchers from the University of Tasmania, who were focused on human experiences in Antarctica exploring whether visiting the continent has a long-term effect on people’s behaviour.

Passengers were interviewed on the way to the continent as the ship crossed the Drake Passage and again on the way back. They will also be followed up in 18 months time to try and establish if this experience has led to any long-term changes. One of the researchers, Prof. Nicholas Farrelly, says they are keen to understand the effect immersive experiences have on behaviour.

“Over the years we have developed a set of tools and techniques for trying to understand the deeply personal responses to a set of environmental experiences. If we are going to manage ourselves more effectively as humans on this planet, we all need to reflect on what we do and why we do it. Working with this group gives us a tremendous opportunity to engage a wide range of leaders from many different fields. I look forward to working with this group over the coming months and maybe years to understand if experiences like this really can create long term change.”

Founder & CEO of academyEX, Frances Valentine says changes in behaviour towards climate change is a work in progress that we all need to embrace. The World Class New Zealander says the expedition gave her the opportunity to hear from leaders who were at different stages of addressing big global issues like climate change.

“I think we have this innate kind of hope that what we understand to be true is true, and that the person opposite us understands the same thing to be true. But actually, the reality is most of the time that’s not the case. People have different influences, different inputs, different biases, and to get to the truth, you need to start the conversation. An experience like this is a fantastic way to do it.”

Insider Expeditions CEO Steve Pirie-Nally says the theme of stewardship and being a kaitiaki of the planet really resonated with those on board.

“People are coming home with the ABCs of what they can do to be better stewards for the planet, and reimagining what that looks like in business as well. The insights that we’ve had from the crew on the boat as well as our speakers have allowed everyone to dive deeper into certain topics, and really understand in a very real way what these mean for us and individuals and business owners. Having people on board the boat for 10 days experiencing this together has also really supercharged networking, we have had several business deals done around ideas for sustainable solutions and there will no doubt be others that come in the weeks and months following the experience.”

Peter Hilary says he hopes this experience will stay with those who were on board and he would encourage others to take part in future expeditions to share their knowledge and insights and form a connection with what it is we are all trying to save.

“This expedition really grabbed people’s attention. We all know with meetings or video calls or even conferences, people might pay attention for a bit but they tune out, or go back to their day and forget. Nothing beats bringing a whole lot of people together to this place where they can really see the effects and for such a duration of time, that I think is a very powerful thing, you’re immersed in the experience, you breathe it, you feel it, you know, it touches you emotionally and you form a connection with the place, I think at the least people came away from this feeling strongly about being advocates for Antarctica.”

Kea spoke to a number of industry leaders on board and asked them to share their advice and business knowledge with our community, please keep an eye out for this series of global insights articles which will feature Sir Graham and Lady Raewyn Henry, USA Brand and marketing expert Rhoda Swan, and Australian founder of the Models Method Simon Bowen.