The Honours boards of Columba College recognise the school’s traditional achievers: head girls, duxes, scholarship winners. Another record of achievement will begin in October this year with the establishment of the Columba College Business Hall of Fame, honouring as Laureates former Columba students who have made their mark in the world of business.

With the support of the Enterprise New Zealand Trust and the Columba Old Girls’ Association, Columba has embarked on a project to identify ex-students who’ll fit the criteria. It’s an exciting venture for the school, which is the only South Island participant of the eight schools in the pilot scheme. Columba’s already special: our Laureates should be too.

We need your help with this. Research will take us some way, but to make this project work into the future we need to keep in touch with our alumni. Please update your details, both now and when you move or have something interesting to report, and encourage your friends and family to do the same. If you can think of Columba friends or classmates who should be in the Hall of Fame, please feel free to nominate them.

Columba really values its ex-student community, and we want to make sure you continue to feel a part of the College. The Columba Business Hall of Fame is the first of what we hope will be a number of alumni initiatives which will make you want to carry on keeping in touch. After all, it’s less than 10 years until Columba’s centenary – and you’re all going to be invited to that. Please keep us posted so we can return the compliment.

	Columba College Business Hall of Fame Laureates 2009: Ann Kennedy Perkins and Helen Anderson

	Business Hall of Fame Alcove

The third Columba Business Hall of Fame function was a fantastic success. With Old Girls, students and parents present there was a real buzz at the event.

The induction of the Laureates is the highlight of the evening, and their identity remains a closely guarded secret until the night. Choosing who to induct each year is no easy task for the organising committee comprising Jennie Hughes, Margie Stevely, Amy Collins, Janet Marquet, Leigh Duncan, Vivienne Eason from COGA and Suzanne Bishop and Cecylia Klobukowska from the Commerce Department .

Columba students have done very well over the years and any Laureate has to meet strict criteria so that the standard of Laureate is guaranteed to be high.

The committee looked forward to the event as it was also the unveiling of the cabinets generously donated by Natalie Ellis-Wilson. These cabinets will house the memorabilia of the Laureates so that there will be a lasting reminder to the present students of the Laureates’ achievements. A slight hiccup with the cabinets meant that they were not all there for the night but they are all in place now.

Margie Stevely launched the Columba Business Hall of Fame Charitable Trust at the function. It is hoped that people will donate to the Trust so that the income will assist the funding of future events.

Three students were also honoured for their achievements in gaining Commerce Scholarships. It is hoped that in the future other school Departments will use the function as an opportunity to honour their students.

The response from the Laureates is amazing as their induction to the Hall of Fame has clearly been seen by all of them as a major achievement. There are now seven Laureates across a range of disciplines. There are photo displays around the school and their stories are being used by many Departments to provide inspiration to current students.

Suzanne Bishop, HOD Commerce

	Helen Anderson

Columba Years:1968 – 1973

Current Role: Chief Executive, Ministry of Research, Science and Technology

Helen Anderson is one of New Zealand’s best scientific minds. She is setting the agenda for science and research in this country.

She has achieved significant academic success in her career, graduating from the University of Auckland with a First Class Honours degree and completing a PhD from the University of Cambridge. In 1990 Helen was awarded a Fulbright Senior Research Scholarship for study at the University of California.

Helen has a particular interest in seismology and was selected as the Director of the Earth and Ocean Sciences in Dunedin, a collaboration between the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences and the University of Otago.

In 1997 Helen began working for the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology as its Chief Scientific Adviser. After six years in this position she was appointed Chief Executive of the Ministry. In this rôle Helen provides leadership and direction to staff within the Ministry and co-ordinates Ministry projects with a clear focus on the returns that investment in science will deliver to New Zealand businesses operating on the world stage, which simultaneously increases the wealth of the entire country.

	Ann Kennedy Perkins

Columba Years:1973-1976

Current Role: Founder and Director of AKP Communications Limited – Public Relations Consultancy

Ann Kennedy Perkins did not know what public relations were when she left school; she has, however, always been interested in communication. She graduated with a first class honours degree in English from the University of Otago and worked at both Radio New Zealand and TVNZ, before beginning her career in public relations.

In 1994 Ann established AKP Communications Limited, a public relations consultancy firm which develops and implements communication strategies to help companies achieve their business objectives. Ann believes that through communication she can make human connections, not just provide information.

The small company structure enables Ann to be hands-on and flexible. She enjoys working in partnership with her clients and seeing a brief from start to finish.

Ann possesses a particular skill-set as she is intelligent, creative and an effective communicator. She has achieved many career successes and in 2009 Ann was awarded a Gold Quill Award for Excellence in Communication, presented by the International Association of Business Communications for her “On the Way to the Agency” campaign, a communications project to support the establishment of the NZ Transport Agency. It was her third Gold Quill award.

	Julia Aspinall and Barbara Anderson Photograph courtesy of the ODT

	Amanda Ellis Photograph courtesy of the ODT

Julia Aspinall of Genetic Gains Ltd. and Barbara Anderson of BKA Interactive Ltd. were inducted into the Columba College Business Hall of Fame at a special function in Constance Hall on the 10th November, joining last year’s inaugural recipients, Amanda Ellis, Miranda Caird and Sue Stevely-Cole.

Amanda Ellis had been unable to attend the function last year, and so it was a special highlight to have her in New Zealand and able to attend the function on the 10th November. Amanda also spoke at assembly in the morning about her career and work with the World Bank – an inspirational talk for the girls.

Amanda who now lives in Washington, D.C., has been with the World Bank for five years. She heads up the World Bank group gender action plan, a four-year $US25 million programme promoting gender equality within economics, which involves spending much of her time in African countries.

Amanda has worked for Westpac in Australia as Head of Women’s Markets and national manager for Women in Business, the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs, OECD in Paris and has managed NZ aid programmes in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

	Barbara Anderson

Attended Columba College 1972 – 1976, Forms 3-7

Founder and Director of BKA Interactive Limited

In this competitive modern era, online marketing has become a necessary tool for many businesses. Barbara anticipated this market and through her vision, passion and determination her company, BKA Interactive Limited, has assisted over 1000 clients to grow their own businesses by providing top-end strategies, design and development of online solutions.

After completing a teaching degree at the University of Otago, moving to Auckland with her husband and raising three young children, Barbara decided to start all over again and studied at the Auckland University of Technology’s Art School where she graduated with a Visual Arts degree, specialising in conceptual and digital art.

In 1998 she was employed by Saatchi & Saatchi in its interactive division as a production assistant for the Telecom website development and “caught the bug”. This position was followed by a role in the online division of CMP Medica, a medical publishing business.

After only four years in the industry Barbara set up BKA Interactive Limited, a website and software development company. The business started with just Barbara in a back-room of her family home and has now grown to become a leading online service business that uses a combination of design, strategy and communication tools to custombuild web-based solutions for a very diverse range of clients. The BKA interactive culture is a blend of entrepreneurial know- how, imagination, technical excellence and rigorous project management methodology.

BKA Interactive Limited’s catch phrase is Better, Better, Better. Barbara wants a better place to work, better people, better ideas and better results for her clients.

Always thinking and planning ahead, Barbara is not content to sit back and enjoy her current success, she is continually strategising to ensure the development of her own business. In the fast-paced Internet industry, BKA Interactive is a proven stayer.

The selection committee was impressed with Barbara’s attitude, ambition and ability to develop her business to its current level of success and is proud to present Barbara Anderson with this well-deserved award.

	Julia Aspinall

Attended Columba College 1971 – 1975, Forms 3-7

Animal Breeding Consultant – Founder and Director of Genetic Gains Limited

Julia has specialised in animal breeding since 1985 and has been involved in some of New Zealand’s most intensive genetic reproduction operations.

Growing up on a farm in Wanaka, Julia attended Columba College as a boarder throughout her high school years. During the holidays she would return home to Wanaka where she worked on her parents’ Station.

In 1979 Julia graduated from the University of Otago with a BHSc and worked as a breeding technician at MAF, based in Mosgiel. With this practical experience and an obvious passion for the work she was undertaking, she decided to move to Canada in 1982 and studied and worked at the University of Guelph, completing a Masters Degree in Science.

On returning home to New Zealand Julia applied and developed her knowledge and skill as a breeding technician working with many businesses – including Aspiring Animal Services, Agrienix, MAF and Ag Research. In this role Julia was actively involved in implementing embryo transfer programmes for sheep. While working at MAF and Ag Research she developed commercial sheep artificial insemination and embryo transfer services, and became a breeding consultant. Over the years her proven talent and ability enabled her to climb to management positions within these organisations.

In 1995 Julia established Genetic Gains and began independently contracting her services and expertise to organisations and clients in both New Zealand and overseas, while also managing the Woodlands Artificial Breeding Centre for Ag Research. She built the business up over the initial years and in 1999 Genetic Gains acquired the Woodlands Animal Breeding Centre, and incorporated as Genetic Gains Limited. In 2001 the business also became responsible for the Invercargill Sheep Improvement Limited Bureau, one of eight Bureaus in New Zealand.

The company provides Artificial Insemination and MOET (embryo transfer) services for sheep and an animal recording service which is interfaced on a national database for breeders.

Julia’s goal is to promote animal breeding services which meet the needs of New Zealand breeders and which will inherently improve the genetic pool of the New Zealand sheep industry.

Julia has been contracted by businesses all over the world that demand her specialist services and she is clearly a leader in her field. Julia has been able to grow her lifelong connection with the farming industry into a successful business which endeavours to improve the standards of one of New Zealand’s most essential sectors.

It is for this reason that the selection committee considers that Julia is a truly entrepreneurial person and is proud to induct her into the Columba College Business Hall of Fame.

The first Columba College Business Hall of Fame laureates were announced on Wednesday 14 November 2007 during a reception at the College hosted by the Columba College Old Girls'Association.

Click here to read about the Business Hall of Fame Launch.

Attended Columba 1971-1973, Standard 4 –Form 2

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Roost Limited

When Miranda Caird (Stringer) founded the Mortgage Advantage Company Limited in 1993, few people in New Zealand had heard of mortgage brokering. It’s now so well established that early in 2007 financial giant AMP chose to buy Miranda’s Dunedin-based business, now known as Roost. She remains Chief Executive of the company, which has 32 franchises throughout New Zealand and provides a range of services including residential, investment and commercial finance, and insurance.

It was an overseas financial planning conference which inspired Miranda to establish herself in the then-new field of mortgage broking. She was well-prepared for such a venture, with a background of 15 years in retail banking, her initial career path after leaving school. Miranda started the business at the same time as she and husband Neville started their family, planning the launch of Mortgage Advantage while pregnant. Soon after the birth of her second child, the company was up and running in earnest. Miranda successfully rose to the challenge of combining a young family with a new business, while also overcoming the initial resistance of lawyers, accountants and banks to her innovative concept.

After three years, Mortgage Advantage had outgrown its original business plan. Miranda’s considered and considerable research led her to another innovation: franchising. She founded the Mortgage Choice New Zealand franchise in 1996, and is the only woman in New Zealand to have owned and operated a nationally franchised mortgage brokerage business. She has also been an ardent advocate of industry standards and innovation throughout.

While Mortgage Choice continued to be a leader in the field, Miranda decided in 2006 to differentiate her business in a now-crowded industry, and, after careful market research, rebranded as Roost. The rebranding was followed by the decision to include new financial services such as insurance broking, and the sale to AMP.

Miranda’s achievements have been recognised by numerous business awards, including Her Business Businesswoman of the Year 2001, several Franchise Association of New Zealand awards, a marketing award for the Hello Roost campaign, and now, as an inaugural laureate for the Business Hall of Fame of Columba College, which she attended in her primary and intermediate years. The selection committee was impressed with her innovation, ambition and determination, as well as the considered approach with which she has developed her business to its current level of success.

Attended Columba College 1976-1978, Forms 3-5

Lead Gender Specialist, World Bank Gender Action Plan

From her office in Washington DC, across the road from the White House, Amanda Ellis has helped women to create and grow more businesses than she will ever know about. As the Bank’s Lead Gender Specialist, she helps to develop policy which promotes gender equality as smart economics, but she also spends much of her time working directly with women in developing countries to help them organise the finance and develop the knowledge necessary to create their own businesses. It’s the latest stage in a remarkable career which has, through advocacy and entrepreneurship, improved the lives of women by encouraging them to make, and manage, their own money.

Amanda’s working life began with an Otago University degree (First Class Hons) in French and Economics , which she followed with Masters studies in communications and political science at the East-West Center in Hawaii. With this training, she joined New Zealand’s diplomatic service, where her postings included international trade economics for the OECD in Paris and UN in Geneva; managing aid programmes in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and Consul to the French Territories in the Pacific.

After ten years in public service, Amanda was recruited by the Westpac Banking Corporation in Australia. She initially headed communications, before becoming the National Manager for Women in Business when Westpac started Australia’s first banking unit designed specifically to address women’s financial issues. In this role she led the development and provision of female-orientated financial services and educational, networking and mentoring programmes, growing revenues to over half a billion dollars in just three years. Her advocacy for women’s business included numerous speaking engagements and the authorship of two best-selling Random House titles on the subject.

Amanda joined the World Bank Group in 2003 after marrying and moving to Washington DC. As the Bank’s first Senior Private Sector Development Specialist on Gender, her mandate was to incorporate awareness of women’s particular problems and needs into the work of the Bank. She began by creating the Gender Entrepreneurship Markets (GEM) project at the Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation. Through the GEM’s work with governments and financial institutions in developing countries, women in Africa alone have been able to access over $40 million in the first-ever dedicated SME credit lines for women to grow their businesses. On the policy side, the inclusion of gender awareness in IFC projects has grown from two to 23 per cent in under three years.

Amanda has an exemplary record of involvement in professional and women’s networks, including the OECD Advisory Council on Women’s Entrepreneurship, the Advisory Board to the Organisation of Women in International Trade (OWIT), Zonta International, the Board of the East-West Center Association, the Australian National Breast Cancer Advisory Network, and the Global Banking Alliance for Women, of which she is a founding member and former chairwoman. The highlight of her career to date was speaking at the Nobel Peace Prize Business Forum when Grameen Bank founder Professor Muhammed Yunus was honored in 2006. The committee considers that her work in the economic empowerment of women worldwide is an outstanding achievement.

Attended Columba College, 1961-1974

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Bear Park Early Childhood Centres, Auckland

In 2006, over 750 children and their parents attended the 20th birthday celebrations for Bear Park, the early childhood group founded by Sue Stevely-Cole in St. Heliers in 1986. Since Sue founded the first Bear Park Early Childhood Centre, she’s built the business to be a franchise operation of 10 centres caring for over 900 young children in the greater Auckland region.

Sue was a Columba girl from her fifth birthday right through to the end of her seventh form year. On leaving school she trained as a teacher and taught for six years before the switch to early childhood education which resulted in the opening of the St. Heliers Bear Park. With four further centres following over the next decade, Sue decided that future development would require a different model. The resulting franchise system she designed for early childhood centres was the first of its kind in New Zealand. She remains owner-operator of three of the 10 Bear Park sites, while overseeing the franchise’s quality standards, professional development and performance management.

Throughout her career as an early childhood educator, Sue has been keenly interested in professional development, which, in 1997 led her to a Spring Institute in Reggio Emilia, Italy. She returned home inspired and committed to putting Reggio Children’s world-renowned teaching approach into a New Zealand context, and has continued to develop this within the Bear Park Centres ever since. In 1998 she became the Reggio network representative for New Zealand and has subsequently led 10 study tours to Italy. Other related initiatives include the introduction in 2002 of the Encounters Journal, and the establishment in 2005 of the Reggio Foundation, a charitable trust established to promote the philosophy through exchange and scholarship.

As well as her work with Bear Park and Reggio Children, Sue has long been actively involved in professional collaboration. She was a foundation committee member of the Early Childhood Council, and has contributed to international research. The long waiting lists for Bear Park places testify to the reputation of her centres, while the continued success and growth of her business reflect a commitment to both customer satisfaction and innovation. Sue began with a career path which has been followed by many Columba students throughout the years, but by recognising opportunities and taking on responsibilities, she has made it into a unique achievement.

The selection committee believes that Sue’s achievements epitomise the entrepreneurial qualities that the Columba College Business Hall of Fame seeks to recognise. She saw an opportunity, planned carefully, and made her vision a reality.

The Columba College Business Hall of Fame will honour as Laureates former students of the College who have gone on to make an exceptional contribution to the community through enterprise, governance, leadership, development and/or promotion of and in business.

If you or someone you know fits this description, please let us know, and we’ll get back to you to find out more about your nominee and why you think they qualify.

Thank you for your nomination for the Columba College Business Hall of Fame. We will be contacting nominees and carrying out further research over the next few months, so you can expect to hear from us in a week or two.

We appreciate your interest and look forward to following it up.

Best wishes
Suzanne Bishop
Co-ordinator, Business Hall of Fame