The beginning of a journey

This is the beginning of a journey for me. The journey to bring together my three passions for education, entrepreneurship and sustainability. I am a 31 year old mother of 3.5 y old twin girls living in beautiful NZ. Growing up in Germany, I encountered numerous situations in my life where I felt that I just did not fit in. People often smiled an awkward smile and called it “swimming against the stream” when I decided that I wanted to leave the all-girls school to attend a mixed school or when I decided against university to travel overseas first to improve my English. My parents did a great job in providing me with experiences and an environment to build my self-confidence and to ensure I have a voice. They always supported my decisions, even though they might have been a little unconventional. At the age of 20, just after finishing High School in Germany, I had my sight set on moving to NZ for 6months to improve my English (little did we know, that it would turn into 10years :-) ). Once arriving in Aotearoa, I felt instantly at home. Not only were the landscapes breathtaking, but the people were so welcoming, the lifestyle so appealing and the opportunities seemed endless. I met my kiwi partner after 4months in the country (this deserves a separate post as our story does sound a bit like a fairytale) and decided to give living in NZ a go.

I found my passion for entrepreneurship while studying business at Massey University and was lucky enough to work with technology start up companies at the business incubator. Since those early days, I have wanted to start my own business but I just did not know in which industry, so I held off.

In 2012, my partner and I were lucky enough to fall pregnant with twins (well actually triplets but I had lost one baby in the first trimester) and we were over the moon. However, I had complications which meant that our twin girls Luca and Phoenix were born extremely pre-mature at 25weeks. We were incredibly lucky they survived and they have no major ongoing issues now but the first two years of parenthood was absolute hell for us. Spending 3.5 months in hospital, much of it in the neonatal intensive care unit, was the easy part! With little family support and two girls with various issues such as severe colic, reflux and in need of oxygen support, we were both at breaking point in regards to our physical and emotional states.

The experience of becoming a mother absolutely transformed me. Of course, under any circumstance, would it have changed my life but in my case, it was the initiator of my second passion: sustainability and healthy living. I started to extensively research alternative and holistic medicine and the organic movement. After a lot of the conventional treatments did not work, I had more and more success with alternative medicine and eating healthy, organic food. We are very lucky that our girls do not have any serious ongoing issues (apart from food insensitivities) and even the doctors, who still monitor them closely, keep on telling us in a surprised voice: “I can’t believe how well they are doing!”. (This is where I really wish alternative and conventional medicine would work more closely together…).

Now, onto my third passion: After my studies, I started working at a technology incubator and even though one of the things I enjoyed most was seeing students progress with their ideas, it was not until 2 years ago when I realised my passion for education. I guess it was a combination of things:

When our girls turned two, I was given the great opportunity to work with social entrepreneur Derek Handley. Derek, a kiwi entrepreneur, had been donating two years of his life to set up the BTeam with Richard Branson. Through being exposed to his thinking, my passion to live more sustainably and to make a difference in the world got fostered. I wanted to be the best mother I could be by setting an example of how I live my life and the lines between education and parenting blurred more and more. My position with Derek was linked to AUT (Auckland University of Technology) and I was truly being immersed in an education environment. I could see so much opportunity and the urge to offer a learning environment in which not only my children could thrive grew stronger and stronger. At this point in my life, I realised that education is my true calling and that the intersection of education, entrepreneurship and sustainability is my sweet spot.