Webinar: Women Founders: Learn from Their Journey and Embrace Your Own Path!

Event recording:

About the event: Gain insights from NZ women entrepreneurs and learn about their journeys to building successful businesses.

Join TechWomen NZ council members for an insightful conversation about women’s entrepreneurship. Discover the unique journeys they have undertaken in building their businesses, and gather tips and guidance to empower and inspire other aspiring women entrepreneurs. We’ll also discuss topics like motivations that drive women to embark on the entrepreneurship journey.

Event Details

• Date: Wednesday, 9 August, 2023
• Time: 12pm-1pm
• Location: Online
• Event Type: Virtual
• Cost: Free for members & non-members

Don’t miss out on this exceptional opportunity to be part of the conversation! 

Speakers

Vanessa Leite - Principal Strategy & Consulting - CyberCX

Senior Information Security Expert with over a decade of experience in establishing and managing cyber security strategies and operations. Throughout my career I have successfully delivered a wide range of corporate initiatives that involved the planning and implementation of cyber strategies and controls. In addition, I currently serve as a member for the NZTech Women sub-committee. I am also a volunteer at the Kapiti Women's Refuge center, where I provide support for women in vulnerable situations by covering the crisis line. Above all, I believe that I am a compassionate individual with a passion for continuous learning and making a positive impact on this world.

Samar Alrayyes - Senior account executive, Microsoft - Director of the board, MACSO - Co-chair, TechWomen NZ

Samar Alrayyes is a senior client executive at Microsoft, specializing in enterprise commercial customers.  She is Co-chair of TechWomen NZ and a portfolio advisory partner for MACSO at Bridgewest Ventures. With a strong background in cloud solutions, she holds a Computer Engineering degree from Philadelphia University and an MBA from Massey University. Samar defied cultural norms to pursue a career with Oracle, where she worked for 14 years in various roles across ECEMEA and New Zealand.  In 2015, she moved to New Zealand and joined Microsoft in 2018 as an Azure specialist. She now serves as a senior client executive and is actively involved in promoting diversity and inclusiveness.

Kristen Lunman - Co-founder - Powrsuit

Kristen’s superpowers tend to lean in the area of growth and leadership. Until last year, she was at Hatch and, more recently, at a new venture she co-founded called Powrsuit - a leadership platform for women. When she does have spare time, it's spent with her teens or on a surfboard. 

Melonie Cole - Founder - Mindshift

Melonie spent the first 25 years of her career in editorial and technology change management and communications roles primarily in the publishing industry, working for Longman Pearson and Thomson Reuters. Nearly ten years at Telecom / Spark in compliance and process improvement roles followed, the last three as the security awareness manager responsible for the formation of the training and awareness programme for Spark staff and as a member of Spark’s security leadership team. In 2018, Melonie founded her business Mindshift with the mission to help people lead safer digital lives. Mindshift are proud to help many large NZ businesses with their security training and awareness – managing their human risk. Melonie won ‘best security awareness campaign’ in the 2018 ISANZ awards for her work at Spark NZ and Mindshift won ‘Best Start-up/ new business’ in the 2022 ISANZ awards. She was a finalist in the Women in Security Awards Aotearoa 2020, and the NZ Women in Security Awards 2022 and was a finalist in the Entrepreneur category in 2023. Mindshift won ‘the ‘Start up Innovation – Customer Value’ category in the 2021 Innovation Awards. Melonie has spoken lovingly about managing human risk at security conferences and industry events including ASIS NZ Women in Security, NZITF, and ISACA.