In March, Year 13 student Brooke Batty was selected as a Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) Ambassador. Her role was to induct Sir Ken Stevens (Founder, Managing Director and Chair of Glidepath) into the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame. Brooke was nominated for the role by her Business Studies teacher, following her success in that subject, including being one of five students who established the successful YES business, LunchLab.
Here Brooke shares her experience of being selected for this significant role at this very prestigious event.
In terms of being chosen, each year the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame holds an induction evening (organised by Young Enterprise) and 9 students from across New Zealand are selected by their respective schools to be Ambassadors on the night. This year Westlake Girls was one of the schools chosen and Business Studies teachers Mr Cowley and Mrs Singh selected me to represent our school. As soon as I was pulled out of class and explained that I had been chosen I took the opportunity straight away because it sounded awesome and being able to meet some of the most successful New Zealand business men and women wasn’t something I was ready to pass up.
When I arrived at the Cordis Hotel on Thursday 25 March, I met the other students who were in the same position as me – nervous but so excited! There were students from all over the country including Wellington and Nelson. We did a few run throughs and were told how to present the awards to the laureate whilst we were on stage and how the night would run. We finished off the run throughs with a pep talk from none other than news anchor Samantha Hayes – who I should add was so lovely to us all and gave us some really helpful tips. Right before we were sent up to our hotel rooms to get ready, we were given a quick lesson on how to use the correct cutlery and glasses for each course of the meal. That was all new to me as well as I’d never had 3 different sets of knives and forks at once before!
Me and a few of the girls who I made friends with, all went up to a hotel room together and had a quick nap before putting on some makeup and our cocktail dresses. We did a few more run-throughs of our speeches in an effort to calm our nerves before getting in the elevator and heading back down to the main hall for the event to start. All I can say is when the doors of the elevator opened and we saw how many people had filled up the once empty room, any efforts to calm our nerves were now pointless. Looking around there had to be about 150-200 people all wearing suits and beautiful dresses, and that’s only the people surrounding the bars, we hadn’t even seen it all yet.
As the event started, people began to filter into the main room where all the tables were set up with food and name cards. I found my table and it was there that I first met Sir Ken Stevens and his family members. I walked around the table and introduced myself to all of them and explained that I would be inducting Sir Ken and be on stage with him. As well as his family members, he also had some of his business partners sitting at the table with us who were all lovely , and one woman in particular I was talking to for the majority of the night!
After the main course there was a 30 min break which is when I got to personally meet the Governor General Dame Patsy Reddy. She was lovely and we had a good conversation in which she asked about my business and I explained that my group’s business ‘LunchLab’ is creating reusable lunch bags out of reused / repurposed fabrics. She was very impressed so if anyone is ever interested in buying our lunch bags, I can proudly (and legally) say they are ‘Governor General of NZ approved!’ .
After the break it was my turn to present and I was invited onto the stage by Samantha Hayes and during this time she was explaining to the audience what school I am from, the business I am a part of in school, and what we are creating. As nervous as I was to be standing on stage presenting in front of so many influential NZ figures, and just so many people in general , I knew that I was representing Sir Ken Stevens and his family and associates so that really pushed me to do as well as I possibly could . I’m pretty stoked with how I presented considering I had about 300+ pairs of eyes all looking at me and my face being projected onto the big screen behind me.
After my speech Sir Ken made his way onto the stage and was awarded his citation and badge from the Governor General and we took a photo, and then he had about a 10 minute interview with one of the hosts of the event.
At the end of the night, I had met many successful people, some including Peri Drysdale , Brendan Lindsay , and of course one of my personal favourites, family members of James Henry Whittaker, the founder of Whittakers chocolate. As me and a few of the girls were leaving to go get our stuff from the hotel room, we were stopped about 6 times just leaving the room to be congratulated by people we hadn’t even met for how well our speeches went which was really cool.
You can see Brooke’s introduction of Sir Ken HERE.