About us

In 2007, Galia Barhava-Monteith and Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes founded Professionelle, a unique social venture dedicated to researching, understanding and addressing the needs of all working women in New Zealand.

Six years later, in August 2012, we transformed Professionelle into a charitable trust called the Professionelle Foundation, to broaden its reach beyond the founders and to align with its public good aims. The founders have been joined on the Board by four more hard working Trustees.

History: We started Professionelle through our realisation that working women face unique challenges in the workplace and often feel isolated and unable to discuss them freely with peers and colleagues.  We believe that by bringing together working women from all  industry sectors and professions we can tap into their collective wisdom and experience to generate smart and practical solutions that materially assist women's career progress.

Professionelle is New Zealand's first and only enterprise of its kind and is targeted at women in large public and private organisations, and in professional service firms. At Professionelle's heart is this website www.professionelle.co.nz, offering a wealth of free resources that cover the real issues working women face in their careers - and beyond.  In our first three years, Professionelle gathered over 2000 members, mostly women. Our members are typically in their thirties and forties, with two thirds in full time employment and 75% tertiary educated. Professionelle is open to all (women and men) who wish to become members, and membership on our website is free.  

Our Offer: Professionelle specialises in developing highly relevant, tailored offerings for women keen to progress their careers. Offline, we offer research-based networking seminars both in-house to corporate and professional service clients and publicly. Seminar topics range from 'Mentoring as a key ingredient for women's career success' to 'Living our values at work and beyond'.  in 2010, Professionelle launched a South Island Chapter offering our networking seminars in Christchurch, and we further expanded our regional presence to Wellington by the end of the year. More towns will be added. Online, we are steadily building our professional development and support products offer. We also plan to harness ever improving web-based technologies to bring professional women together to learn about and discuss key issues, regardless of location.

Underlying all our work is extensive research into the most up-to-date thinking about what works for women and their careers. Our research combines academic thinking with practical solutions garnered from our ongoing interactions with our membership base.  Professionelle has also conducted original research on this topic for leading organisations in this field, such as Global Women, as well as for local media.

Love your work - there has been so much that has been bang on with what is going on in my life.

Our Board

Galia Barhava-Monteith, Founding Trustee

Galia holds a Masters in Developmental Psychology with First Class Honours from Auckland University. Her local work history spans corporate and professional service sectors. She began her career with The Boston Consulting Group, where she and Sarah met while sharing an office together and working all hours of many nights.

Later, Galia was appointed as HR coordinator in the merger that created Fonterra.  Her last corporate role was Ethics & Community Relations Manager at Fonterra.  

Nowadays, as well as being a Director of Professionelle, Galia works independently as an executive coach.  She is a Ministerial Appointee to the National Advisory Council for the Employment of Women. Between 2006 and 2011 Galia has acted as the independent coordinator of Fonterra's Candidate Assessment Panel,  working directly with the Chairmen of Fonterra and Fonterra's Shareholders Council. She recently featured in the Office of Ethnic Affairs' Trailblazers project. Galia is a Board member on the Auckland Regional Migrants Services Trust (ARMS).  She has recently been appointed to the advisory board for AUT's Dean of Business Law.

Galia is married with two young, school age children.  She is very serious about taking exercise and is an avid Yoga practioner.  She has a soft spot for the great outdoors and tramping as she first arrived here as a backpacker, drawn by the luscious New Zealand bush.

Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes, Founding Trustee

Sarah arrived in New Zealand twenty years ago, with an MBA from London Business School and a background in European marketing with Unilever.  She worked as a strategic business consultant with The Boston Consulting Group, becoming a senior Manager, before negotiating a shift to contracting after the birth of her first child.

More recently, in parallel with developing Professionelle, she has focused on her independent consulting portfolio through Strategic and Consumer Consulting, chiefly in her preferred industries of consumer goods and retail. She reckons that toilet paper and diamonds can be equally fascinating markets if you enjoy knotty problems and pattern recognition...

Through her children, Sarah garnered seven years' experience in education governance with a Montessori Primary Trust. She relaxes by researching family histories and rowing round and round Lake Pupuke.

Marisa Fong, Trustee and Chair

Born in Auckland, Marisa Fong is the oldest child of Chinese immigrants who ran successful restaurants. With a long career in recruitment consulting, she co-founded and built what has become The Madison Group, New Zealand's largest privately-owned  nationwide recruitment company. She is very proud of the accolades and awards it has received, including being named "the most exciting recruitment company" by the National Business Review.

Recently, she stepped back to a governance role on Madison's Board and is actively contributing to social causes she is passionate about.

As well as chairing the Board of Professionelle Foundation, she has leant Madison's support to the First Foundation. This organisation provides practical support to university students from disadvantaged backgrounds and Marisa mentors a student.  She also has been actively involved in Springboard, a group that promotes age diversity on Boards. In her "spare time" she develops high potential export-based businesses.

John Loughlin, Trustee

John Loughlin is a professional company director. He is Chairman of Tru-Test Corporation Limited and Firstlight Foods NZ Limited. John is also a director of Metlifecare Limited, Augusta Capital Limited, Port of Napier Limited, and AgResearch Limited.

John is a former Chairman of Zespri Group Limited, Prism Group Holdings Limited and Allied Farmers Limited. He is a former director of Toll NZ Limited, Centralines Limited Lean Meats Limited, NZ Meat Producers Board and New Zealand Lamb Company (North America) Limited.  John is also a former member of the NZ Markets Disciplinary Tribunal and a past ministerial appointee to the Representatives' Committee of the Animal Health Board. He is a former Independent Chairman of Fonterra's Candidate Assessment Panel.

In his executive career John was Chief Executive Officer of Richmond Limited and prior to that Finance Manager of that company. Prior to holding those positions John was an institutional fund manager with Westpac and AMP.

John and his wife Kathryn established and own Askerne Estate Winery.

Rebecca Thomas, Trustee

Rebecca arrived in New Zealand from the UK in 2004. Rebecca is one of the few women to have headed a funds management business in London. She has had a career in funds management for over 25 years both managing portfolios and as CEO of a UK listed company.

In New Zealand she led one the country's largest and most successful investment teams before starting Mint Asset Management in November 2006.

As she did in the UK, she also acts as an independent Director on both Crown and private sector Boards. Currently she is a Director of KiwiRail and Chairman of the Audit, Finance and Risk Committee of that Board, an Associate member of The Financial Markets Authority, the financial markets regulator in New Zealand, and she is a Trustee of the Professionelle Foundation.

Rebecca initially qualified as a barrister.

Cheryl Bowie - Trustee

Cheryl is a self-employed "career contractor" who specialises in consulting in the fields of project management, business change and business process improvement.

She holds a Bachelor of Business (Accounting and Management) and has extensive training in leadership having completed the Leadership NZ Programme in 2007.

Cheryl has worked for many of NZ's blue chip companies such as TelstraClear, Mercury Energy and NZ Post, to name a few and has worked in a range of different sectors that includes local government, energy, telecommunications, banking & FMCG.  She was instrumental in establishing and running the project office at the Auckland Transition Agency - the organisation charged with amalgamating Auckland's eight councils.

As a very early member of Professionelle, she was delighted to join the Board at the end of 2012 and is passionate about what Professionelle can achieve in its vision to support and develop professional women.

Lynda Fairweather, Administrator

Lynda joined Professionelle as the new site was going live, just in time to help upgrade our backend systems to cope with growth.

Lynda is an Auckland-based working mum with two boys and she has years of valuable experience in adminstration, website and database management and accounts. She is also an avid golfer - and says she has a standing order for fine Thursday mornings!

 

 

Karyn Riley, Professionelle's Lead Facilitator, Christchurch

Karyn Riley helps women rediscover their identity, have time for their priorities, find balance and fun in their life.

Karyn works with women throughout New Zealand and internationally, providing them with a supportive, confidential partnership and helping them overcome challenges, identify their goals and achieve more by focusing on less. She motivates, inspires and empowers women to find time for themselves and what's important in their life.

Karyn is a time management/life balance educator, author of "How to Keep the YOU in Mum", speaker, contributing writer, media commentator and mother of two. In addition to being an Event Facilitator for the Professionelle women's network, Karyn is also a Toolbox Facilitator for The Parenting Place, a Master of Ceremonies and a member of the National Speakers Association.

Karyn was awarded a Local Heroes Medal in the New Zealander of the Year Awards 2012, a business finalist in the NEXT Woman of the Year Awards 2010, a finalist in the Zonta Women in Business Awards 2008 and is undertaking a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Psychology at Canterbury University.

Jann Watt, Professionelle's lead facilitator, Wellington

Jann is New Zealand's first Reach-Certified Personal Branding Strategist and is passionate about helping motivated mid-career professionals find their career mojo. Personal branding is a key to helping people focus on the positives in their lives, and Jann's mission is to be catalyst for making work meaningful and fun.

After observing highly talented people feeling unfulfilled in their roles, Jann stepped out of her corporate role in Organisational Development and launched de novo to enable her to follow her purpose of inspiring others to be the best they can be. Jann loves one-on-one coaching and is also adept working with groups in the role of facilitator or trainer.

Jann has a reputation of being a forward thinker, yet always practical, quickly tapping into the barriers that hold people back and giving them the tools and confidence to achieve their career goals. She is a firm believer that networking is all about sharing. This is seen in the number of coffee chats Jann fits into her busy week with people in her network.

Kathryn Jackson, Professionelle's original Lead Facilitator in ChCh

Kathryn has a 1st class honours degree in Human Resources and Sociology from Stirling and Texas A&M Universities, with a postgraduate diploma in workplace motivation. Her early career was in the UK in HR related roles in Andersen's and the UK banking industry before qualifying as a coach with the Oxford School of Coaching in 2006. She moved to New Zealand that year.

Kathryn first experienced Professionelle while researching her first book, 'How to Keep Your Cool If You Lose Your Job', for which she interviewed Galia.  Kathryn's business is careerbalance which specialises in providing tools and resources to support professionals and leaders in their personal growth. She has been instrumental in designing and delivering Manager as Coach training for the New Zealand Institute of Management and is a volunteer coach for the KEA Coach Trust in Canterbury.

Having lived in a variety of countries throughout her life, she loves to travel as often as she can and regularly supports non‐profit organisations like Riding for the Disabled.

Kathryn is married and since their new son arrived in March 2012 she has stepped back from the Professionelle role to focus on him.