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 professional working women in New Zealand. We started
this venture through our realisation that professional 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 women from
all professions and industry sectors 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
professional 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.
Professionelle specialises in developing highly relevant, tailored
offerings for professional working women. 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 emd 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 professional women. 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.
In April 2008, Galia appeared on TV One News in a Special Report
discussing women and workplace flexibility. Hannah Ockelford, a
Professionelle member and TV One reporter also interviewed
professional women at our first birthday party.
Galia Barhava-Monteith
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 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
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, 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 rowing and writing romantic fiction.
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!
Kathryn Jackson, Professionelle's Lead Facilitator,
Christchurch
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.
Kathryn is married with a team of 'furry children' including
Kali the cat, Shiva the dog, and twohorses called Angus and Mouse.
Having lived in a variety of countries throughout her life, she
loves to travel as often as she can and regularly supports
nonāprofit organisations like Riding for the Disabled.
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.