We thought it was about time we introduced ourselves properly. This article is about Huia, she is one of the three founding partners of Electric Kiwi.
What’s your background?
“I’m a left-brained numbers person. I studied Engineering Science at the University of Auckland, my first job being a business risk consultant at Ernst and Young. I moved to Ireland in 2005 (the Celtic Tiger years!) where I worked for a hedge fund as an analyst and found I really enjoyed finance. When I got back to NZ, I landed a job with Mighty River Power in their risk and investment team, where I worked for six years. In early 2014, I joined Julian and Phill, who I’ve known since we were at high school in Whakatane, in helping to get Electric Kiwi off the ground – and here we are! It’s definitely been one of my biggest professional achievements.”
Describe your role at Electric Kiwi
“As a start up we have a very flat structure, but my official title is programme manager. I spend around half my time managing IT projects related to optimising our business processes. The rest of the time I spend on strategic business projects.”
What do you like about working for a start up?
“Everything! I love the fact that we can make changes to the business so quickly and see immediate results. I also enjoy the challenger mentality, the can-do attitude and of course, working with a fantastic group of like-minded people.”
What’s your hidden talent?
I’m pretty handy at quizzes – I somehow manage to remember quite a lot of relatively useless general knowledge ranging from obscure capital cities to more shameful tidbits such as celebrity baby names.