The New Zealand business leader tells Simon Pound why she’s funding the Theresa Gattung Chair of Women in Entrepreneurship and why we need to start taking burnout in business more seriously.
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When Theresa Gattung became CEO of Telecom at 37 she became forever famous as a glass ceiling breaker – she was the first woman to run an NZX top 50 company and the highest-paid businessperson in the country.
But when she left the role, those ceilings seemed to get rebuilt. The number of non-male leaders and the pay differentials are only barely better now than 20 years ago, with just a handful of leaders in the top 50 – it’s growing, but slowly.
I last talked to Theresa on Business is Boring four years ago, about her career and initiatives she was helping create, like getting SheO off the ground here. Since then, she’s seen her co-founded company My Food Bag IPO, become chair at telehealth provider Tend and helped publicise the problem of burnout by sharing her story.
But the gender opportunity and achievement gaps still remain. So to do more at the structural level, Theresa has just announced she will work with Auckland University to create a new hub to help increase participation and excellence in entrepreneurship for women, by funding the Theresa Gattung Chair of Women in Entrepreneurship – to the tune of at least $2.5m.
To chat about that, launching Tend and why we need to start taking burnout more seriously, Theresa returned to Business is Boring this week.