In this week’s episode, Simon Pound talks to Louise Aitken, CEO of the Ākina Foundation, about how they’re helping social enterprises grow.

Social enterprises are some of my favourite things in business. The idea that a business could be about more than just shareholder value, that it is part of a community and that the impact it has can be positive in many ways if it just decides to, are hugely powerful ideas. 

As social enterprises have emerged, some people have asked why they aren’t just charities if they want to do good. But the real question I think is why isn’t every non-social enterprise trying to make the world better too?

There are supporters helping the concept grow. For the last three years the Ākina Foundation has been delivering a programme in partnership with the government, called The Impact Initiative, focussed on the future of New Zealand’s social enterprises. Ākina runs a range of programmes to help more businesses make money and positive change, help grow companies’ capability, support them in things like finance and other nuts and bolts of doing business well, and create and demonstrate impact in what they do.

Part of this includes working with impact companies to help them become investment ready, and they offer grants and support to great social enterprises like Chia Sisters and Big Street Bikers – cool companies we’ve spoken to on the podcast.

The Ākina Foundation is an impact consultancy and impact investor, and to talk about what that means, CEO Louise Aitken joined us this week for a chat.

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Simon Pound talks to Emma Kaniuk, founder of an online directory of women and gender-diverse tradespeople.

Women make up about 10% of all tradespeople in New Zealand, and only about 4% of “on the tools” workers. That’s a wild statistic, especially in an industry crying out for more workers. 

There are many barriers to women and gender diverse people joining the trades – some identify the culture in the industry as an issue, and others cite safety concerns on solo jobs. But if you wanted to get someone that isn’t a man out to your house to do a job, where would you even start? 

That was something Emma Kaniuk started thinking about after having some work done on her home, and realising that the vast majority of the tradies who turned up were men. So she started keeping and sharing a list of female and gender-diverse tradies. 

The demand was out there, but the service wasn’t – so on top of her day job as half of one of Aotearoa’s best design studios, Akin (you’ve definitely seen her work on things like Karma Cola or Ecostore bottles) and her other pet project, Dogdogdog, she decided to start the online directory Tradespeople.

Tradespeople lists companies owned and run by women and gender diverse tradies around the country, and it’s going great guns. To talk about the idea, her work, and the state of the industry, Emma Kaniuk joined Business is Boring this week.

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