In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 40, our guest is Lawyer turned Novelist, Rachel Paris.

Success is a recurring theme in the life of Rachel Paris. With degrees from Auckland University in Economics and Law, and the Law Society’s prize for the top law student under her wing, she joined one of the country’s most prestigious law firms, Bell Gully.

A spectacular law career in New Zealand and around the world followed. Along the way she completed her Master of Law degree at one of the world’s most prestigious law schools, Harvard Law. Her dissertation there was cited as ‘influential’ by the Wall Street Journal.

After her Kiwi OE via a law firm in London, she returned to New Zealand, quickly becoming a Partner back at Bell Gully where, she became an expert in Banking and Finance law in the free lending days before the GFC, and she oversaw much of the post-crash restructuring that became the aftermath of those heady days.

Uniquely, she put that career aside and left the law partnership, as her family moved to London, following husband Jason’s career at Vodafone. There, she created her own boutique law firm specialising in Blockchain technologies and supporting her global client base part time while organising a growing family in a new part of the world.

But, having returned to New Zealand, it is her latest adventure that is the most fascinating. A masters degree in creative writing back at her old stomping ground at Auckland University and now a new book. And not a book about the law or even blockchain. But a novel, a twisting turning thriller about toxic rich people behaving badly!

The book, published in New Zealand and Australia, is called “See How They Fall” and has already attained Number 1 Bestseller status, while a Hollywood production company has optioned the rights for the big screen.

During the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast Rachel Paris talks about her amazing career and the lessons in leadership she has learned along the way. We learn more about Bitcoin, Harvard Law School, and the importance of making an impact, while balancing a family with three busy children and a CEO husband.

And, as you might expect, there is both support and strongly worded advice for a government with plenty on its plate.

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In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 39, our guest is the brains behind the four day week, and Founder of Perpetual Guardian, Andrew Barnes.

Andrew Barnes survived the hurly burly of London’s investment banking world in the 1980’s, the result of which saw him sent to Australia to manage the exposures held downunder by his banking masters in the UK. He moved to Australia for a month and stayed for twenty years.

After returning briefly to the UK in the mid 2000’s, the GFC saw him head to New Zealand and a unique opportunity with the business that became Perpetual Guardian.

During the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast Andrew Barnes speaks to Bruce Cotterill about the lessons he’s learned from a highly varied career and how re-defining risk led to his ability to make better investment decisions.

Barnes came to prominence a few years back when his book, “The Four Day Week”, was launched during the covid lockdowns. Born of an article in the Economist, and time to think on a long flight, the concept of a four day working week and resultant improvements in productivity has been adopted by companies and countries around the world. His view that people can be more productive in four days than in five makes for a compelling conversation.

Barnes, who these days splits his days between the UK and New Zealand also offers his thoughts on the different challenges being faced by each country. He cites the failure of politicians pursuing a change agenda to “take the people along with them” as a primary reason for the unravelling of our once cohesive culture.

As for what he would do if he was Prime Minister for a day, his answer should be compulsory listening for every parliamentary MP.

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In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 38, our guest is the Executive Director of the New Zealand Initiative, Dr Oliver Hartwich.

Oliver Hartwich was born in West Germany and talks of growing up in the 1980’s in a country shaped by the two World Wars that had until that point defined it. As Europe reshapes its defence strategies in response to the Ukraine crisis, his surprisingly frank conversation about his youth offers a stark reminder of the long-term impacts of war.

But it is as an economist, specialising in thinking about government strategy, that he has made his career. That career has seen him working in the House of Lords and in think tanks in the UK, Australia, and ultimately, for the last twelve years, in his adopted home in New Zealand.

During the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast Dr Hartwich speaks to Bruce Cotterill about the state of New Zealand, a country which he says has so much going in its favour, and yet continuously fails to live up to its potential.

Using the extensive research base of the NZ Initiative as his base, he discusses the state of our housing market and explains in a simple and no-nonsense manner the reasons why such a small country at the end of the world has some of the world’s highest house process.

And while on the local themes, his insights regarding our education system, excessive centralisation, infrastructure and the opportunity for direct foreign investment are as refreshing as they are direct.

Dr Hartwich has made quite a name for himself as an international columnist, and his comments about the current state of the USA, Europe and the UK are so insightful that they should be regarded as compulsory listening for the millions who are relatively uninformed on matters of international geopolitics.

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