The Vaso journey starts with Bar
It’s a funny thing in your early fifties to realise that you’ve spent the vast majority of your professional career - some thirty years - being somewhat successful doing things you didn’t really like, in organisations you didn’t really believe in.
For quite a few years now I’ve wondered what on earth I was doing working crazy hours, feeling super stressed and constantly railing against the latest machine I’d attached myself to. I should've realised at university, many years ago now, that I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life. After leaving with three completely different degrees (classics and latin, then journalism, and finally commerce) and an adventure-laden student loan, the lure of a graduate job and a ‘high paying, professional career’ sucked me in and, before I knew it, I was utterly addicted to the hype of the Silicon Valley PR machine in the midst of the dot.com boom. Coming back to Aotearoa New Zealand just as 9/11 imploded in NYC seemed prescient and safe and I no longer wanted to live anywhere else in the world.
For the next 25 years I tried really hard to fit into the corporate world. I tried agencies, consultancies, start ups, non profits, government departments, banks, membership bodies and publicly listed companies. And mostly I struggled - railing against their rules and structures, their ingrained ways of doing things and their rigid views of success. I was constantly trying to remind people to look to where we want to go instead of where we’d been and pushing people to take a few risks and do things differently. Mostly, in vain.
Along the way, I had a handful of truly amazing leaders and mentors and many inspirational moments that I’m really proud of - winning industry awards, building incredible teams and starting the odd enduring movement. But mostly I just made myself stressed, frustrated and angry - not the person I wanted to be.
Despite that, the idea of quitting, of giving up on all those societal perceptions of success and what I ‘should’ be doing, seemed impossible. Until my mother died.
I’m not going to say I had an epiphany - some gloriously sunny, angelic like moment where everything became clear. But I did stop to think, to reflect on what I was doing and if I was happy doing it. The answer was a resounding ‘NO’.
What happened next has been truly glorious. I gave myself the chance to breathe and to interrogate my career through a very honest and unfiltered lens - what I’d been good at, where my passion truly lay and what filled my heart and made me smile - and to get comfortable with a different kind of future. I gave myself permission to let go of the ‘corporate world’ and try something for myself - the way I wanted to do it - without rules and boundaries.
None of this is unique or visionary. I’m not suggesting I’m the first person to have such a realisation or to act on it. But letting go has been truly liberating and energising. I’m acting on all the pieces that I’ve loved about my work these past three decades - designing and building amazing programmes for adults and kids alike, bringing old brands to life with fresh zeal and untraditional ideas, encouraging conservative minds to consider news ways and allowing different voices to be heard, always, always with an eye to a new and ambitious future.
I never would’ve got to this place without all the learning and fighting and pushing that’s gone before. And I owe so much of that awareness and courage to my mother.
My mother was a rebel and a feminist from an early age. The third of four daughters, and the youngest for many years, she had a wildness about her that endeared her to everyone she came across and her parents granted her a freedom many of her age didn’t enjoy. When sent to catholic boarding school in the sixties, she took her horses with her and escaped the wrath of the nuns at every opportunity. She defied their narrow expectations of her by passing all her subjects with ease and setting off to university to study law - one of only three women in her class at the time. In her forties, she went back to university to do an MBA before it was even a thing and, when my parents moved to Wellington in the nineties, she got a senior role at the Reserve Bank.
Throughout my childhood she was always loving, generous and full of laughter. But she was also staunch about a great many things - she constantly challenged me to question everything; to always pay my own way; to be independent and not rely on men; and to never “get a reputation” (for what, I had no idea). She pushed me to do more, be more and to never give up. For the longest time I wanted to go to Harvard and become the CEO of some well known Fortune 500 company…until I realised I really didn’t (and probably couldn’t if I’m honest).
I think Vaso is the culmination of all the angst and bravery and creativity bottled up in both of us. I’ve always wanted to create my own company - one that I could shape and grow and set the agenda and where I didn’t have to endure anyone else’s lack of vision. And I think Bar spent many years trying to figure out what she “should” be. Vaso is the perfect mix of creative ideas, genuine collaboration and pushing into something new and different. It’s a little bit random but exciting and risky - in a good way. I think she would’ve loved that.
So Vaso is both mine and Bar’s. She is my inspiration and my muse and I love her for it. I only hope I can do her indomitable spirit justice.
Bridgit
