Sina Wendt-Moore
The Art of Leadership
Story by - Sonya Bloomfield
With a beautiful smile and a gentle voice Sina has an ability to draw you in with conversation that both stimulates your thinking and your views. One where you feel like you don’t have to defend your viewpoints, they just are what they are. But you leave the conversation thinking more about why you have those viewpoints and how you make decisions. She is subtle and influential in a very good way.
Sina Wendt-Moore is the CEO of Leadership NZ. It’s an organisation that has been developing and enhancing leadership in New Zealand for over a decade. Her own journey to leadership began as a precocious, outgoing, inquisitive and curious little girl growing up in Samoa.
Sina’s father is Samoan and grew up in a very large family in Samoa. Sina’s mother is British born, and came out to New Zealand as a baby with her parents post WWII. Sina’s parents met at Ardmore Teachers Training College.
At the time (1950’s) mixed-marriages in New Zealand were frowned upon, and Sina’s grandparents did not approve of the relationship. At the end of their teaching degrees they wanted to go back to Samoa but without her parents blessing her mother had to go to court get permission to marry. Sina didn’t meet her maternal grandparents until she was five, when she travelled to New Zealand for the first time with her mother and siblings.
Never having been overseas Sina’s mother landed in Samoa and Sina reflects that must have been a big culture shock for her and admires her mother’s strength and willingness to learn the Samoan language and understand the culture.
That was the landscape they started in.
It was an exciting time in Samoa in the early 60’s as it was not long after independence and those that had been sent away for an education were coming back in a time where there were lots of opportunities. Sina’s father was a teacher and within a year or two he was a principal of the leading government secondary school at age 25. His peers, uncles and brothers played a key role in the country’s development post independence. Leadership ran in the blood.
“I remember being in this place that was magnificent. It was a really positive time and in a society where there was one set of rules, it was simple. My grandfather’s house was always busy with friends and family. Apia was wonderful place to grow up, and I have many fond memories of a childhood filled with adventures, and a loving supportive family.”
At seventeen Sina made her own journey to New Zealand under a bi-lateral aid scholarship. With both of her parent being teachers, Sina wanted to do something different so she chose a law degree. In order to go to university Sina had to do 7th form and was sent to Nelson Girls College. She had a fun year and then moved to Christchurch to do her law degree.
With all this freedom at her fingertips, Sina’s first few years at university were a fun but harsh lesson in growing up. She’d met her future husband Johnny and was having a great social life but she wasn’t enjoying law and she ended up losing her scholarship. She was out on her own and had to get part-time jobs to support herself. She refocused her studies and when Johnny got a job in Wellington she transferred to Victoria and finished her double degree in sociology and political science.
It was only natural with a number of her family in public service that that was where she was also headed. But a chance holiday admin job at Yellow Pages saw her go in a very different direction. At the end of her contract she was offered a sales rep role.
It was the best decision she ever made.
She spent the next couple of years travelling around the country learning about all manner of businesses. The money was great and she would travel through the week and go out on the weekends. No kids, double income, life was good.
It was also changing times; the business went from being paper based to the introduction of computers.
“I got the chance to do some really creative and interesting things over those seven years. I was having fun. They needed someone to help set up the learning and development team, so I went and did that. One project morphed into the next, I had a new job every year and was now leading teams.”
Change meant a move to Auckland and in the middle a new software launch Sina had her first baby Isabella. It wasn’t great timing she took eight weeks off to have her baby and then carried on with the project juggling with the help of a nanny. “It was crazy, but somehow I managed”.
Because of her Samoan heritage and experience Sina was asked to take the Yellow Pages project to Samoa. With her second baby Ashley born she took her children, nanny and a sales team to Samoa. She found it fascinating to see how it played out.
“How do I go home after leaving as a young seventeen year old?”
It was a challenging time for her culturally and she learnt a lot. By this stage she was not yet thirty so from a Samoan perspective she was still young and dealing with senior ministers and business owners.
Telecom Directories was very significant in her development.
After a while work had begun to get a bit predictable and she wanted to spend more time with the kids. There was no real flexibility for working mums at that time so she left and spent the next three years at home.
Never a dull moment in Sina’s life she then threw herself into her children and their education. Sina set up the West Auckland Montessori Education Trust. With her education in her blood she wanted something different for her children. Somewhere where they would learn to form their own opinions and learn how to help themselves rather than the more traditional way of learning.
Over the next 10 years, Sina helped establish and lead the first integrated Montessori primary school units, and contributed to the national Montessori Association and development of a Montessori primary teaching qualification.
This was her first foray into governance and board work and she chaired the trust until the kids left primary school.
Her next few roles saw her work across the education sector, and other leadership and board roles.
During the early 2000’s she got a call out of the blue and was asked to interview for a board role for a new Pacific Broadcasting Network. Not knowing anything about broadcasting and not really having much experience in the broader Pacific community she wasn’t sure if she was the right person but they talked her into applying as they wanted someone with her business experience.
“That was amazing. That was a sliding doors moment.”
I can see how Sina’s natural curiosity and desire to engineer and improve things takes her down pathways that don’t look straightforward. Her open mindedness to try new things has created some amazing opportunities to stretch and learn.
“It was a great opportunity to move things in the Pacific space and work in a cross cultural environment. I was absolutely terrified but when I thought it through, I knew I had all the components for the role – leadership, business and organisational development skills and an appetite for change - I just didn’t have the broadcasting experience but there were plenty of others who did.”
Sina and her team built the NiuFM network operations from the ground up and when the CEO role became available this was the first time in her career that she proactively sought out the opportunity.
It was an extremely complex role they took it from government pilot project phase through to baseline-funded public broadcasting service. She learnt so much about herself, the Pacific community, and about politics both at a government and community level.
It was an amazing time. It was her MBA in practice and it taught her that you really can do social good and still make money.
After all this strategic change work Sina tool time out to review what she wanted to do next. Having completed the LeadershipNZ programme, she realized how much she relished developing others, and began mentoring for YWCA and also worked with the First Foundation. Staying on as a volunteer for Leadership NZ she eventually ended up on the board.
Sina became CEO of Leadership NZ a couple of years ago and really values the opportunity to make a contribution by building leadership in others. She is passionate about people and leadership and how we can help impact the world on a larger scale. Working with senior leaders and hearing their different ideas inspires her and she enjoys helping them to enable younger people and the communities they operate in.
Sina recently celebrated reaching 50 years of age, and 25 years of being married to Johnny, and has started to think about where to in the next 50 years! The kids are no longer kids anymore and they have their own careers so she and Johnny are freer to think beyond New Zealand. The world beckons and recent travels overseas have sparked a call to travel and see more, and to think about opportunities to contribute in different places.
She has learnt a lot about her own tolerance and balance and tries to make more time for friends and family and the simple things in life like just being home in the evenings to cook dinner.
Sina’s ability to engage at a deeper level to stimulate our thinking about how we can work together better and improve the world is incredible. I value our conversations and think that we are very lucky to have her influence and presence at a leadership level in New Zealand.
You can see more of Sina's work here.
