THE HON 
MARGARET AUSTIN

The Hon Margaret Austin is no stranger to achievements, but ask her to name her biggest one and she stops 
in her tracks. This former teacher, founding member of the United New Zealand political party, former cabinet minister, co-founder of Osteoporosis New Zealand and one-time chairwoman of the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO has an impressive curriculum vitae.

“Nobody can underestimate the privilege of being in 
a decision-making position in the cabinet of a New Zealand government,” she says of her years as a member of parliament, Senior Government Whip (1987–89), Minister for Research, 
Science and Technology, Minister for Internal Affairs, Minister 
for Arts and Culture and Shadow Minister for Education.

At 55 Austin was diagnosed with osteoporosis. “It was suggested that we should have a society to increase awareness [of osteoporosis], so Christchurch geriatrician Dr Nigel Gilchrist and I set up the Canterbury Osteoporosis Society. Then I co-founded Osteoporosis New Zealand with Professor Ian Reid of the University of Auckland.”

Of her many achievements, Austin considers her current role as vice-president (Education, Public Awareness and Outreach) of the Royal Society of New Zealand, the country’s premier science establishment, to be the most significant post she has held. “I’d like to think I’m contributing to the portfolio of science, education and technology in New Zealand in this role,” she says.

MARK INGLIS

It’s 26 years since Mark Inglis was trapped in a snow cave on Aoraki/Mount Cook for 14 days. Inglis, then a successful 23-year-old mountain rescue guide, remembers the gamut of emotions that raced through his mind when he woke in hospital.

“I woke on Christmas Day, and that was by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I went from being a very fit young mountaineer in full control of my life to having both legs amputated just below the knee. It wasn’t so much that I was feeling sorry for myself because I’d had my legs cut off, but that I couldn’t do anything for myself,” he recalls.

His mountaineering philosophy and an insatiable appetite for challenge inspired Inglis to look beyond his injuries and rebuild his life. “Mountaineering is all about challenge. I’d been climbing since I was 12 years old, so I just saw [my injuries] as another challenge,” he says.

Inglis embarked on a new career as a microbiologist and winemaker, eventually returning to the mountains on artificial legs and becoming the first double amputee to reach Mount Everest’s summit.

“I see what happened to me as an opportunity to live life in a different way. It’s not a disability. It’s not an easier way, it’s a very tough way. New Zealand has so many resources and opportunities, so you do have the chance to live your life in a different way, whereas in many places, such as Nepal, where I am doing a lot of work with spinal patients, they don’t have that opportunity. I want to make the word ‘disability’ synonymous with the opportunity to live life in a different way.”

To achieve that goal, Inglis has established Limbs4All, a charity dedicated to helping amputees in developing countries.

limbs4all.com

MARK GUNTON

The chairman of the New Zealand Retail Property Group (NZRPG), Mark Gunton is adamant that his biggest success is his children. “They are first and foremost and always the most important thing I’ve ever had a hand in,” says the Auckland property developer.

His chairing of NZRPG evolved from his job as a West Auckland property developer. “We’ve grown from having B- and C-grade properties to having much more prestigious and larger properties around Auckland,” Gunton says, listing Auckland’s Milford, Highbury and Westgate shopping centres and Tauranga’s Fraser Cove as NZRPG properties.

In early 2007 Gunton launched another company, NZ Farm Co, to process the meat that he and one of his sons rear on their own South Island farm. “For too long farmers have beaten their chests and bemoaned the prices they’re getting for their beef and lamb,” he says, “so when my son decided to look after our farm I decided to take control of the entire process from pasture to palate.”

Gunton sees his biggest career achievement as staying in business. “To have set up a business, maintained it and grown it over the past 15 years and still be here today is huge,” he says. “The biggest challenge in it is also the biggest thrill: people. 
We’re in a recession now, but we have a great bunch of people here building a business that’s doing really well.”

MICHAEL RAWLENCE

Creating his own beautiful stationery is a dream come true for Michael Rawlence, a University of Manchester graduate and Eton-schooled Englishman who 
migrated to New Zealand.

Rawlence launched his stationery business in 2008 with Roxane Horton. Their collaboration happened through a chance meeting. “Roxane had heard that I’d worked in a British top-end stationery company and suggested the idea,” Rawlence recalls.

“With the internet and email, paper communication has been in limbo, but some people are fed up with the impersonalisation of the internet and email, however efficient they can be,” Rawlence says. “Not only is a well-written 
letter on beautiful paper in a lined and personalised envelope 
a lovely medium of communication, it can also be more powerful than email.”

Without a shopfront in which to display what Rawlence describes as “the Rolls-Royce of stationery”, contacts are key to their new business. So what makes “the Rolls-Royce of stationery”? The answer is envelopes lined with tissue in the client’s choice of colour; die-stamped (engraved) images and 
text; and a wide choice of “classic with a twist” fonts.

Auckland will be the biggest market for Rawlence and Horton Fine Stationers but the long-term plan is to take their stationery further afield.

rawlenceandhorton.com

JULIANNE 
LIEBECK

When Julianne Liebeck opened New Zealand’s first Mod’s Hair salon in Christchurch, she threw away the hairdressing rule book to which she had once aspired. “For my whole working life I’d been told to cut hair like paper, in a formulaic fashion that works for some people and not for others. Like a lot of stylists, I was disappointed because my clients weren’t always getting the results they wanted or expected,” she recalls.

“At Mod’s Hair we approach hair in the manner that works for the individual. It’s a completely different philosophy.”

Liebeck has never entered hairdressing competitions or gone down the path of easy marketing manoeuvres. Hers has been a quiet, hard-working approach that has seen her business grow from its inception five years ago to having an annual turnover in excess of NZ$4 million. This year she will open her first Mod’s Hair Paris salon on Australia’s Gold Coast.

Liebeck worked for Mod’s Hair Paris in Europe for seven years. She was part of the salon’s international education team in Athens before she returned home to New Zealand in 2000 and opened her own Mod’s Hair salon.

“There is very little education about cutting hair,” she says. “We’ve gone in the opposite direction, training our staff to work with the hair’s natural movement. Our business is incredibly successful because of that.”

modshair.co.nz

KESTON AND 
JEREMY MUIJS

From performance speedsuits to luxury yachts, New Zealand brothers Keston and Jeremy Muijs have the uncanny ability to turn a good idea into an exceptional business. For the past few years Keston and Jeremy have been travelling the world, spending time with companies who are in need of clever ideas, passion and energy to get their businesses off the ground.

An example of the Muijs’ handiwork is Orca, the performance speedsuit company. “Orca use to be one guy, Scott [former triathlon champion Scott Unsworth], selling speedsuits out of the back of his car,” they recall. “Scott was passionate about what he did but his business was like most businesses that can most often benefit from a fresh perspective.”

The brothers have just launched their own organic skincare range, Grown. “We started looking into this area a decade ago when a friend was diagnosed with cancer and was lamenting that she reacted to everything she put on her skin,” they recall.

“We look for opportunities where we can make a tangible difference. We research and question everything. We love finding the missing pieces to the puzzle to make the whole thing work.”

grown.net.au

JULIE HELSON

Life will change for New Zealand school children who are going without breakfast, lunch and shoes with the first New Zealand telethon in 15 years. Reviving the telethon with the “KidsCan Big Night In”, Aucklander Julie Helson aims to make a difference to the lives of the 42,000 New Zealand children living in poverty.

Disillusioned with working for other non-profit organisations, Helson founded the KidsCan Stand Tall Charitable Trust three years ago with Carl Sunderland. “I had worked for not-for-profit organisations for nine years and was increasingly disillusioned with where the money was going. I was raising a lot [of money] and not seeing a tangible impact,” Helson says. “I knew there was a huge problem with children in New Zealand missing out on the basics and things that most of us take for granted, which has a major impact on their ability to learn at school.”

Helson and Sunderland researched 80 low-decile schools around New Zealand and discovered that food, shoes and raincoats were the biggest needs of children officially living below the breadline. Since founding KidsCan, Helson has garnered the support of Adidas and Number 1 Shoes to enable children living in poverty to have shoes.

The “KidsCan Big Night In” telethon will be broadcast live for 21-and-a-half hours on TV3 from June 20 to 21.

kidscan.org.nz

TONY CHRISTIANSEN

When Tony Christiansen was nine a railway carriage crushed his legs; they were amputated.

“I think one of the challenges people face when this happens later in life is they want it to be the way it was. For me, I didn’t really have ‘the way it was’, so I didn’t have a lot that needed to change. So many people have things happen to them and they want things to be the way they were before. And that’s what makes it so hard for them – they don’t know how to accept change,” he says. “We like to make our own choices, we like to think we’re in control of life, but the reality is there are things that happen in our life that we have no control over. However, you do have control over what you do about it.”

Despite being told he would have to be institutionalised and wouldn’t live past the age of 20, Tauranga-based Christiansen has spent the 40 years since his accident packing as many experiences and successes into his life as possible. A father, grandfather, pilot, race car driver, best-selling author, businessman, qualified lifeguard, Olympic gold medallist and mountain climber, he recently became the fastest amputee when he attempted a (car racing) land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

“I believe in success. I believe it is not a crime to be successful. It’s a choice. A lot of people find it easier to be miserable than happy. I didn’t ask for what happened to me to happen, but it did happen, and I made the best of it.”

tonychristiansen.com