Working with you and for you
One Thursday evening, two women met by chance at Vogelmorn Precinct in Wellington. They hit it off, chatted for 20 minutes, exchanged numbers, and a few months later opened a small film festival at Vogelmorn. A few years later, after multiple art projects and professional jobs together, these women teamed up, joining forces to open a company doing for others what they do best: build highly functional, connected, and healthy work environments. That’s us, Alsu and Ruth. Nice to meet you. We’d love to share a little more about us, find out about you, and how we can help you.
Our Team
Ruth
Grew up in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and has lived in the middle east, former Soviet Union, Te Waka o Maui, before coming to Te Whanganui-a-Tara over a decade ago. Ruth has always had different sides to her work. Her PhD in policy implementation built a foundation of system thinking and big picture perspective. But one of Ruth’s earliest roles was as a forest firefighter, working in pressure situations with teams of people on work that needed to be done precisely to avoid injury to life and limb. This work harnessed her ability to quickly assess a situation, identify pathways forward and work constructively with others to get the job done. This passion for momentum is part of Ruth’s approach in all she does (she has since worked in ski instructing, teaching, aged-care, academia, local government, public sector, and not-for-profits). She can bring this bias-towards-action to your organisation, to help you build momentum towards your key goals. Beyond paid work, Ruth is an artist, a jock, and a lover of nature.
Co-Founder
Alsu was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russia, lived in London, UK, Nelson and has Te Whanganui-a-Tara as her home for the last ten years. She comes from the Tatar ethnicity, and all her ancestors lived within a hundred kilometres in the valley of Volga river. She holds a PhD in cognitive linguistics, spent half of her career being an adviser to senior leaders, and the other half being a senior leader herself. She worked in a wild variety of industries and environments, from art galleries to courts, from an investment company to private aviation, to higher education, to startup. This extremely diverse experience and absolute passion for communication and people relationships allows her to step away from the weeds of your specific operational context and see the more generic patterns and opportunities that will make a difference.
Co-Founder