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Posted in General Sophie Roberts Wins Future Leaders Challenge!

Date: 30 November 2021

30

Nov

Sophie Roberts Wins Future Leaders Challenge!

Congratulations Sophie for winning the ‘Future Leaders Challenge’ competition. 

The Future Leaders Challenge is a competition calling rangatahi across New Zealand to voice their opinion on gender issues and equality in Aotearoa.

Students’ were asked  to submit a short video imagining they were giving a speech to Parliament. In the video they could explain either:

  • an issue facing young women in Aotearoa New Zealand and the action they thought  Parliament could take to address it
  • or explain an action Parliamentarians could take to promote gender equality.

Sophie explains,

“I chose to discuss an issue facing young women over the country and what Parliament could do to solve it, being the lack of female's in senior leadership positions in business. I suggested the introduction of a scheme led by the Ministry for Women and the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment that trained a handful of young women across the country every year to be world class leaders. As this would need to be something long term in order to solve this issue, I suggested the scheme belong to a Cross-Party Parliamentary Group, as this would ensure its continuation regardless of a change of government. 

 My reasons for entering was as someone soon to be leaving school and entering into the workforce, I want to work within an environment where female leadership is utilized and represented within business, and what I saw in society currently was not a reflection of this. When I saw a post on google classroom from my business teacher advertising the competition, I knew it was the perfect forum to voice this opinion, in the hope it might create change. 

Winning in my category means that in March I will be lucky enough to travel down to Wellington to experience Parliament behind the scenes. As someone who would like to pursue law and politics as a career, this is an incredible opportunity to further my knowledge and get a first hand  experience of Parliament, as I have spent the past year studying it as part of my legal studies course.” 

We are very proud of you Sophie and have no doubt that one day you will realise your dreams. 

 

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