Gala Dinner Speeches 2019: Te Huia Painora-Hepi, BNZ
Tāne lying flat
Tāne crawling
Tāne with straight back
Tāne with bent back
Tāne the originator of light
Tāne who bested the sky
Who uplifted the heavens
Bringing forth the world of light
Light, light, a world of light
The breath of Life
To those who have passed
Farewell
To those who are here today
Welcome
To Angie Mentis the CEO of BNZ
And to Kate Daly the Chief People Officer
Warm greetings to you both
To the hard workers of TupuToa
Greetings to you
To all the family, the partners, my friends who have gathered here
I welcome you all
I want to share a proverb with you. He manako te kōura i kore ai - basically what that means is, the wish for a crayfish wont produce one. And by looking at the menu today, I wasn't wishing hard enough.
Kia ora, my name is Te Huia. I come from Aotearoa. I study psychology and social science at AUT and I interned at BNZ; working within business banking. Everybody asks, what does psychology have to do with banking? Well, unfortunately I can't answer that.
I came into this internship reluctantly and pretty nervous about working in a corporate environment. It's something quite different to me, my background, my Māoritanga and what I even study. I thought the corporate world would be like the TV show 'Suits' with a little less glam and a little less whisky; I was right about the glam and the whisky.
But to be honest, BNZ, felt a lot more welcome and comforting than I expected. I was able to walk around while being brown, even started to teach a little bit of Te Reo Māori while I was at it. A big part of what made this internship experience so good was having a really great cohort with me at BNZ, and I want to shout out to TupuToa for creating that opportunity, that network of bringing our Māori & Pasifika students, our interns, together.
Banking wasn't the first thing on my list. But I thought it's a new opportunity, a new challenge, and experience. I thought to myself, I'll get in there, I'll do the mahi, get a good character reference and something to pretty up my CV. I got a little bit more than I bargained for, with BNZ offering me a position with them while I continue my studies. It's a pretty humbling experience and I just want to acknowledge everybody else that took the opportunity to do this internship, congratulations to you all - you're making moves in this world.
Well, coming back to my proverb: He manako te kōura i kore ai - the wish for a crayfish won't produce one, but put in the mahi and you'll make the most of everything that you do.
Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
