Welcome to my new column, Pretty Interesting! Capsule has given me the opportunity to write about some truly epic humans I have met who march to the beat of their own drum and who have genuinely inspired me recently.
I feel oddly proud that I have mended my algorithm enough to no longer be force-fed a constant stream of negative news and collective trauma when I scroll. There is a privilege in protecting your mental health this way, even if it means remaining a little ignorant to certain things. And yet, if I am honest, a lot of feel good stories can lack the punch to really hold my attention. There is a strange duality in wanting something juicy and compelling without feeling like you are reading a glossy puff piece.
This column is my attempt to sit right in that tension – human, honest and a little sharp around the edges.
You can read previous columns – a chat with Kiwi writer/director Taylor Nixon, restauranter, Michael Dearth, writer/director Rachel Ross, Kim’s own mum, Jill Arkley and Toni Anne Glover, who is one of the geniuses behind the Kinloch Wilderness Retreat.
This week I managed to get an interview with one of the busiest women on the planet: Nyssa Waters.
When I started this Pretty Interesting column, it was with the intention of shining a light on epic humans in a raw, honest, non glossy way. The kind of people who were and are inspiring me. What I didn’t expect was to become so invested, so excited and so amazed by the things these people are doing that it would open entirely new tabs in my brain. Today’s chat with Nyssa was no different.
I was introduced to her by my sister, Rochelle, one of the most interesting people I know, but also one of the greatest connectors on the planet. She simply said, “How have you NOT met Nyssa?” So I reached out and she very kindly joined me on Zoom for a chat.
From everything Rochelle had told me, I expected to meet an AI powerhouse.
What I did not expect was to meet a woman talking about global expansion, Singapore tax structures and billion dollar possibilities one minute, then tearing up the next because her kids are getting used to her not being home.
That was the thing about speaking to Nyssa Waters. She exists in the duality. One minute she is explaining how her brain can build five businesses at once. The next she is wondering whether she is letting everyone down.
Honestly, I found it deeply comforting.
Nyssa is the CEO and Co-Founder of Possibl AI, an AI consulting company helping businesses navigate the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence. She is sharp, wildly intelligent, deeply future-focused and refreshingly honest about the chaos that comes with building big things while raising children.
She described herself to me as “a wrangler battling a whole lot of lions,” which honestly feels like the perfect summary of modern womanhood.
Throughout our conversation, I kept thinking: this is what happens when women stop trying to fit neatly into boxes.
Nyssa openly shared that she is autistic and ADHD, diagnosed later in life, like many women are. She spoke candidly about masking, struggling socially at times and feeling “too direct” for certain environments. But what fascinated me most was how clearly those same traits have become part of her brilliance.
While many people still approach AI with fear, Nyssa sees patterns, opportunities and possibility everywhere.
“I see the art of the possible in almost anything,” she told me.
And honestly, you can feel that energy around her. She is a get sh*t done kind of human. The sort of person who says yes first and figures the rest out later. The kind of woman who probably makes other people slightly nervous because her brain moves at lightning speed while the rest of us are still trying to finish our coffee.
At one point she described her brain as having, “a million tabs open with music playing at the same time.”
As someone who also operates somewhere between ambitious woman, overwhelmed mum and recovering perfectionist, I weirdly understood exactly what she meant.
There was something incredibly freeing about hearing her talk about how medication dulled what she now recognises as part of her magic. Not because medication is wrong, but because it made her realise that the very thing she had spent years trying to “manage” was also the thing allowing her to connect dots other people could not even see yet.
And yet, despite all the success, all the brilliance and all the disruption, the thread running underneath everything was motherhood. The airport tears. The guilt. The impossible balancing act so many women quietly carry.
“I feel like I’m always letting someone down,” she admitted to me.
I nearly cried with her because I think so many women know that exact feeling.
We are living in an era where women are finally being told we can have both. Career and family. Ambition and softness. Success and presence. But nobody really talks about the emotional cost of holding all those identities at once.
What struck me most about Nyssa was not that she is building companies across multiple countries or speaking on global AI stages. It was that underneath all of it, she still sounded like every mum I know. Trying. Caring. Questioning herself. Wanting to do a good job at all of it.
And maybe that is why women like her matter so much. Because she is not pretending to have perfectly colour coded balance. She is not selling some polished girl boss fantasy. She is messy and brilliant and exhausted and visionary all at once.
At one point I asked her what her brain would look like if she had to draw it.
“My wardrobe,” she laughed. “F**king messy.”
Honestly, same. Although I admit my room is very tidy… till you open the drawers and realise the clean is an illusion.
But somewhere inside that mess is innovation, curiosity, creativity and humanity. And maybe that is the future of AI too. Not robots replacing us, but technology giving us the chance to become more human again.
That was Nyssa’s hope anyway. That AI could eventually remove some of the endless admin, pressure and overload modern families carry so people could reconnect with each other, creativity and actual life. More conversations, more connection and maybe even a little less burnout.
I left our conversation feeling strangely hopeful. Not just about AI, but about women. About difference. About the possibility that the very things we once thought made us “too much” might actually be the thing that changes the world.
And also deeply reassured that even the women building global empires are still forgetting their coffee somewhere in the house.
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