Welcome to my 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, my own mum, Jill Arkley, Toni Anne Glover, who is one of the geniuses behind the Kinloch Wilderness Retreat, entrepreneur, Nyssa Waters, author of F*ck Up Your Kids with Grace & Humour: The Truth About Parenting, Jacqlin Richards, the woman who leaves a trail of glitter wherever she goes, my sister Rochelle Moffitt and Naturopathic Sleep Specialist, Managing Director and Founder, Kirsten Taylor
This week I talk to PH Digital CEO and partner Christine Kearney.
For my sister to say someone is exceptional is usually a sign that they are not of this world. As someone who is constantly surrounded by impressive people, Rochelle has a pretty high bar. When she is genuinely captivated by someone, they are very quickly presented to our family group chat and their story shared so that we can all bask in the success story of their life.
Christine was one of those people who immediately got my attention, particularly when Rochelle told me that Christine’s mum had essentially taken her and her siblings in the middle of the night and brought them to New Zealand for safety.
I have always had an interest in stories like this, of incredible women who risk so much for the chance at a better and safer existence for their babies. It is something I have found ever present in a lot of the work I do with World Vision and some of the Refuges I have had the privilege of meeting. There is something about a mother making an enormous decision in the face of uncertainty, knowing that whatever happens next, she is doing it because she believes there has to be something better on the other side. So while the story itself sounded incredible, it was actually the what happened next part that really made me want to connect with Christine and drink in all the goodness I could.
Christine was nine years old when she arrived in New Zealand, and when I ask her what she remembers most vividly about that transition, her answer isn’t what I expected. She remembers feeling incredibly lonely. They had very little time to prepare for the move and suddenly she was navigating an entirely new life in a country where she knew no one, starting a new school, making new friends and trying to find her place completely estranged from everything she knew. She also remembers experiencing terrible insomnia for the first time, lying awake until the early hours of the morning as a very young girl, trying to process everything that had happened and feeling lost, insecure, scared and alone.
I think there is something important in hearing that part of the story. When we hear that a child has been taken somewhere for safety, it is easy to imagine the arrival as the happy ending. Safe. New Zealand. New beginning. But Christine was nine. She didn’t have the perspective of an adult who understood why the decision had been made. She was simply a little girl who had suddenly lost everything familiar, and had to figure out how to exist in a completely new world.
And yet, somehow, that little girl became Christine.
When I ask her what she thinks she inherited from her mum, she talks about gratitude. Her mum, she says, has always had a tendency to focus on the positive and remind her children that even in moments of real adversity, there is always something to be grateful for. She also taught Christine to reframe the things she was afraid of. Instead of thinking, “I have to do this presentation,” she would encourage her to think, “I get to do this presentation.” It is such a small shift, but somehow it changes everything. Suddenly something that feels like a burden becomes an opportunity, and something you are dreading becomes something you are lucky enough to experience.
Christine has tried to carry that mindset with her throughout her life. It isn’t always easy, she admits, but when things get tough she tries to focus on all the incredible things and opportunities she does have rather than allowing the negative parts of a situation to consume her. Listening to her talk about this, I started to understand that perhaps her optimism isn’t really optimism in the traditional sense. It feels more like perspective that has been hard earned. I needed that reminder too as I feel like I am in a season of overwhelm like most at the moment so that adjustment to, “I get to do this” or how lucky am I that I have this kind of responsibility etc is a good reframe for me.
When I ask whether adversity made her more ambitious or more resilient, she doesn’t hesitate. Christine tells me that it made her decide at a very early age that she simply wasn’t going to fail. She was going to work as hard as she possibly could and give herself every opportunity to change her life and, hopefully, her family’s life too. “Come hell or high water, I was not going to reach adulthood and find myself struggling or suffering in the same way.” I find that sentence fascinating because ambition can come from so many different places, and in Christine’s case it seems to have begun with a little girl deciding that her future was going to look different from her past.
Perhaps that is also where her willingness to take risks comes from. One of my favourite stories about Christine is the fact that she famously wrote to The Ritz and essentially pitched herself into a job she wasn’t technically qualified for. I love this because most of us would probably see the opportunity, decide we weren’t qualified, find another reason why it wouldn’t work and then move on with our lives. Christine seems to have a slightly different approach. She grew up in an environment where there was a lot of struggle and hardship, but she had also witnessed something that seemed almost impossible happen right in front of her. How does a single mother with no money move three children across the world with almost no notice and rebuild an entire life? She had watched her mum do exactly that.
So perhaps writing a letter and asking for a job didn’t feel like such a huge risk. “What is the worst that could happen?” she asks. She had already lived through some incredibly difficult situations, so pitching herself for a job she may or may not get didn’t feel particularly terrifying. “The worst outcome was that they didn’t reply, and I had certainly lived through worse than that.” Some of the best things that have happened to Christine have come from exactly this kind of behaviour, going out on a limb, talking to someone, building a relationship, writing a letter or simply taking a chance. As she puts it, “You can’t sit back and wait for life to happen to you. You have to create your own opportunities in this world.”
That mentality seems to have followed her throughout her career. When I ask whether confidence comes before action or because of action, she tells me that in her experience, confidence definitely comes because of action. She talks about having a plan, being organised, knowing exactly what she needs to do and then doing it consistently. You don’t need to feel completely confident before you start. Often, the confidence comes from taking action, seeing yourself make progress and proving to yourself that you can actually do it. I think this is such an important lesson, particularly in business, because we spend so much time waiting for that magical moment when we finally feel ready.
Christine tells me that almost every major step up in her career happened before she felt completely ready. She has always been prepared for the opportunity, but she has never felt entirely ready for it, and she actually thinks that is a good thing. There should be some element of fear and challenge when you take on a bigger role because it means you are learning and growing. At the same time, she is very clear that there is a difference between feeling stretched and genuinely not being ready. There is something incredibly self aware about understanding the difference. Some fear means you are growing, but if you are completely out of your depth, perhaps the timing simply isn’t right.
Christine has very high standards for herself, and when I ask where they come from, she tells me it comes back to not wanting to fail. She knows what she wants to achieve and she is relentless about getting there. “If you want to do something exceptional, you have to be prepared to hold yourself to an exceptional standard.” Again, I can imagine my sister reading this and nodding furiously in agreement.
But what I find particularly interesting about Christine is that despite all of that ambition, her definition of success has changed dramatically as she has got older. When she was younger and very career focused, success was much more about material things. Having a house, having a nice car and being able to buy the things she thought she wanted. Now she tells me that material things don’t fulfil her in the way she once thought they would. She can work incredibly hard, earn a certain amount of money and buy something she wanted, but it never gives her the level of fulfilment she expected.
What fulfils her now is knowing that she is contributing positively to the lives of the people in her business and through the work they do for their clients at PH Digital. She has the opportunity to help people build careers, create financial security, grow their confidence and access opportunities they may not otherwise have had. That is something she takes incredibly seriously. Health has also become a huge part of how she defines success, because as she puts it, you can’t do what you love if you’re not healthy. As I was writing this I was eating the remains of a burger and the irony is not lost on me. I will make better choices tomorrow… consider me inspired.
Success is also being able to spend time with her family, support them financially and create new memories together. Her family has moved through a lot of painful things, so being able to build something different together now means a great deal to her. None of those things are particularly material, but they are the things that make her feel the most fulfilled. I think there is something beautiful about watching someone’s definition of success evolve from what they can acquire to what they can contribute.
Perhaps that is why the work Christine does feels so connected to who she is. She has spent a huge part of her career walking into businesses that need to be rebuilt or transformed, and when I ask what attracts her to those challenges, she tells me it is the problem solving. She genuinely loves looking at a business, figuring out how to pull it apart, understanding what is really causing the problems and then putting it back together in a way that transforms the result. Having done it so many times throughout her career, she now feels genuinely confident that it is something she is good at.
There is also a much softer side to Christine that I find really lovely. When I ask when she feels most like herself, she doesn’t mention being a CEO or running a business or achieving anything professionally. She says she feels most like herself when she is with her nieces and nephews. She is incredibly close with them and loves that there are no expectations. She doesn’t have to be the CEO, the person making all the decisions or the one responsible for solving every problem. She can just be herself, and they love her exactly as she is.
I think that answer tells you a lot about her.
Because underneath all the ambition, all the standards and all the problem solving, there is someone who deeply values connection. Christine tells me that leading teams has taught her that people need purpose, belonging and to feel connected to what they are doing. The more meaning we can give people in their work, the better they perform. That is why she tries to be transparent with her team about every part of the business, where they are going, what they are working towards and how each person contributes to those goals. People want to understand why their work matters and feel that they are part of something.
It makes sense to me that belonging has become so important to her. Perhaps when you have experienced what it feels like to arrive somewhere and know absolutely no one, you develop a particular sensitivity to what it means to help other people find their place.
Christine has also developed a very different relationship with some of the pain in her past. We talked about forgiveness and how her feelings towards her father have changed as she has grown older, she tells me that making her own mistakes, often out of trauma or hurt, has given her a much greater understanding of his actions. “Hurt people hurt people.” She doesn’t say this to excuse what happened. Instead, she talks about how powerful it can be to choose forgiveness, understanding and empathy rather than holding onto anger or hatred. Another A-ha moment for me.
“I think this has been one of the real gifts of getting older. Realising that nobody is perfect, including ourselves.” Christine acknowledges that she has made big mistakes in her own life and that many of those mistakes have come from her own pain. There is something very freeing about being able to look at another person’s behaviour with more understanding without pretending that the hurt didn’t exist.
Her understanding of resilience has also changed. She thinks people often misunderstand what resilience actually is. Being resilient doesn’t mean something terrible happens and you simply carry on as though it hasn’t affected you. You can still feel hurt, disappointed, angry or overwhelmed. For Christine, resilience is being able to process those feelings, work through what has happened and eventually find your way back to your base level. It isn’t about never falling apart. It is about how you put yourself back together and find a way to keep moving forward.
That philosophy has probably been tested more than most people realise through her experience with endometriosis. Christine has spoken openly about living with the condition while also running businesses and maintaining a demanding career. She describes periods of pain, medication, inflammation and exhaustion, and the incredibly difficult experience of needing to put all of that to one side because there never seemed to be time to stop.
She tells me there have been countless moments when she has wanted to give up, and that she has learned she is capable of pushing through an enormous amount. But she has also learned that being capable of pushing through does not mean she always should. There have been times when she has become completely burnt out mentally, physically and emotionally because she continued long after her body was telling her to stop. As she has got older, she has become better at recognising those patterns and understanding that sometimes the strongest thing you can do is actually listen.
And then I ask her what she is still hungry for.
Her answer is a family of her own, and in this moment I began to cry. I know that feeling well and in my journey to Coco I remember laying awake so many nights worrying if it would ever happen for me.
“It is the one thing she feels is missing from an otherwise incredibly privileged life.” She is deeply grateful for everything she has built, the experiences she has had and the relationships she has made, but she is ready for the next challenge of building a family while also navigating her career. She is passionate about her work and cannot see herself sacrificing that part of herself. She wants to be a working mother and show her child what women can achieve without having to compromise who they are or what matters to them.
That answer becomes even more poignant when I ask her which version of herself she would most like to sit down with for an hour. She chooses the most broken version of herself as a small child.
Christine tells me that having nieces has made her look at them at certain ages and realise that she was once that little girl too. The difference is that, in her experience, she often felt scared and alone. If she could go back, she would tell that little girl that everything is going to be okay. She would tell her that she should never have had to go through those things, but that one day she would look back and understand that those experiences had shaped the person she became. And then she tells me that having a little girl of her own one day would be incredibly healing. A little girl who looks just like her, but a different life, a better life.
That sentence stayed with me. Because suddenly the whole story comes full circle.
The little girl who was taken across the world in the middle of the night for safety. The little girl who arrived in New Zealand knowing no one and spent nights awake trying to process a life she didn’t understand. The little girl who watched her mother somehow rebuild everything from scratch and decided that she was never going to fail.
Then came the woman who wrote to The Ritz and created an opportunity for herself. The woman who built an extraordinary career, learned to lead people, transformed businesses and created opportunities for others. The woman who has learned forgiveness, who has learned to recognise the difference between resilience and simply pushing yourself into the ground, and who now defines success through health, family, purpose and the positive impact she can have on other people’s lives.
I think that is what makes Christine so interesting to me. It isn’t simply that she became successful. It is what she chose to do with everything that happened to her. She didn’t get to choose the circumstances she was born into. She didn’t get to choose the things that happened to her childhood or the uncertainty that followed her to New Zealand. But she has spent her life choosing what happens next.
Maybe that is what exceptional people actually do. They don’t necessarily have exceptional beginnings. Sometimes they have incredibly difficult ones. They simply become very good at deciding what they are going to build from them. And I think that is why Rochelle was so quick to put Christine in our family group chat.
Because once you hear her story, you can’t help but want to know what happens next. And if the little girl who arrived in New Zealand scared and alone can grow into the woman sitting at the helm of an incredible career, creating opportunities for other people and still dreaming about the family she hopes to build, I have a feeling Christine’s story is nowhere near finished.
There is still plenty more goodness to drink in.
Love Kim
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