A Journey to Global Leadership

Why This Kōrero Matters

Kōrero — a conversation, a discussion.

For Māori and Pasifika professionals working globally, leadership is shaped by more than role or title. Mel's story is a reminder that cultural grounding and global ambition are not in tension — and that leading through relationship, service, and genuine care can carry someone all the way to the top of a global industry.

By centring a wahine Māori (Māori woman) CEO's own account of how she leads, this discussion reframed service and relationship as strengths of leadership at the highest levels, not qualities set aside to get there.

Reflection

What struck me most was the absence of distance between the CEO of a global company and the woman who still goes straight to the kitchen to check on her chefs. There was no evidence of a style adopted on the way up, or a persona built for scale — only a consistency, carried unaltered from wherever she began.

This extended to a tension many of us carry when we leave home: the sense that ambition, achievement, and a life built abroad might come at the cost of who we are or where we're from. Mel's account offered a different premise entirely. Cultural identity and global ambition were never presented as competing claims.

This was clearest in her response to a question on how Māori born and raised in the UK might contribute to Aotearoa from such distance. Her answer was direct: contribution is not contingent on proximity. Learning te reo (the Māori language), and choosing to live in a way that carries one's identity forward, is itself a form of contribution — wherever in the world that life is built.

It was notable, too, how widely this resonated across the room — Māori, Pasifika, and other New Zealanders alike recognised something of themselves in how Mel described leading, evidence that these values, however named, travel well beyond any one culture's ownership of them.

Kaupapa

This discussion brought together Claire Nesus (Ngāti Porou) and Mel Smith CBE (Ngāpuhi), Global CEO of ATG Entertainment, for an evening on leadership, identity, and what it means to lead at scale without losing where you're from.

Rather than a career retrospective, the conversation centred on how Mel leads — the instincts behind it, and the values she carries into rooms most of us will never stand in.

These reflections contribute to the wider Voices & Voyages kaupapa of uplifting culturally grounded leadership and visibility for Māori and Pasifika professionals navigating global spaces.

On the night

Guest

Mel Smith CBE

Facilitator

Claire Nesus

Discussion Highlights

"That's just how we do it"

Asked why she leads this way, Mel was clear: it's not a technique, it's just being Kiwi and Māori. Someone in the room put it plainly — is that leading through relationship, through connection, rather than through status? Her answer was an easy yes.

Valuing the frontline

Mel spoke about arriving at one of her venues and being greeted by a doorman who told her he'd worked there for nearly thirty years and had never once met a CEO. For her, that's the point: the people meeting the customers, doing the hardest jobs, are the ones who deserve the most respect and attention from a leader — not the other way around.

A woolly blanket

Mel described her connection to community — even now, twenty years on — as a woolly blanket: comforting, familiar, like family. And, she added honestly, sometimes a bit scratchy too. It's a fitting description of home from a distance: imperfect, but never something you'd trade.

You are already contributing

Asked how Māori born and raised in the UK might contribute back to Aotearoa from so far away, Mel's answer was clear and warm: learning te reo, living and working in a way that carries your identity with you — that is contributing. Distance doesn't lessen it.

Holding both

Mel spoke about the tension many in our Māori and Pasifika community will recognise — the sense that pursuing success, visibility, or scale might be read as stepping outside cultural expectation, especially back home. Her view was unflinching: you can't be responsible for how others feel about what you're achieving, and you can't let that responsibility become the reason you hold yourself back. Ambition and identity aren't in competition. Holding both, fully, is possible — and necessary.

Backing yourself

Through the Mokaraka Trust, Mel has met high-achieving young Māori women — exceptional students, full of potential — who don't believe they deserve their own success. Her ambition is a global cohort of Māori women CEOs who do.