Multimillionaire businesswoman is back
Linda Jenkinson has made a fortune and now wants to build influence in different ways. reports.
Karoline Tuckey
After half a lifetime overseas building multimillion-dollar companies, Linda Jenkinson has moved back to New Zealand.
The Manawatu-born-and-bred entrepreneur caught the bug for business as a girl, following her father about as he worked on ventures.
She is behind the development of five businesses and a non-profit, WOW for Africa, and raised more than $300 million of investor backing. In 1998, she was the second Kiwi ever to float a company on the United States Nasdaq stock exchange and her current appointments include being a director for Air New Zealand.
Jenkinson grew up in Hiwinui, a farming area north of Palmerston North, and studied finance and computing at Massey University, before working as a management consultant in Wellington. She burst out of the southern hemisphere by borrowing and scraping together $115,000 to take an Ivy League MBA at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1991.
She co-founded her first business in Wellington, Dispatch Management Services, a courier company that used new software to improve dispatch productivity. They expanded it city by city internationally and it reached $230m in value.
Jenkinson has returned to the neighbourhood, buying property in Wellington.
For 2017 at least, this will be her base. She’ll divide her time between here and the US.
The move home follows the November sale of concierge services company John Paul to French hotel group Accor, for $150m.
Jenkinson says she has largely flown under the radar with Kiwis.
‘‘I’m pretty low key. I built a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar company and no-one cared back in New Zealand – no-one really even knew what that meant.
"I built a quarterof-a-billion-dollar company and noone cared back in New Zealand – noone really even knew what that meant." Linda Jenkinson
‘‘It’s very different now. New Zealand has done so much really in the last 15 years in the entrepreneurial industry and rejigged itself around innovation. People are starting to know what that means with [accounting software company] Xero.’’
In today’s world ‘‘you’re only a plane ride away from anywhere’’, so the problem of geographical distance by operating from New Zealand has lessened. However, relationship-building must happen face to face, she says.
Jenkinson says she was lucky to get a taste for the digital world and how it could be applied, from her degree.
She is excited about the ‘‘circular economy’’, incorporating environmentally friendly systems into the core of product and organisational design.
New projects are queued for after a summer break. A book is in the works about her formula for tackling challenges, she is seeking governance roles here and overseas, and has bought a high-rise in Wellington as a live-work base.
The top floor will be renovated into New York-style loft apartments. Office floors will house a number of small companies she is already connected to, with room for others still to be discovered. The ground floor provides warehouse space.
‘‘I’m really excited for my next phase of life. I don’t want to be in the day-to-day any more. I want to be building influence in different ways.
‘‘I’ve started a fund where I’m going to find companies in the circular economy and then take them global. I’m looking to work with five to 10 companies.’’
She looks forward to getting back to the ‘‘real essence’’ of New Zealand, immersing her daughter in it, and being closer to family.
‘‘I had a great upbringing. It was an all-inclusive experience on the farm, breeding racehorses, and the pony club.’’
‘‘Pig sticking, deer shooting, farms and shearing and adventure, that type of Kiwi adventurous upbringing where you create your own fun and then as you go out into the world, you realise it’s a bigger place to do things.’’