'Don't call me Eliza'
Young pole vault star forging her own path
When budding gymnast Olivia McTaggart was diagnosed with two pars stress fractures in her back, her sports doctor suggested chess. She was 14 and sport was her world – find an alternative and we’ll manage it. The doctor relented.
‘‘He said ‘it’s easier to fix a broken back than it is to fix a broken spirit’.’’
These days it’s easy to spot McTaggart in an airport – her shoulder will be slung with a tube more than three metres long, trying not to skittle other travellers with sudden turns. Transporting the tools of pole vaulting is one of her new sport’s challenges, the 17-year-old says.
Despite picking up vaulting only three years ago, she’s being touted as the next Eliza McCartney, having broken the Olympic bronze medallist’s schoolgirl record twice in just over a year.
Pole vaulting is, McTaggart admits, a little bit terrifying. The pole can reject you, sending you crashing back to the ground. It can snap, as it did once in Australia – the force vibrated through her hands, but she emerged uninjured. The launch requires 100 per cent commitment, but everyone experiences doubt, where the brain blocks the body and you run through without planting the pole.
But the perfect vault is something else – an upright run, legs cycling underneath, high arms for takeoff, the jump a free-flowing wave of movement that culminates in a handstand on top of a pole. There’s the adrenalin, going upside down and the sheer technicality.
‘‘That feeling off the top of a pole when you’re going over the bar is so amazing and it’s so hard to explain.’’
McTaggart is training six days a week in the hope of making the Commonwealth Games team, alongside her brother Cameron, who has already been selected for weightlifting. She thrives on pressure, having won a junior competition in Germany in 2017, when she juggled correspondence school with training. In 2018 she will concentrate solely on vaulting.
Her personal best of 4.4m is the Kiwi team’s B qualifying standard. The A standard is 18cm higher.
Based in Auckland, McTaggart shares a coach with McCartney and appreciates the huge boost she’s given the sport. But while an Olympic medal is her ultimate goal, she doesn’t want to be the next Eliza.
‘‘I sort of want to be my own person. It’s cool to be compared to someone who is so big, but we are very different people so it’s very weird.’’
MITCH JAMES Musician
When he first saw the email he suspected it was fake – the Sony signature looked suspiciously low-resolution. After three years of gigging to half-empty houses and sleeping rough, muso Mitch James was losing faith in the fairytale ending.
But when he and the Kiwi owner of the Munich hostel where he was staying internet-stalked the email’s author they realised it was legit. James – now 22 – had finally achieved his goal of getting signed by a major record label.
His first single was released in December 2016. Now, he’s talking from Melbourne, where he’s been writing. With his debut album due out in early 2018 his self-belief seems unshakeable. Here comes the next Ed Sheeran. ‘‘It’s just world-class and I’m just super-excited to see how people react to it and how people react to the stories,’’ James says. ‘‘The most real moment of my life will be the moment where it’s put out into the world.’’
This from the shy Auckland kid who spent lunchtimes in school rehearsal rooms teaching himself guitar, because he had no mates to hang with. The anxious teen too timid to play to others for two years, until the age of about 16, and even then it felt like the equivalent of playing Wembley Stadium. The guy who cleaned cars to fund a one-way ticket to London and the X-Factor fairytale orbit to stardom he was sure would follow.
The self-belief came from seeing Ed Sheeran live at 16 and realising he could do that. And he’s never really lost it, despite three years of ups and downs – mostly downs – trying to make it in England and Europe.
The fairytale did come true, after a Sony NZ executive saw Facebook videos James was posting – mash-ups of cover songs.
In five years, James expects to be playing big global shows and shifting from pop to a more unique sound.
‘‘I feel like in five years’ time I’ll be a little older, a little bit happier and a little bit more successful.’’
BROOKE ROBERTS Sharesies co-founder and CEO
Conjure a modern women-in-business poster child and it would probably look a lot like Brooke Roberts.
Thirty, pregnant and CEO of a finance start-up, Roberts breaks most traditional female career taboos. Which is fitting, because breaking taboos is what her business is all about.
The Wellingtonian is one of seven cofounders of investment app startup Sharesies, which aims to transform sharemarket investing from Wolf of Wall
Street-scary to playful puppy.
With a $5 minimum buy-in it’s pitched at Generation Rent – a way for those priced out of the housing market to have their smashed avocado brunch and grow their wealth too.
‘‘The whole industry has made money so complicated and it shouldn’t be,’’ Roberts says.
Less than a year from launch, Sharesies has raised $2.5 million in startup capital and signed up 10,000 customers and $7m in investments.
From setting up Hawke’s Bay fashion shows as a schoolgirl for the Young Enterprise project, to studying finance and marketing, to learning Kiwi savings habits at Kiwibank, to understanding global business at Xero, Roberts was primed for this job.
Sharesies wasn’t her idea, though. Cofounder Sonya Williams had $50 to go out for dinner and wished she had a more productive way to spend it – like investing in small share parcels.
After nine months of customer research and undergoing Kiwibank’s Fintech accelerator programme, the Sharesies team decided this was the idea they’d been waiting for. Young Kiwis do want to invest, they’re just intimidated and shut out by financial institutions traditionally targeting only the wealthy few, Roberts says.
Roberts is due in January and hopes to spend her first three months learning to be a mum, before finding a flexible way to return to the job.
‘‘I can’t wait for the day when someone with a $20 investment portfolio can have a conversation with a person who has a $200,000 investment portfolio, and share investment strategies. No longer is it about elitism.’’
DR ANIRUDDHA CHATTERJEE Cancer researcher
If it wasn’t for cricket and Brendon McCullum, New Zealand might have lost out to London or the United States on a budding star of the scientific world.
Top Indian student Aniruddha Chatterjee knew New Zealand by its cricket stadiums. McCullum was playing for Chatterjee’s hometown of Kolkata in the Indian Premier League and came from Dunedin, so he figured it must be a good place.
The biotech/biochemistry/chemistry triple honours graduate was looking for a PhD project. New Zealand came up – an Otago University scholarship in the emerging field of epigenetics. Chatterjee doesn’t take the well-worn path – dismissing medicine and engineering as cliche. And he rates EQ over IQ, so when he warmed to supervisor Ian Morison he accepted the post.
His Indian friends thought he was mad and when he landed in this supposedly vibrant university town in November 2009, he had his own doubts. Christmas was spent in his office reading research papers.
‘‘I felt a bit depressed in the beginning to be honest. I thought, ‘this is not vibrant. Nothing is happening. No-one is here’.’’
The 33-year-old soon fell in love with the city and in 2017 was awarded a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship to study the epigenetics of metastasis, or the way cancer spreads to other organs.
It’s metastasised cancer that typically kills, rather than the initial tumour. Chatterjee’s research aims to unpick the epigenetic changes – the biological changes that switch genes on or off – that cause cancers to spread.
By studying single cells from both the primary tumour, the metastasised tumour and the intermediate stage of tumour cells floating in the blood, Chatterjee hopes to find what makes them different and to identify epigenetic signatures which could predict whether a cancer has a high risk of spreading and – eventually – whether it will respond to drugs.
Identifying patients who would respond to treatments such as Keytruda would save precious time and money.
‘‘It’s expensive and takes time. If you don’t respond by that time, it’s too late. If we can predict the likelihood of a response based on the epigenetic profile of the patient, then that can go a long way.’’
Chatterjee is starting with killer cancers like melanoma – on which he’s already done extensive research – and colorectal cancers.
Funding in New Zealand is a struggle – he probably would not have stayed without ongoing Cancer Institute funding. But it’s still possible to do world-class science through international collaborations (he’s currently teaching in Belgium and Italy).
Chatterjee loves New Zealand’s space and beauty and lifestyle. But he’s not a complete convert – he still supports India against the Black Caps.
MONIQUE FISO Pioneer of high end Ma¯ ori cuisine
Monday lunchtime – a young Monique Fiso unwraps her taro leftovers from Sunday lunch with her Samoan grandma. The other kids lean in: ‘‘Ooh, what’s that?’’
She was 10 but Fiso still remembers the shame. They’d just moved from ethnically diverse Porirua to Wellington’s white, middle-class suburb of Northland. Noone ate taro there.
Twenty years on, Fiso is drawing on the other, Ma¯ori half of her cultural heritage – and 71⁄2 years working in Michelin-starred New York restaurants – to present authentic Ma¯ori fine-dining through her Hiakai pop-up restaurants.
Set in tents amid New Zealand’s stunning scenery, with dishes starring Ma¯ori ingredients and cooked using traditional ha¯ngi and firepits, Fiso says Hiakai is truly authentic whereas previous Ma¯ori restaurant attempts have been basically English or French, with a weak Ma¯ori twist.
There’s also a book in the pipelines and she spent her 30th birthday on a Hollywood set filming with Netflix. Oops, can’t talk about that, but 2018 promises huge things.
Fiso’s childhood was dominated by KFC and Eagle Boys pizza, as her entrepreneurial parents Serena and Siuai set up their call centre business. But Fiso was always reading cookbooks and experimenting: feijoa ice cream (she figured just freezing milk would work); chocolate souffle. The smiles through gritted teeth of her sampling parents.
At 17, she quit school and begged chef Martin Bosley for a job, working and studying fulltime – class from 7am until 2pm then cheffing from 3pm until close. It was good training for New York’s Michelin star restaurants, where the pressure was indescribable. She was yelled at from go to whoa, thrown against the wall and did some yelling herself, before realising there were better ways.
She spent her last two years at
Kiwi Matt Lambert’s The Musket Room. People asked her what
New Zealand cuisine was. It got her thinking.
Burnt out and over New York, she returned home in 2015 and has been showcasing true Ma¯ori cuisine since. She’s had to set up her own supply lines – foraging for ingredients, finding a foodsafe supplier who can sell them back to her.
She’s won innovation awards and has big plans to set up immersive tourism ventures, such as jetboating up the Whanganui River to a pop-up restaurant, staying overnight and canoeing back.
She used to think a Michelin star was the most important thing in the world. Not any more.
‘‘Sometimes contributing to your culture is actually way more important than chasing a star that people will forget about 20 years from now.’’
DR DEBORAH RUSSELL New Labour Party MP
Bells to start the day and ring binders with coloured dividers setting out the day’s agenda – it’s like going back to school.
Having come from teaching at Massey University, tax expert Deborah Russell is struggling less than many new MPs to adapt to Parliament’s rhythm.
But as the new chairperson of Parliament’s environment select committee, she has already faced a steep learning curve.
At 51, ruby-haired Russell is aware time is short if she wants to make a difference. She’s blunt about her ministerial ambitions – revenue, to reflect her tax policy background.
But she realises 2018 will be about mastering the political process and navigating the smaller problems of her constituents, as the ‘‘nice white lady’’ MP in the multicultural Auckland electorate of New Lynn. That’s the part of the job currently giving her more sleepless nights.
‘‘This person came to see me about an immigration issue. Did I do the right thing there?’’
Born on a farm in Whangamomona,
Russell grew up around Taranaki. Her father left sharemilking to become an accountant.
She was a brainy, studious kid– debating and drama; Jane Austen and Tolkien. Everyone thought she should be a lawyer, so she followed her father into accounting. She stuck at it for five years, but became restless, returning to university to do a PhD – and then lecture – in philosophy at Massey.
With twins and an older daughter the workload was unmanageable, so she fell into a job at Inland Revenue, before returning to Massey to lecture on tax.
Where most eyes glaze over at the mention of tax, Russell calls it ‘‘the price of civilisation’’. It’s the perfect blend of big ideas and detailed design.
She’s even written a book on gaps in the system – the lack of a capital gains tax (CGT) being chief among them. She’s diplomatic, though, about Labour’s decision to drop its CGT policy before the election.
‘‘Politicians need to lead but you can’t get too far ahead of people. You’ve got to take people along with you. You’ve got to build a case.’’
A feminist since the age of 13, Russell will also advocate for abortion to be ‘‘administered under a medical model not a criminal model’’.
When school’s out, Russell can be found in her herb garden or watching Wonder Woman or the new Star Trek series at home with her girls.
FINN BILOUS Olympic free skier
Finn Bilous was eight when he saw his last full summer. He still had those scraggly blonde locks, but well before the moustache.
With an English Mum and American Dad, summers were about long northern hemisphere sojourns visiting relatives, usually with some skiing thrown in. Now it’s back-to-back winters as Bilous trains for the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. He’s chatting via scratchy internet in Monaco, in between competitions in Austria, Switzerland and France.
Brought up in Wanaka and the son of a heliski guide, Bilous was always going to be a snow baby. Now 18, he can’t remember his first time sandwiched between mum’s skis at Cardrona – he was only two at the time.
Bilous followed around his big brother Hank, learning his tricks and trying them out on the backyard trampoline.
Skiing rose to the top of several sports Bilous could have chosen to compete seriously in. He still fancies a Summer/ Winter Olympics double. Maybe in ping pong, he laughs. Or triathlon.
Having won New Zealand’s first ever Youth Winter Olympic medals in Norway in 2016, in the slopestyle and halfpipe categories, Bilous also qualified for both events in Pyong Cheang.
He’s chosen to focus just on slopestyle – that unique combination of aerial gymnastics and skate park-style rails.
Winning medals in Norway was surreal, but Bilous knows the Olympics will be a big step up.
If he can land his best run he reckons he’ll make the finals, and have a shot at a medal.
Having juggled school and skiing in 2016 and 2017, he’s just focusing on training in 2018.
It’s full-on – travelling to Europe then Colorado, skiing every day, with a couple of weeks of sunshine and mountainbiking back home in between. But a morning in Monaco helps him to appreciate the travelling life.
So far, the body is holding up – his worst injury was a 21-stitches gash in his leg from the backyard tramp.
Bilous sometimes misses summer, but then he remembers that would mean months without the thrill of a triple cork 1620 – that’s three flips and 31⁄2 full rotations.
‘‘There’s this amazing feeling when you hit the apex, a little moment right at the top of the air where it kind of feels weightless.’’ When she filed the final draft of her first novel, Annaleese Jochems went into mourning.
She dyed her hair blonde. It went orange. She cried a lot. It was a bad time.
The 23-year-old thinks it was the sense of godliness she was mourning. The same godliness she invoked as a child growing up on a Northland farm, choosing three favoured toys, then firing them for imagined failings and anointing a new crop.
‘‘I think I had a sense of mastery. This is a world where I’m in charge and I know everyone and I know exactly what’s going on in everyone’s head.’’
By the time the novel Baby came out in September, to rave reviews and an Eleanor Catton cover recommendation, she had moved on.
Baby was Jochems’ creative writing masters project and won her Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters Adam Prize in 2016. It charts the relationship between Cynthia and her gym instructor Anahera. They steal money to buy a boat and then strange things happen. It’s been described as dark, erotic and psychopathic. Jochems thinks it’s more dreamy than dark.
‘‘I just think of Cynthia as my fantasy self – what I would do if I were a braver, bolder sort of person.’’
Reality TV plays a starring role, and not by accident. Jochems is fascinated by its distorted world view and the fact people dismiss it as contrived.
‘‘No one ever looks at porn and says ‘it’s not real, they’re not really doing it, they’re doing it for the camera’ – because they are doing it. I feel like reality TV and porn are pretty much the same thing.’’
The life of an acclaimed debut author is not glamorous. Jochems has spent this year writing a new novel, while paying the rent by working at a rest home and then cafe. The $3000 Adam Prize is running out but the $5000 book advance should last seven months. Her mother buys her shoes.
The new novel is a romance crime mystery. She misses the input of a workshop full of people immersed in the novel’s world. She has big plans for it. Baby was rejected by 10 British publishers, with feedback that was ‘‘like being sucker-punched and pashed at the same time’’.
The next one will go global.
HAMISH WALKER New National MP
Pass Hamish Walker on the street and you’d probably peg him as the lawyer or accountant his cleancut, preppy look conveys. But his work history tells a different story.
The 33-year-old is a self-confessed high school dropout who desperately wanted to be a cop. A diagnosis of type1 diabetes at the age of 14 – and the six daily injections that went with it – put paid to that dream.
The new Clutha-Southland MP is a fan of charter schools as he thinks disengaged kids like him need alternative models. He wasn’t thick – he just wasn’t interested.
Walker ditched his last year of school in favour of crayfishing off Port Chalmers. The wet, cold, 16-18-hour days earned him carpal tunnel – a painful hand condition – and a real appreciation of hard yakka.
Unable to completely accept his ‘‘crushing’’ police rejection, Walker instead became a police jailer, reading rights and bringing food and smokes, and understanding that prisoners were people too.
At 22, he decided to go to university to study accounting, fetching and photographing rocks in 40 degree heat in the Western Australian mines for six months to fund his study. Walker’s grandfather started the Young Nats in Southland in the 1940s and his politics genes eventually switched on when he spent a year as finance officer on the student executive. On Sir John Key’s advice, he learnt the game running for a red seat – Dunedin South – in 2014.
After working as an accountant, building a property management business, refereeing first-class rugby and serving on Otago Rugby’s board, Walker this year replaced disgraced Clutha-Southland MP Todd Barclay. Asked if he has trust to rebuild, Walker says his election majority would suggest not.
National Party leader Bill English’s old seat is true blue and Walker has long-term goals. But for now he’s content lobbying for a better deal for his sprawling electorate, which spans the development pressures of urban mecca Queenstown, and rural areas crying out for growth.
ALEX McNEILL Semiconductor PhD researcher
You’ve probably never heard of it but chances are it’s never far from your thumb. Indium tin oxide is a semiconductor which reacts when your digit hits your smartphone’s touch screen, sending an electrical signal to the phone to tell it what you’ve done. It’s also used in solar panels. But indium is expensive and scarce.
Canterbury University chemistry PhD researcher Alex McNeill has been investigating an alternative – zinc oxide. It’s cheap and abundant and has similar properties – it’s transparent and a semiconductor and less toxic to the environment.
There’s only one problem – water and oxygen in the air stick to its surface, rendering it useless.
‘‘Imagine if it was in a solar panel. So you’ve got all this unwanted garbage on the surface and that means the zinc oxide no longer behaves like these awesome semiconductors, it behaves more just like a metal. So it’s constantly conducting, which defeats the whole purpose.’’
McNeill’s research, which included a year on a Fulbright scholarship in Wisconsin, has been to investigate giving the zinc oxide a protective coat of molecular-scale paint.
The first attempt failed miserably, but with advice from a physicist friend, McNeill hit the jackpot – her molecular layer not only protected the zinc oxide, it actually made it more efficient. ‘‘It was an ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it worked’ kind of moment.’’
Growing up in Palmerston North, McNeill took on her parents’ twin interests – her mother taught music and her father lectured in environmental planning.
Coming from a girls’ school, there was never any stigma around science. But engineering at Canterbury wasn’t for her. Every Friday the lecturer played YouTube clips of engineering fails such as building collapses. A traumatised McNeill switched to chemistry.
She hopes to try her coated zinc oxide in devices, including a UV sensor. But to scale up to use it in touch screens or solar panels would require more specialised work.
Long-term, the Generation Zero environmental advocate would like to use her science in environmental policy – ‘‘lending expertise to huge decisions’’.