World Class New Zealand Awards

To purchase tickets to this prestigious event, please email daz@verve.co.nz

About the Awards

The World Class New Zealand Awards recognise innovators, business people and entrepreneurs who make an outstanding contribution to New Zealand's growth, development and global reputation. Established in 2003, the Awards are one of New Zealand's most prestigious and significant honours.

Date:

6pm, Thursday 23 May

Location:

The Langham,
83 Symonds Street
Auckland

Tickets:

Individual - $285.00 (plus GST)
Table of ten - $2600.00 (plus GST)
If you have any further questions, please email daz@verve.co.nz

About the night:

The 2013 World Class New Zealand Awards black-tie gala dinner will be held on Thursday 23 May at the Langham, Auckland. This will be a truly spectacular event, and a golden opportunity to meet and interact with New Zealand's top business people, entrepreneurs and political leaders.

Doug Cleverly
Life Sciences

Dr Doug Cleverly is a self-confessed "hair-on-fire-type" - happiest when the sparks fly as science meets commerce. With a rare mix of talents in research and business, he has built an international enterprise in healthcare products for creatures great and small - from cattle to kittens. Argenta is the world's first contract research and manufacturing company dedicated to animal health, with a rapidly rising share of the global market. Since starting up in 2006, the company now exports to 40 countries and has two subsidiaries in its key United States market.

Geraldine McBride
Information and Communications

Geraldine McBride is a global expert in corporate evolution. A zoology major from Wellington, she has taken into the information business her grasp of the natural world's imperative: adapt or die. Geraldine has risen to key roles in one of the world's largest business software companies, SAP, by setting audacious goals and then exceeding them. In postings for IT giants on every continent bar Antarctica, her transformational leadership has repeatedly delivered exceptional results. Geraldine is now at work co-founding a global next-generation technology business from New Zealand.

Sean Simpson
Science, Technology and Academia

Dr Sean Simpson is on the verge of a breakthrough in sustainable fuels - with a bit of biotech wizardry that's a little like brewing beer. His company, LanzaTech, creates microbes that convert waste gases into fuels and valuable chemicals. It is in the final stages of commercialising a microbe that ferments ethanol from the carbon monoxide from steel mills, and is working on other products including jet fuel. Sean is now at work on a new microscopic sensation - a microbe that consumes the key greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.

Rob Fyfe
New Thinking

Rob Fyfe's reputation rests on a tricky manoeuvre - the execution of a 180-degree turn in the fortunes of Air New Zealand. Rob reimagined a small airline as a nimble one, able to survive an era of rocketing fuel prices and plummeting economies. He turned the tyranny of distance into a victory for innovation in everything from fuel efficiency to seat design. Over Rob's seven-year tenure as CEO, as many other airlines failed, our national carrier consistently made a profit, and was twice named the best airline in the world.

Annabel Langbein
Creative

Annabel Langbein is on the threshold of what she calls "world domination by spatula". Her best-selling books and television series Annabel Langbein The Free Range Cook are carrying her brand of fresh, delicious and accessible food around the planet. They demonstrate her philosophy that cooking can feed your life, not just your appetite, and they're set against the stunning backdrop of her family's Lake Wanaka cabin. Annabel has so far written 19 cookbooks, which have sold a total of around two million copies worldwide, and her television show has screened in 84 countries.

Bill Buckley CNZM
Manufacturing, Design and Innovation

Bill Buckley's imprint is somewhere inside almost every computer, smartphone and digital appliance you own. He is the sole owner of Buckley Systems Limited - the maker of the electromagnets used to create around 90 per cent of the world's silicon chips. He also dominates the global market for the precision electromagnets used in everything from carbon dating to cancer therapy. Renowned in the hi-tech world as a laid-back engineering genius, he's known to many Kiwis only as the devoted promoter and benefactor of the Western Springs speedway track.

Judith Hanratty CVO OBE
Investment and Business

Judith Hanratty is a game-changer - one of the most influential people in modern corporate governance. As Company Secretary at British Petroleum Group (BP) in the United Kingdom, she pioneered models for corporate governance and social responsibility, and in the insurance industry she evolved new ways of financing cover for rare and severe risks. She is now Chairman of the Commonwealth Education Trust, which she rescued and reinvented. She is also a former New Zealand golf international who has maintained a single-figure handicap throughout her business career.