Kate Horton (Harington 2001-2002) wasn’t supposed to go to St Paul's Collegiate School; she planned to leave school at 16, but her father convinced her that furthering her education might be the making of her. He was right. Kate is now in her dream job and helps others to live their dream too. She is also part of the St Paul’s Collegians Oaks for Acorns Collegians Mentorship Programme. 

As a teenager, she was on her way to her current high school, and her dad made a surprising stop at St Paul’s to meet the headmaster. After an interview and a visit to the uniform shop, she started that very day. She was a little shocked by the swiftness, but Kate says, “Now with my 40-year-old brain, I am just so incredibly grateful”.

Kate enjoyed both the academic and social change at St Paul’s. “There were just 80 girls in Harington House, and we all just got on so well”, says Kate. Being a creative type, Kate joined the choir, orchestra, productions and photography.

On leaving school, Kate went to University in Canterbury, then to Teachers College in Hamilton, which led to work in the classroom at various primary schools for the next 11 years. After becoming a team leader, then an associate principal, she decided she didn’t know if the next step of being a principal was for her.

Instead, Kate found herself on a new path. She became involved with Kaahui Ako (Communities of Learning), supporting leadership mentoring across 19 North Hamilton schools. This opened the door to start her own business as a Professional Learning and Development Consultant in 2019. When Covid-19 hit, she quickly moved her work online, spending “nine hours a day on Zoom supporting team leaders and principals.”

She now co-runs New Zealand Lean Academy (NZLA) with her partner Rob, using LEAN methodology to minimise waste in processes, from waiting times to administration, and help businesses lift profitability while creating great workplaces.

Rob’s strength is the systems and processes in the business, and she says, “You can have the most incredible systems and processes in the world, but if you don’t have a team of people who are engaged and motivated, then you are not going to get your business off the ground. So, with Rob and me working together, we get to hit it all from both angles, which can be lots of fun”.

Kate has always been curious as to why people choose the jobs that they choose, and with New Zealand being such an incredible country to live in, it should equally be an incredible place to work. “Work-life balance is so important; we should not have jobs that we try to escape from so that we can go and live”.

She is passionate about helping business owners, often husband-and-wife teams, rediscover balance in both their work and personal lives. “It’s an incredible feeling to take a business to a place where people fall back in love with it again.” With 90% of New Zealand businesses closing before the five-year mark, she sees this support as vital.

One success story is Velobike in Cambridge, a husband-and-wife team producing world-class cycle components. With NZLA’s help to streamline operations and prepare for growth, they’ve expanded seamlessly and now supply Olympic teams worldwide.

Kate’s strongest memories of St Paul’s centre on her “hero,” Dr Kay Etheredge, who refused to let her “coast by” in Biology. Dr Etheredge set high standards and pushed her students to rise to them – a lesson Kate still applies in business today. “She didn’t dumb anything down; this is complex, and you will get it,” says Kate. That focus on maintaining standards continues to shape how Kate works with clients. Dr Etheredge taught her that you don’t lower your standards; people will come up to meet you. There is no room for excuses.

Kate’s message to her 18-year-old self would be, “Learn as much as you can about great communication as early as you can, never stop learning about it. Communication is key and will open doors. If you can have a great conversation with someone, if you can start to influence people to do things beyond what they think they are capable of, the world is your absolute oyster.”

For Kate, communication is at the heart of every business challenge — “if it isn’t the number one issue, it will be the second.” She believes people need to be spoken to in the way they best receive information, and this principle underpins her work.

Looking ahead, Kate is exploring several new directions: writing a book on communication in middle leadership, developing New Zealand-recognised qualifications in business improvement to strengthen skills in small and medium businesses, and even considering angel investing in start-ups. Kate hopes to get to a point where she can deliver her concepts and training in systems and processes to many businesses, employ staff and build a training school around it. “This really appeals to the teacher in me,” she says of her training work.

She has also joined the St Paul’s Collegians Oaks for Acorns Collegians Mentorship Programme, seeing it as a natural extension of the reciprocal support she already shares with fellow Collegians. Giving back to the school feels important to Kate, who says the investment her family made in sending her to St Paul’s was one she fully embraced – and one that continues to shape the way she contributes today. She is an example of “You get out of life what you put into it”.