2018 – Present (Annually)
Anne initiated and Gaze funded Walmart CEO, Greg Foran, to New Zealand in November 2018, introducing Greg to TVNZ to complete a Sunday documentary and lead NZ companies. Greg is a home-grown Kiwi, pumping well above weight in the global arena, heading the largest retail company in the world. Greg attended Hillcrest High in Hamilton and is relatively unknown to the NZ corporate arena.
Anne is very aware that New Zealand’s Corporate Social Responsibility participation is one of the lowest in the OECD – Anne believes that this is greatly due to the lack of resources for due diligence and resource-poor to govern funding. Many corporate companies would definitely have the appetite to support great work in NZ, but lack trust and resources.
The consequence to this to this is the lack of funding for the fantastic work done by Sir Richard Faull and his Centre for Brain Research at Auckland University. Sir Richard spends over 70% of his day raising funds – away from his skill base in global development of Huntington’s Disease and Alzheimer’s. Anne was determined to deliver a corporate audience of CEOs to Sir Richard – and to do that, Anne identified that she had to deliver what the CEOs wanted, not what she wanted – they would turn up in droves hear the likes of Greg Foran. Greg was approached and immediately agreed to fly to NZ to support the CBR. The private-audience presentation was delivered on a Thursday afternoon, both Sir Richard Faull and Sir Ray Avery presented their ground-breaking work and Greg Foran presented keynote in the form of interviews.
Anne has long been friends with Michael Barnett, CO Business Chamber and asked Michael to partner the event and deliver the support needed, as well as his superb interview skills (Michael presents same at the Business Hall of Fame awards). The outcome of the presentation was met with huge appreciation by the CEOs in attendance and Sir Richard, Sir Ray delivered to an audience that had not evidenced their great work; Greg Foran was nationally showcased both at the event and on TVNZ, as well as met with leading NZ companies.
