It was an evening to celebrate progress, as well as discuss what’s yet to be achieved, as 120 Kiwi women gathered at New Zealand House for our International Women’s Day event.

Run by the New Zealand Business Women’s Network and KEA, this year’s event shone a spotlight on Kiwi in sport, featuring a formidable panel of sportswomen to explore the IWD theme for 2022; #BreaktheBias.

With views of the London skyline as a backdrop, the audience was kept refreshed as they mingled, with beers from Wellington brewery Yeastie Boys and gin and tonics from Cardrona distillery. Kiwi themed nibbles prepared by Rhonda Scott of Escence catering were handed around before the panel discussion got underway.

Leadership coach and writer Mary Fenwick was our MC for the evening, steering the conversation between our panelists; Katie Sadleir, Rebecca Smith, Sene Naoupu and Jonelle Price, and facilitating questions from our audience.

The Art of Rest: How to find respite in the modern age, by Claudia Hammond

Busyness used to be a badge of honour but nowadays it is becoming less so. We need rest! And rest means different things to different people. It’s not just sleep, but restful activities we do whilst awake. Not getting enough rest affects all age groups and manifests itself in higher rates of depression, more colds, worse memories, and poor decision making.

Claudia and her counterparts set up a survey called the Rest Test which asked 18,000 people in 135 countries about rest. The findings make up the 10 chapters in the book.

Each chapter of the book is dedicated to one of the top ten things people considered restful and the studies around it. Claudia is upfront about the fact that there isn’t as much research around rest and its benefits so some of the studies are very small. Saying that, all the papers are in the back of the book if you wanted to access them.

The power of knowing what you don't know, by Adam Grant

Getting together to discuss Adam Grant’s Think Again was a spirited and joyful event. Seven of us were lucky enough to meet in person at Ozone Cafe (with an exciting brand new brunch menu) and our group consisted of a mix of seasoned book clubbers and a few newbies too (myself included!).

Unanimously we all agreed that we enjoyed the book (or what we had managed to read of it so far), so the discussion flowed easily between us. Think Again is a fairly comfortable read, dotted with interesting footnotes and cartoons depicting, and poking fun at, a lot of the ideas presented. However we quickly realised that in this modern world we were not all reading the book per se. We had quite the mix of hard copies, e-readers and audio books between us. We discovered that not all mediums picked up these footnotes and images so well, so if you’re still wanting to give this one a read, then the hard copy might be the way to go - although Adam Grant himself reads the audio book which is quite the treat!