As a young Sara Fogarty watched her friends finish university and book flights to Europe for their OEs, she recalls thinking ‘I’m not going to do that, I’m going to do my own thing’. “I was quite stubborn at that age,” she says with a laugh.

It wasn’t until later, when she set off for a holiday through the UK and Europe with her then boyfriend, now husband, aged 31, that she “fell in love” with London and all the opportunities it has to offer.

“It’s big, but it’s not noisy like New York, it’s got its own beat and hum and is a little bit softer than some of the other big cities around the world,” Sara says. “I love that you can walk down the street and you get that sense of history, and that real sense of openness and changing scenery.”

Moving to London as a fresh 21 year old, Sophie describes having no fear and no idea. Determined to not make beans on toast a regular meal, she was quick to take control of her destiny, adapting to the fast pace of London and everything in between.

After graduating from Rangitoto College on Auckland's North Shore in 2012, Sophie left home to live and work in the United States as an au pair. With an itch to travel and explore the world further, she made what she describes as ‘the obvious choice’ and moved to London in 2016.

With every intention to stick with her first London gig as a live-in nanny, Sophie soon realised that living in a London flat with a bunch of kiwis was an experience she didn’t want to miss! This decision led her to look further afield, beyond nannying, as she undertook a number of admin roles within the corporate world, eventually landing a position as a medical secretary looking after 5-7 surgeons a week.

After two years as a medical secretary Sophie was ready for a new challenge. Her cousin Tess had been working for their auntie and uncle Paula and Bill Wallace, helping to build a UK presence for their New Zealand based luxury linen and homeware company, Wallace Cotton.

Packing her bags to move from Whakatane to Oxford to start her new job, Evie O’Brien found herself grappling with a bout of imposter syndrome.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would leave New Zealand, let alone move to Oxford. It's viewed as elite and for the world’s elite, so it felt like a bit of a dream.”

Evie, now the Executive Director of the Atlantic Institute: Rhode’s Trust, says it took “a bit of courage” to uproot the life that she loved, to move across the world by herself. Attempting to alleviate any homesickness, she packed artwork - pictures of her sacred ancestral mountains in the Bay of Plenty, and taonga, to hang on the walls of her new home.

But despite any feelings of unease, the reality was that Evie had been cherry-picked for the role. Her involvement with the Rhodes Institute began back when she was working at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi, the Whakatane-based indigenous tertiary education provider, back in 2018 and was selected for the inaugural Atlantic Fellows Social Equity programme, based at the University of Melbourne.