ANGELA McLEOD

Angela spent most of her childhood on the back of a horse, starting with her pony, Winkie, riding throughout the neighbourhood and on-farm. A favourite ride was across the boundary fence into the neighbours, through the bush along the tops. She reckons she might have even spent more time in their paddocks than she did in her own backyard.

In rural Upper Hutt, keeping the farm going took the whole village. 

“‘Many hands make light work’ is true in a farming sense. We supported each other and worked together.”

Every day after school, the kids would barrel into the kitchen, where a scrap of paper would be waiting on the bench: To do. There was always more to do. It didn’t matter if it was feeding out, mustering, or cooking for the family, they were there and ready to muck in. And they were happy to do it.

“I have no doubt about it. I loved the way I grew up.” 

But everyone has to leave home sometime. Angela left Upper Hutt to fly solo, passionate about improving the lives of everyday people. She studied Agriculture at Massey, cooking up grand plans to bring the cutting edge technology she’d learned about to struggling African farmers. 

Then, tragedy struck. In a head-on collision on the Desert Road, woke up in hospital with two  broken legs, a broken arm and broken back. Doctors told her she was lucky to be alive. When she was discharged, she needed in-home care, so she moved in with her Great Aunt (and, later, her Grandma) who cared for her as she was rehabilitating. But it wasn’t just family - it was the whole community. Her doctor wisely advised her to consider volunteering while she got better, which brought her to the Trade Aid family who not only opened their arms to Angela, but also gave her vital mentorship. Here Angela learned about the women-run businesses who produced the products she was selling, which sparked a deep passion that continues to fuel her today. 

“When you’re in full rehab, families and communities are what make your world tick. It teaches you how people can support each other and how important that is. Having all that family and community around me got me out of there walking.”

Angela emerged from recovery with a new lease on life and a passion for community-led change. This brought her to parliament and politics, where she worked on ground-breaking legislation. She championed the Right to flexible work and country of origin labelling of food Sue Kedgely, demanding that food companies tell us where our food comes from. She also worked on the Pay Equity Coalition, a vital step towards equality in the workplace. She then looked abroad for more opportunities to serve. In 2012, Angela was scouted by the International Federation of Business and Professional Women. There, she was able to lend her voice to such worthy causes as #BringBackOurGirls, a global effort to rescue Nigerian schoolgirls from Islamist organisation Boko Haram. 

And now that she’s got the experience, she’s ready to bring it all back to where she started. Angela wants to help – but she’s not here to take the reins and do it all by herself. She wants to help Upper Hutt make Upper Hutt better – because it’s always better when the community decides.

“I remember my father saying to me, ‘you’re not the sort of leader that’s going to go, “This is how it is”. You actually like to discuss it with people. And you actually listen to their ideas.”

And Angela reckons that’s exactly what Upper Hutt needs.

“How I grew up… that’s how I want to be able to do things. It takes all sorts of people to make the world go round. There are a whole lot of people in the Upper Hutt community that know things that I don’t know who can feed into what it is that we do. You need to be able to get around the table and talk about things.”

With good leadership, the spirit of community really works. It just takes someone to bring people to the table in the right way. Angela knows that with a little nudging, Upper Hutt can come together and find the best outcome for everybody.

“That’s the way I work. I’d be like the hen with her chickens, gathering them in and having that discussion with them. There are people in the community doing really good stuff. It’s just about getting them together.”

“There’s just so much potential in a lot of our cities and towns, and Upper Hutt is one of them. There are a lot of things that we can take from the community as it was back then and put it into what it is now.”

“Being who I was on the farm and having the family and the community that we had – to have all that support takes you to this place.”

“The mayor only has one vote. Good leadership would mean that the team works together to take the community from this point to that point. It takes a village.”