In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 57, our guest is The Right Honourable Christopher Luxon, Prime Minister of New Zealand.

A typical Kiwi upbringing was a hallmark of young Christopher Luxon’s life. The oldest of three brothers, he grew up in Christchurch and later Auckland, with working parents and a work ethic that was obvious early.

He was a sports mad kid, but it didn’t stop there. Walking home one afternoon he decided to cold call the neighbourhood homes to see if he could sell his services as a window cleaner. A business was born. It’s owner-operator just 14 years old.

He returned to his hometown of Christchurch for his university studies before his corporate career took hold. 

Starting as a management trainee with global consumer goods giant Unilever, it was a company and a career that took him around the world. He worked in Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA before his eventual appointment as President and CEO of Unilever Canada.

In 2011, he returned to New Zealand for a senior executive role at Air New Zealand and a year later he was appointed CEO, a role he held for seven years.

That he walked away from such a spectacular business career is a story in itself. Within four years, and after just three years as a Member of Parliament, he became New Zealand’s 42nd Prime Minister.

In the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast, Christopher Luxon talks openly with Bruce Cotterill about his short but spectacular rise in New Zealand’s political scene. He is surprisingly open about his successes and failures in government to date and equally forthright about the assembly and operation of a coalition that has held together better than many expected.