#07 Just do it: Former tourism worker’s journey to film, sneakers and sports

Davy Chen spent 14 years working in the travel and tourism industry. Bright eyed and fresh out of tourism college he scored his first job at a backpackers in 2006, and by 2014 he was working in the big leagues at Flight Centre.  But as COVID reared it’s ugly head in 2020, flights were grounded and…

#06 Kiwi mums whip up fully baked idea during COVID

Launching a business in the middle of New Zealand’s second lockdown? Why not! That’s exactly what Clare Gallagher and Lauren ‘Lulu’ Taylor did.  The pandemic meant Lulu’s marketing work had dried up, and Clare was looking to re-enter the workforce after taking time off to raise her kids. But our e…

#05 Former designer at Air NZ spills the tea on new venture

Tamarin Howse had always dreamed of working for Air New Zealand so when she landed a role at head office as a Customer Experience designer, she thought she’d be in it for the long haul.  But just a year in, and right before she was about to launch a huge project, the Covid 19 pandemic struck New Z…

#04 How COVID-19 killed the radio star

David Rooney had a dream job in a dream city. After working at ZM in New Zealand, he packed his bags and moved to Melbourne at the end of 2017 to work at major music station KIIS FM. But as COVID took hold of the world last year, the dream started to look more like a nightmare. In an already tough…

#03 Surfer turns pipeline dream into reality after advertising redundancy.

Annabelle Reynolds never thought she’d be able to turn her passion for the ocean into a job. She’d been in advertising for most of her career, and that’s where she planned to stay. But just like the world, her work began to slow as COVID-19 tightened its grip.  She lost her job in June 2020, but a…

#02 The Zoom of doom: Bauer Media staff open up about losing jobs

COVID-19 hit the media industry hard, but among the hardest hit was Bauer New Zealand. It abruptly closed its doors just days into the country's level 4 lockdown, taking around three hundred jobs with it and iconic titles like The Listener, New Zealand Woman's Weekly, Metro and Woman's Day. Some …

#01 Flight attendant turned Auckland ice-cream shop owner

The skies were Mike Kitching's livelihood for 18 years, before he was made redundant alongside thousands of other Air New Zealand staff. But now he's quite literally putting his career on ice, by pivoting his way into a new business venture as an ice cream shop owner.  Newshub’s Wilhelmina Shrimp…

Coming soon: Newshub's The Pivot

2020 was ruthless, unforgiving and unprecedented. Because, while our bodies became sick from Covid 19, so did our economy. There were redundancies, company closures, and the largest rise in unemployment since the global financial crisis. The seismic shift in our daily lives forced us to change, ada…