A big thank you to all our 2021 Young Horticulturist Competition Finalists, Trust Members, Speakers and Sponsors who attended the Professional Development Day on the 17th May 2022.
It was great to get our 2021 finalists back for this Professional Development Day. This is a one day event held at the Auckland Botanic Gardens where our finalists develop their emerging leadership capabilities through networking, hearing presentations and receiving leadership training such as personality profiling and goal setting.
Our 2014 Young Horticulturist Winner Patrick Malley started off the day and we were thrilled to have him speaking! We all loved hearing Patrick's back story and where his Horticultural career has taken him to date. Finalists feedback included; great speaker, great content, engaging, very inspiring, got us thinking critically, great tips on speaking to investors and did an amazing job encouraging our finalists to push their boundaries.
Candice Collier from Belbin leadership solutions joined us again this year with leadership profiling and training which is a great tool to strengthen leadership capabilities. This was a great interactive session where the finalists all worked on their individual leadership styles. As always Candice is so knowledgeable, passionate & professional.
Speaking with experience we had Greg Lazzaro from Lazzaro Advisory speak with our Finalists. The finalists thought Greg was very professional with a plethora of experience, he was amazing at keeping everyone entertained and gave great insights on leadership.
We also had some great financial advise for our Finalists from Chris Briggs at ANZ. Our Finalists commented that this was 'very beneficial financial advice', great relevance, interest & use', extremely helpful & informative for starting your own business' an 'excellent informative session'.
A big thank you also goes to the Auckland Botanical Gardens for hosting our Professional Development Day and for taking the time to take us all on a wonderful garden tour around your grounds.
