Julie has over 10 years of experience in management beginning in the health service, leading to not for profit organisations and more recently, in business. She has been company manager and is now a director for Business Development Company. Julie’s experience and skill lie in strategic business management and planning, financial management and leadership.

She enjoys learning and studying in the field of economics, management and NZ business. Her focus is on helping local businesses succeed through business advice and training opportunities.

 

Robin Whalley - FCIS, (London) Snr. Assoc.CIP, MIoD - has over thirty years experience dealing with small and medium sized businesses throughout New Zealand, including being company directory for over fifty SMEs and a business startup specialist.  In addition Robin has held many roles including  being a professional trustee, business mentor, former Chairman of the Nelson - Marlborough Branch, New Zealand Society Of Accountants, former Chairman of the Tasman Bays Heritage Trust and as a judge for the Nelson Tasman Business awards.

Mid 2010 and the shareholders walked out of the door at BDC. A key contract was gone and from the cold, hard, corporate reality of a shareholder’s perspective, there was nothing left.

 

Except there was.

 

The people at BDC knew it, so did our customers and so did the business men in the office next door. You see, what happened was, that at the thought that BDC may close, we got swamped by hundreds of emails and phone calls that talked of the support we’d given, our energy and enthusiasm, our commitment and care for business people, our passion and leadership. We hadn’t just delivered on a key contract, we’d cared about what we do and we believed in it. We knew that wasn’t ‘nothing’, it was gold.

 

So, together with those business men from next door, we invested in BDC. We want to make it grow again. We're proudly provincial and we want Nelson and Tasman to stand out as a region where businesses succeed. We know it’s going to be hard work; after all, we’re just the little guys with a big dream. We don’t have a marketing department or a corporate uniform. What we have are customers we care about, passion to succeed and good, old fashioned Kiwi 'number 8 wire' ingenuity.