Rangi Ruru Stories – Kendal Flutey
Kendal is a tech entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Banqer, a financial literacy platform for school children in Australasia. She is a former New Zealander of the Year and attended Rangi Ruru from 2002 to 2008.
Rangi Ruru provided me with the confidence to feel that I could achieve big things while also providing me with opportunities to put this into action. I was really privileged to have an environment that let me experience and try a lot of things as a part of the journey of figuring out who I was, and what mattered to me. This journey obviously extended well beyond my time at secondary school, but the foundations laid at Rangi Ruru were pivotal.
The sense of community and service also strongly influenced where I now focus my attention – creating a scalable global business that has a measurable impact on the lives of others.
Lessons from the Sports Field
The majority of my outward success while at Rangi Ruru would have probably been in sports, particularly team sports. But now having the luxury of hindsight and broader appreciation of what success means to me, I’d be more inclined to say that the successes I hold highest are the relationships and friendships I made. As well as how I learned to navigate and develop various capabilities; like discipline, dedication, and learning from failure.
After school, I guess the pattern has repeated a bit. There are some awards I’ve collected both individually and as a part of the Banqer team, but I see my successes as something different. While I’m really proud of scaling something from an idea to an international EdTech company, I’d say my greatest success is the impact we have had on the lives of over 200,000 students and the way I’ve developed as a leader and a person.
Driven by Purpose
The path that I’ve taken from school until now includes a lot of support from others, a bit of luck, risk taking, and hard work – but it’s all grounded in purpose. Although I love what do, there are still really challenging days, early starts and sacrifices. For someone with my values, I’ve found it really important to have something greater than profit to help reinvigorate me, and remind me of why this is important work.
Social enterprise just makes sense to me. I value others, and believe that business should pursue not only profit, but also some kind of purpose that improves lives – whether in a big way or a small one. I can’t exactly place what sparked this interest, but I have been fortunate to have been personally provided an amazing education, so appreciate the power of education. I think that’s why I’ve always been drawn towards social, education-focused projects or business.
And although my sports days are largely behind me, I appreciate the significance of the characteristics that were developed at 6am on the sports field or losing a national final (four times!). These formative years set a course that I’m extremely appreciative of.