25 to Watch – catching up with Leadership Network member Millie Morgan
As part of Asia New Zealand Foundation's 25th anniversary celebrations in 2019, Millie Morgan was named one of the Foundation’s "25 to Watch” for her contribution to Business and Entrepreneurship in the New Zealand-Asia space. To mark the Foundation's 30th anniversary, we checked in with Millie to see what she's been up to the past five years.
Millie and her mother at the Foundation's 25 To Watch event held at parliament in 2019
“I’m a farm girl through and through,” Millie says. Born in the UK, she emigrated with her family at six years old to Fairlie — a small farming town in the South Island.
The family moved to New Zealand as farm managers, though quickly worked their way up to ownership. “My parents and siblings are still farming that farm now,” she shares.
After graduating high school in Timaru, Christchurch was the next adventure for 18-year-old Millie. Opting to study a Bachelor of Law and Arts, it was at University of Canterbury (UC) that her life trajectory was forever altered.
She got talking to the director of Internationalisation at UC, and had her eyes opened to the array of opportunity open offshore. “I said, ‘you’re taking a cohort of students to Peking University, what are the chances of me going?" she says.
Millie and Brad spoke about their China visit at Asia New Zealand Foundation Asia After Five evenings in Christchurch and Auckland recently
She wasn’t terribly involved in university life, was plagued by self-doubt, and felt it was a longshot to put in an application. But apply she did.
“My whole life changed. That Beijing trip was so pivotal for me," Millie says.
She fell in love with China — a particularly remarkable feat for a rural farm girl typically averse to big city life. In Millie’s words, “It’s something unreal. Everything is working at such an incomprehensible scale — which challenges your thinking and makes you feel mini."
Back in New Zealand, that first taste of China was the catalyst for Millie’s story. She started studying Chinese, got into several leadership roles at university, and then started her own business.
Catching up with Leadership Network members at the Foundation's 30th anniversary event held at parliament
The birth of her startup — NZ and Beyond, was a product of her second trip to China. This time round, she was at Fudan University in Shanghai for a three-week summer intensive around innovation in China.
After she returned to New Zealand, Millie and one of the girls she bonded with in Fudan entered an entrepreneurship summit together. They “dreamed up starting an ecommerce business going into China and it snowballed quite quickly”, she says.
The business facilitated the journey for kiwi SMEs into the Chinese eCommerce market without the substantial costs, understanding, and time required to enter the market.
In her first year of doing the business, she received the 25 to Watch. She reflects on attending the formal 25 to Watch ceremony at the Beehive. “I was just so excited to be there. My parents came up to Wellington, too. I was a country kid in the big city who had never been to parliament”, she says.
Millie (green jacket) with fellow Leadership Network members at the Foundation's 30th anniversary event at parliament in October 2024
Soon after the 25 to Watch, Covid hit. It was a bad time to be an entrepreneur, particularly one in your early 20s, and Millie felt the pressure. “It was such an amalgamation of bad timing combined with inexperience”, she says.
They ended up connecting their clients with different trade partners and winding down the business. In Millie’s words, “we decided that was the end of the journey for now, and I entered into the law full time”.
She focused on being a full-time lawyer and tried to detach the Asia connection from this new, legal side of Millie. “I completely shut down my relationship with China, almost out of embarrassment that I had failed”, she reflects.
But her retreat into legal obscurity didn’t last long. In her first year of full-time law, her supervising partner, aware of her background, said, "you don't have to be a typical Lawyer Millie - fail fast, find momentum, and harness your skills to curate your own trajectory. You can still be a lawyer and work on China”. It was like an epiphany.
Now a member of the Leadership Network, Millie started using her membership to its fullest potential. “I thought, I’ve got this amazing network. So why am I not using it? So, then I just started tapping into it”, she says.
She then reconnected with Brad Olsen, a fellow 25 to Watch alum and Leadership Network member, at the Leadership Network Otago History Hui in 2022. “That Otago hui spurred me back into action — into wanting to be part of the New Zealand-China relationship again”, Millie says.
Since then, Millie has been navigating how these passions all meld together—combining her passion for the New Zealand primary sector, the New Zealand-China trade relationship, and her law background.
In China, Millie and Brad met with New Zealand businesses in China to learn
A trip that Brad and Millie independently planned to China in 2023, partially funded by the Foundation, was instrumental in this journey. She used her old China contacts and Brad his business contacts to create a jam-packed two-week itinerary connecting with New Zealand businesses throughout China.
The purpose of the trip was to gain first-hand insight into China’s economy and the key trends shaping it.
They took part in business roundtables, met with economic reporters, engaged with New Zealand consulates in Shanghai and Beijing, and visited primary-sector businesses to gain first-hand insight into their operations.
"I experienced serious imposter syndrome at first, but I was reassured that the perspective I brought was unique. Despite my legal background, it wasn’t an academic viewpoint as such—it came from working in the primary sector as a farmer."
For Millie, of particulalr interest was gaining insights into how China's agriculture sector is developing and what this might mean for New Zealand.
"I see the New Zealand-China relationship as critical moving forward for our primary sector."
She says being on the ground and visiting businesses offers a perspective you simply can’t get from research done back home. One of her key takeaways was the importance of relationship building.
"It came back down to that whole relationship connection and building being so important. I think there is still a gross misunderstanding about how China does business and how we should be doing business with China - the trip really highlighted that.
She returned with a renewed passion for China.
"The trip far exceeded my expectations. It sent me into an absolute headspin—not just about my career trajectory, but also about the potential the New Zealand primary sector, and beyond, has with China, as we continue to foster that relationship."
Millie’s journey has now come full circle. Over the past 5 years, she has managed to reroute the Asia-centred path Covid knocked her off course from in 2020.
While still being unsure where the next five years will take her, she knows it will centre around a hybrid of the NZ-China relationship and her primary sector roots. In Millie’s words, “whatever it is, I would hope I don’t lose momentum — and continue on this trajectory I suddenly got back on 18 months ago”.
Changing trends in China: implications for NZ - read Millie and Brad's report on their China visit
pdf, 1.17 MB
The Asia New Zealand Foundation Leadership Network equips the next generation of Kiwi leaders to thrive in Asia. We provide members with the connections, knowledge and confidence to lead New Zealand’s future relationship with the region.
