Leadership Network Member brings baking to the boardroom
Ethan Laby was gifted with a penchant for pragmatism. His career as a young chartered accountant speaks to his appreciation for the black and white. However, in-between the comfort of stark figures, he also seeks out the shades of grey. He may be an accountant in his day-to-day, but come 5pm, Ethan assumes his other identity: as a great Kiwi baker.
In 2020 Ethan did an Asia New Zealand Foundation internship with KPMG in Ho Chi Minh City
A strategic thinker, numbers have always been Ethan’s friend. Born in Christchurch but raised in Auckland, he spent his childhood unusually future-focused. Every birthday and Christmas, he would brush aside the allure of cheap thrills like colourful plastic toys, light up sneakers, and candy, for cold hard cash.
In Ethan’s words, “everyone would be like, ‘oh you’re going to blow it all’, but no, I actually saved it all”. He squirrelled it away into a bank account and mustered the enormous self-restraint required to never touch it. He was saving for something big. He just didn’t know what yet.
At Long Bay College on the North Shore, Ethan’s number-savvy skillset came in clutch, seeing him top classes for accounting, economics, and maths. What didn’t come so naturally however, was English. “I was told I was going to fail English when I first went to Long Bay”, he says.
But Ethan wanted to prove people wrong. By the end of high school, Ethan ended up proving everyone wrong to the tune of $26,000 worth of scholarships. He was awarded four different scholarships to attend Canterbury University in Christchurch.
Practical as ever, another reason that drew him to Canterbury was the perils of Auckland’s housing market. “I’m never going to be able to buy a house in Auckland!”, he worried at 18.
So he packed up and headed to Christchurch to pursue a degree in accounting and taxation, with a minor in economics.
Alongside his studies, university was also the time where Ethan got to take his longstanding creative passion to new heights. He grew up baking, trained as an enthusiastic kitchen hand to his grandmother. Whenever he’d go round to his grandmother’s house, there’d always be something yummy — from sausage rolls, to chocolate chip cookies, to her infamous Swiss rolls. “So many of my memories of her centre around food and baking”, he says.
He continues, “a lot of her recipes and stuff are what started my interest in baking”. He grew a passion for it, and continued baking throughout his life. Come university, he got his big break.
In 2019, he was part of the second season of The Great Kiwi Bake Off. “I balanced my Uni studies while taking 6 weeks off Uni to go up to Auckland and bake”. One of the youngest contestants, he was living in a house with all the other bakers and doing 10-12 hour shooting days.
With 5-6 cameras on him at any one point, the atmosphere was rather different to his grandmother’s kitchen. “You’ve got the cameras, people watching, time restraints, ingredients and surprises, and other contestants you’re competing with”, Ethan illustrates.
In 2019, Ethan competed in the second season of The Great Kiwi Bake Off
Post-Bake Off, Ethan couldn’t quite escape the soaring heights of minor fame associated with being a New Zealand reality TV show contestant. Shortly after going on the show, he graduated university and started his career in accounting — specialising in audit.
Apart from two older ladies recognising him at a Christchurch shopping mall, he was surprised to discover a soft spot for the show hidden amongst the finance community. As Ethan describes, “I would go to these businesses and be auditing them and they would say, ‘not to be rude, but we recognise you and we don’t know where from’. And then I would have these slightly awkward conversations where I’d have to say, ‘oh I was on the Great Kiwi Bake Off’”.
Once his secret identity was revealed, baking became an interesting part of his professional life. He says, “for a while there I was even baking for clients” (in a strictly non-bribery way).
Interestingly, Ethan’s passions reveal an undeniable parallel — the world of business and baking are not so dissimilar. “I suppose baking is like a science if you think about it”, he says. The precision of grams of butter and flour required to bake a cupcake seamlessly echoes the rhyme and reason of numbers, the mastery of which comes so naturally to Ethan.
It’s why Ethan says he’s a much better baker than he is a cook. He likes knowing that you can’t go back and change anything. But with cooking, “you can kind of throw stuff in a pan and make it work just by tasting”, he says. Baking is a numbers game with a creative flair — an apt descriptor for Ethan.
This love of food is one of the reasons he looked to Asia. His first taste of Asia came with a Prime Minister’s Scholarship to Thailand in 2017, where he worked at a children’s orphanage in Bangkok for six weeks.
Ethan: “Spending time in Vietnam provided me with perspectives on the country I could only have got through living there.”
Following this experience, Ethan became an Asia New Zealand Foundation business intern at KPMG in Ho Chi Minh City. Unfortunately, half of his three-month internship took place during early 2020, so he ended up coming back to New Zealand earlier than expected.
Despite the tail end, he loved Vietnam and found the internship transformative. “Spending time in Vietnam provided me with perspectives on the country I could only have got through living there”, he says.
After joining the Leadership Network in 2023, Ethan travelled to Hanoi, Vietnam to participate in the April 2024 Leadership Network Hanoi Hui.
“I can’t yet express how incredibly grateful I am for the amazing week spent in Hanoi with a bunch of incredibly talented people (now great friends!), learning lots about business in Vietnam and experiencing things I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d have the opportunity to see and do”, he reflects.
This year Ethan joined a group of Leadership Network members and travelled to Vietnam for the Hanoi Hui
He looks forward to more life changing experiences through the Leadership Network.
Following the Hanoi Hui, Ethan's next destination is London, but not before seeing a little more of Asia on the way. South Korea, Tokyo, and revisiting Ho Chi Minh City are all on the itinerary.
With a new life in London awaiting, Ethan is now moving to the next chapter of his exceptionally well-planned life. He jokes, "I don't know if my colleagues will miss me or my baking more”.
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.
