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You're already on LinkedIn. But there's a difference between being on the platform and making it work for you.
One of the fastest ways to level up is to study the people doing it well. We used Claude to evaluate each executive's content strategy, consistency, and engagement, so this isn't a gut-feel list.
The result is a list that goes beyond follower counts and vanity metrics, spotlighting the executives who are actually worth your attention.
Here are 10 C-level executives worth following and learning from:
If this list inspires you to take your own LinkedIn presence seriously but you never seem to find the time, start your free 14-day trial with Will - the AI content strategist that turns a quick voice note or a few keywords into a polished LinkedIn post, without ever leaving WhatsApp.
Chris Quin – CEO, Foodstuffs North Island
Chris Quin leads with a focus on community and scale. His career began in the telecommunications industry, where he led Gen-i at Spark.
He later moved into the grocery world. He manages a cooperative that feeds millions of New Zealanders every day.
During major natural disasters like Cyclone Gabrielle, he stepped up to show how supply chains provide a lifeline to isolated towns. He often shares the human side of logistics and the hard work of local store owners.
About Foodstuffs North Island
Foodstuffs North Island is a 100% New Zealand owned and operated cooperative. It includes brands like New World, PAK’nSAVE, and Four Square. The organization consists of over 300 stores across the North Island. In recent reports, the cooperative supported the distribution of over 13 million meal equivalents to people in need.
🔗 Visit Foodstuffs North Island
LinkedIn Content Strategy Analysis
Who should follow Chris: New Zealand business leaders, food and grocery industry professionals, co-op advocates, journalists covering retail and consumer pricing, and anyone interested in how a major corporate leader communicates with transparency during times of public scrutiny.
Core Value Proposition: Chris positions himself as an accessible, accountable CEO of one of New Zealand's largest food retail co-operatives, using LinkedIn to explain, humanise, and defend the business he leads while consistently bringing the focus back to community, people, and local ownership.
Key Themes & Topics
Industry Transparency & Public Accountability - His most distinctive content pillar. At a time when supermarket pricing is under intense public and political scrutiny in New Zealand, Chris steps into that conversation rather than away from it. His post breaking down the price of frozen peas for Newstalk ZB listeners, explaining the full supply chain from farm to shelf and noting that roughly 68 cents of every dollar goes to suppliers, is a good example of a CEO choosing to educate rather than deflect.
Community Crisis Response - When events like the Far North flooding affect Foodstuffs stores, Chris posts quickly and specifically, updating communities on store status, acknowledging the team on the ground, and signalling that the co-op understands its role in people's daily lives. These posts are unpolished in the best way, written like a leader who is actually across the detail.
People & Team Recognition - Chris is generous and specific when celebrating colleagues. His farewell to Jonathan Box after eight years with the co-op is warm without being formulaic, and the detail he includes signals genuine knowledge of the person's contribution rather than a communications team writing on his behalf.
Co-op Values & Local Ownership - A thread that runs through much of his content is the distinction between Foodstuffs as a co-operative of locally owned stores and a faceless corporate retailer. He returns to this framing regularly, whether celebrating supplier partnership awards, highlighting a local Four Square operator, or noting that a store-owning family retains around 4% of the shelf price.
Sustainability & Innovation - He shares operational progress on things like electric trucks and store rebuilds, keeping the content grounded in specifics rather than aspiration. A quick post about jumping behind the wheel of an electric truck lands better than a sustainability strategy document would.
Media & External Engagement - Chris is active in the media and references those appearances on LinkedIn, from Newstalk ZB to conversations with Mike Hosking and Ryan Bridge. This cross-platform presence reinforces his role as the public face of the business.
Format & Presentation Style
Chris writes in clear, measured prose with no unnecessary embellishment. Posts are typically a few paragraphs, structured logically, and grounded in specifics. He does not use bullet points heavily, preferring to let ideas flow naturally. Emojis are absent or very rare. His tone is warm but professional, the voice of someone who has given a lot of media interviews and knows how to say something clearly under pressure. He reposts Foodstuffs company content regularly, adding a personal line or two of commentary to make it his own.
Engagement Strategy
Chris tags people by name when recognizing them, which generates reciprocal engagement from the individuals and their networks. His transparency posts tend to attract the broadest reach, drawing in people who do not follow him but encounter the content through shares or comments. He does not explicitly invite engagement but his posts on pricing and community issues naturally generate debate and discussion.
Performance Indicators
With 32,699 followers, Chris generates consistent engagement across his posts. One of his best recent performing posts, the frozen peas price breakdown, attracted strong reactions and comment activity given the topical nature of supermarket pricing in New Zealand. His community crisis posts also perform well in terms of reach, as they tend to be shared by local media and community groups.
Overall Strategy Summary
Chris is doing something relatively rare among CEOs of large organisations: using LinkedIn as a genuine communication tool rather than a broadcast channel. His willingness to address hard questions about pricing, to show up personally during community crises, and to centre the co-op's local ownership story gives his content a credibility that polished corporate communications rarely achieve. He has built an audience that trusts him to speak plainly, and that trust is his most valuable asset on the platform.
Hamish McKay – Co-Founder & CEO, OrderEditing.com
Hamish McKay started his journey by identifying a massive friction point in the e-commerce world. While working for a large merchandise brand, he noticed that a huge portion of customer service time went to fixing order mistakes after checkout.
He decided to build a software solution that allows customers to edit their own orders. At just 22 years old, he moved from a concept to a business that supports hundreds of global brands.
His story is one of building in public and solving a specific, annoying problem for merchants.
About OrderEditing.com
OrderEditing is a software application for Shopify merchants. It allows customers to change their shipping address or swap products after they have already paid. The company has grown to support over 620 merchants, including major names like The Oodie and Sheet Society.
LinkedIn Content Strategy Analysis
Who should follow Hamish: Startup founders, e-commerce operators, Shopify merchants, early-stage entrepreneurs, and anyone building a SaaS business who wants an unfiltered view of what founder life actually looks like.
Core Value Proposition: Hamish positions himself as a young, Forbes-recognized founder who is still very much in the building phase, sharing the real mechanics of growing a bootstrapped startup with honesty and specificity. His content says: here is what is actually working, and here is what it costs me.
Key Themes & Topics
Founder Life & Personal Vulnerability - His most resonant content comes when he drops the performance and shares what building genuinely feels like. His post about telling his co-founder he needed to disappear to Patagonia, and the admission that he no longer felt he had the things he built the business for, drew significant engagement precisely because it was uncomfortably honest.
Hiring & Team Building - Hamish writes about recruitment with the urgency of someone who knows every hire either accelerates or derails a small company. His post about making the company's fastest hire, walking through the three battles every startup founder faces when attracting talent, is a good example of content that is both practical and personal.
Product & Commercial Specifics - He is unusually willing to share numbers. Cutting a Shopify brand's address validation bill by 80%, the cost-per-order economics, the ROI of returned parcels avoided. This granular, merchant-facing content serves a dual purpose as both thought leadership and product marketing for Order Editing.
Conference & Event Strategy - His posts around Shoptalk Vegas are some of his sharpest. The framing of being a bootstrapped startup in a room full of well-funded competitors, and choosing scrappiness as a deliberate edge rather than a limitation, is a positioning story that plays well with his audience.
Team Recognition - Hamish calls out his team members publicly and with genuine warmth. His post from Las Vegas praising Claudia Ditri's partnership skills and Lachie Tod's personal brand at 21 shows a founder who understands that celebrating his people is also good content.
Work-Life Tension - He returns periodically to the question of why he is building and whether the business is serving the life he wants. These posts are not self-help adjacent. They feel like a founder genuinely processing things in public, which is what makes them land.
Format & Presentation Style
Hamish writes in short, punchy lines, often one sentence per line, which creates a fast-moving rhythm that suits the platform well. He uses numbered points frequently, particularly when breaking down a process or a lesson. His tone is direct and energetic without being aggressive. Images appear occasionally, typically from events or travel. Hashtags are minimal, usually just one or two.
Engagement Strategy
His engagement numbers average around 36 comments per post, which points to an audience that is genuinely invested rather than passively scrolling. He builds this through consistency, specificity, and a willingness to say things other founders might keep private. He also tags team members and collaborators in a way that feels earned rather than transactional.
Performance Indicators
Posts are generating impressive engagement for an audience his size, with almost 23,000 followers and comment counts regularly reaching into the dozens. One of his best recent performing posts, the Shoptalk Vegas preparation post, generated strong comments and shares. His Patagonia vulnerability post also attracted an unusually high comment count, suggesting his audience responds most when he goes personal.
Overall Strategy Summary
Hamish is building one of the more compelling founder narratives on LinkedIn in this part of the world. He has found a tone that is confident without being arrogant, and vulnerable without being indulgent. The Shopify and e-commerce community he speaks to is large and engaged, and he has positioned himself as a trusted, credible voice within it while still being early enough in his journey that the story is genuinely unfinished. That tension is his biggest asset.
Simon Vicars – Chief Creative Officer, Colenso BBDO
Simon Vicars is one of the most awarded creative leaders in the world. He spent years working on campaigns in London and New York before returning to lead Colenso BBDO in Auckland.
He believes that creativity is a business tool that can drive massive results. His career is built on the idea that a great story is more powerful than a big budget.
Simon leads a team that consistently puts New Zealand advertising on the global stage.
About Colenso BBDO
Colenso BBDO is a creative agency based in Auckland. It has been named the Agency of the Decade by several industry publications. The agency employs approximately 150 people and works with some of the biggest brands in New Zealand and abroad.
LinkedIn Content Strategy Analysis
Who should follow Simon: Creative directors, advertising professionals, brand marketers, and anyone who works in or around the creative industry and wants to see what genuinely great campaign work looks like.
Core Value Proposition: Simon positions himself as one of New Zealand's leading creative minds, using LinkedIn almost exclusively as a portfolio and celebration platform for Colenso BBDO's work. His presence says: we make things that are brave, original, and worth noticing.
Key Themes & Topics
Campaign Launches & Creative Work - The dominant pillar. Simon introduces new campaigns with punchy, confident copy that mirrors the tone of the work itself. Recent examples include the Skinny "Collect Calls" campaign built around phone call prizes, and Lump Lottery, a behaviour change campaign for testicular cancer awareness fronted by Sir Buck Shelford. He lets the work lead and keeps his own commentary tight.
Awards & Industry Recognition - Simon marks wins with genuine enthusiasm and specificity, calling out individual team members by name. Colenso taking Agency of the Year at Spikes Asia for the second consecutive year, a Grand Prix debut, and the Adoptable campaign breaking into the WARC top 10 are all shared with pride but without being boastful.
Creative Craft & Industry Reflection - Occasional posts reveal a deeper love of the discipline. His post about a 20-year-old D&AD annual, still full of work that holds up, is a good example. He uses these moments to say something about the permanence of great ideas, which resonates strongly with a creative audience.
Behind the Scenes & Team Culture - Simon shares glimpses of life at Colenso, from being on set and losing his CCO authority to the production hierarchy, to celebrating the agency's pitch team. These posts are lighter in tone and show a leader who doesn't take himself too seriously.
Industry Amplification - He occasionally reposts work or commentary from others in the global creative industry when it connects to something Colenso has touched or a theme worth highlighting.
Format & Presentation Style
Simon's posts are notably brief by LinkedIn standards. He writes in short, punchy sentences, often just a few lines, and lets the visual content or the linked work carry the weight. There is no padding, no excessive context, no calls to action. The writing style reflects the same economy that good advertising demands. Videos and images are central to almost every post. Hashtags are campaign-specific and used sparingly.
Engagement Strategy
His primary engagement mechanism is tagging collaborators and agency partners, which consistently pulls comments from the creative community. He does not ask questions or explicitly invite engagement, yet his posts attract strong comment threads, which suggests his audience is intrinsically motivated to respond to the work. He celebrates individuals publicly and by name, which generates goodwill and reciprocal engagement.
Performance Indicators
Posts are generating strong engagement across the board, with one of his best recent performing posts, the Spikes Asia Agency of the Year announcement, drawing 184+ reactions and 15 comments. Campaign launch posts like Lump Lottery also attracted significant attention given the boldness of the idea. His more reflective posts on craft tend to generate longer, more considered comment threads.
Overall Strategy Summary
Simon's LinkedIn is essentially a curated creative showcase with a human voice behind it. He is not trying to build a personal brand separate from Colenso. The two are tightly linked, and that coherence is part of what makes his presence feel authentic. For anyone who wants to follow what bold, awarded creative work looks like coming out of this part of the world, Simon's feed is one of the better places to look.
Jessica Manins – Co-CEO, Beyond
Jessica Manins is building the future of entertainment through virtual reality.
She has spent years advocating for the growth of the gaming and tech sectors in New Zealand.Her work focuses on creating social experiences that exist entirely in digital spaces
About Beyond
Beyond operates as a venture studio and game developer focused on social connection in VR and AR. The company focuses on creating immersive digital environments that prioritize user interaction and community engagement. Jessica maintains a hybrid business model that balances services revenue with the development of their own intellectual property.
LinkedIn Content Strategy Analysis
Who should follow Jessica: XR and VR enthusiasts, game developers, tech founders, educators interested in immersive learning, and anyone in the NZ tech and startup ecosystem.
Core Value Proposition: Jessica positions herself as a builder at the frontier of immersive technology, someone who is equally comfortable talking about VR fitness for high school students as she is about the commercial realities of platform dependency and bootstrapped growth. Her presence signals optimism, community, and genuine conviction in what XR can do.
Key Themes & Topics
Beyond & gamefit Updates - Her company's VR fitness programme for schools is a recurring anchor. She shares milestones like onboarding new high schools, presenting outcomes to Sport New Zealand, and gathering impact data, framing the product around student wellbeing rather than technology for its own sake.
XR & Immersive Tech Industry - Jessica speaks with authority on the broader XR landscape, covering topics like Apple Vision Pro content, platform dependency on Meta, and the state of the NZ games industry. She positions herself as someone with hard-won, practical knowledge rather than hype.
Ecosystem Building & Community Championing - One of her most consistent behaviors is lifting others. She promotes accelerator programs like Creative HQ, tags founders and collaborators liberally, and celebrates the Wellington and NZ tech scene. Posts like her support for Kaha Create show she sees community building as part of her role.
Founder Insights & Business Lessons - Her podcast appearance on Ways to Wealth gave her a natural vehicle to articulate the realities of building Beyond, covering hybrid revenue models, fast customer validation, and balanced growth. This kind of reflective content resonates strongly with her audience.
Women in Tech & Diversity - She surfaces stats and stories about women in the NZ games industry with quiet pride rather than performative advocacy, which keeps it feeling grounded.
Personal Moments - Jessica occasionally shares personal experiences that reveal character, from camping trips gone wrong to her involvement with a long-running book club. These posts are infrequent but tend to humanize her well.
Format & Presentation Style
Posts are warm, energetic, and often community-facing. She uses emojis freely and they feel natural in her voice rather than forced. She tends toward shorter posts when amplifying others and slightly longer ones when sharing company news or personal reflections. Images are used regularly, typically event photos or product screenshots. Hashtags are minimal.
Engagement Strategy
Jessica is generous with tags, often naming multiple people in a single post, which reliably pulls comments from her network. She also invites direct action, whether asking people to share an opportunity or to check out a program, giving her posts a functional purpose beyond self-promotion. Her reposts and amplification of others' content make up a meaningful portion of her activity.
Performance Indicators
Engagement is strongest on posts that combine a personal milestone with broader relevance. One of her best recent performing posts, a simple image with the caption "I guess it's official," drew 119+ reactions, suggesting her audience responds well when she lets her guard down. Her podcast recap post also performed well at 70+ reactions and strong comments.
Overall Strategy Summary
Jessica's LinkedIn presence is less about broadcasting expertise and more about being a genuine node in a community she cares about. She leads with warmth and purpose, and the credibility follows from that rather than the other way around. For anyone building in the XR or NZ tech space, she is exactly the kind of voice worth following.
Stephanie Quantrill – Founder & Chief Brand Officer, Cue Marketing Partners
Stephanie Quantrill focuses on developing brand identity for top New Zealand names. Experience spans over 20 years across the retail, telco, FMCG, and alcohol sectors.
Serving as a custodian for global brands like Grey Goose and Spark provided deep insights into large-scale marketing. This expertise now helps medium-sized businesses access corporate-level strategic depth.
Community leadership includes judging for the Auckland Business Awards. The goal remains helping companies find "market orientation" to grow with clarity.
About Cue Marketing Partners
Cue Marketing Partners provides fractional marketing for businesses needing senior expertise without a full-time hire. The firm supports medium-sized NZ companies and scale-up SaaS brands.
Offerings include brand refreshes and internal marketing function setup to build resilience. Bridging strategy and execution helps these brands scale effectively.
🔗 Visit Cue Marketing Partners
LinkedIn Content Strategy Analysis
Who should follow Stephanie: Brand marketers, FMCG professionals, small business owners, fractional CMOs, and marketing consultants looking to learn from someone who bridges consumer and B2B marketing.
Core Value Proposition: Stephanie positions herself as a marketing specialist with genuine creative credibility, someone who has done the client-side work, launched her own agency, and can now speak to both worlds. Her content signals that good marketing is good marketing, regardless of category.
Key Themes & Topics
Creative Work & Campaign Wins - Probably her strongest content pillar. She celebrates campaign wins openly and with personal pride, anchoring her authority in real results:
- Silver Axis Award for the Doobious campaign with Hell Pizza
- Trade show branding work for Animals Like Us at Global Pet Expo in Orlando
- The idea of brand consistency as a competitive tool ("right down to our yellow trainers")
Personal & Career Storytelling - Stephanie weaves her personal life into her professional narrative without losing the thread back to business. Her post about dropping her son at Outward Bound drew strong engagement because it was honest and relatable, and landed on a universal theme around growth and challenge.
B2B vs B2C Commentary - A recurring theme that plays well given her background. She uses her own business and podcast as proof points that the marketing principles she built in FMCG translate directly to B2B, which is a genuinely interesting argument to her audience.
Podcast Promotion - She consistently references the Canned the Marketing Podcast she co-hosts with Ben van Rooy, using her posts to drive audience there.
Client & Category Immersion - She shares what she's learning while embedded with clients, from spending time in Australia learning the pet food category to exhibiting at trade shows in the US. This reinforces her role as a hands-on, curious practitioner.
Format & Presentation Style
Stephanie writes in a conversational, real-person voice. Posts often open with a striking quote or a scene-setting detail before pulling back to the broader point. She uses bullet points sparingly and tends to let the story breathe rather than bullet everything. Photos from events and trade shows feature regularly. Hashtags are present but minimal and relevant. Emojis are used for warmth rather than decoration.
Engagement Strategy
She tags collaborators and clients generously, which draws them into comments and widens reach. She ends posts with an open question or an invitation to comment, which works particularly well for her more reflective pieces. Her audience tends to respond to the personal posts most visibly.
Performance Indicators
Posts are generating solid engagement, with one of her best recent performing posts, the trade show recap from Global Pet Expo, drawing 131+ reactions and 15 comments. Personal storytelling posts like the Outward Bound send-off also performed well at 57+ reactions. Her campaign win post for Doobious picked up fast early engagement.
Overall Strategy Summary
Stephanie is building a personal brand that says: smart, experienced, real, and still in the work. She doesn't position herself as a thought leader lecturing from a distance. She shows up as someone actively in the trenches alongside her clients, and that authenticity is her strongest differentiator in what can be a crowded marketing consultant space.
Tanya Johnson – Chief Product Officer, Auror
Tanya Johnson is at the forefront of using technology for social good. At Auror, she leads the product team in creating software that helps retailers and police collaborate to prevent crime.
She is passionate about building ethical products and making sure that technology is used responsibly.
Her career has taken her through various product leadership roles where she has focused on solving complex problems with simple, human-centered design.
About Auror
Auror is a retail crime intelligence platform based in Auckland. The company has raised approximately 67.9 million dollars in funding to date. As of 2026, it employs nearly 300 people and works with some of the world's largest retailers.
LinkedIn Content Strategy Analysis
Who should follow Tanya: Product leaders, CPOs, and senior product managers, as well as people working in tech-for-good and retail crime prevention, Women in Tech communities, and anyone interested in thoughtful takes on AI's role in product and engineering teams.
Core Value Proposition: Tanya positions herself as a mission-driven CPO who is building something genuinely meaningful at Auror — a company working to reduce violent retail crime — while also showing up as a visible advocate for women in tech, neurodiversity, and honest AI adoption. The combination of company pride, professional depth, and personal conviction gives her profile a sense of coherence that many executive LinkedIn accounts lack.
Key Themes & Topics
Auror's Mission & Milestones - The backbone of her content. Tanya posts regularly about what Auror is building, why it matters, and what the team is achieving. Posts celebrating the Deloitte Fast 50 recognition (150 reactions), Auror's NZ$82m Series C raise (374 reactions, her strongest post in the dataset), and AI hackathon outcomes read as genuine pride rather than corporate cheerleading. The retail crime reduction mission gives her content a moral weight that makes it more compelling than standard product leadership posts.
Hiring - A high-frequency content type, and notably she makes it work better than most. Tanya's job posts don't read like listings — they read like pitches. Her post recruiting a Chief of Staff drew 172 reactions. A call for a senior ML/AI leader in the US drew 103 reactions. She writes about what she's looking for in a way that makes the role and the team sound genuinely attractive.
AI in Product & Engineering - A growing and credible thread. Posts about Auror's AI hackathon, developer skepticism around AI adoption, the team's approach to experimentation, and her own reading on the state of AI models all reflect someone who is actively managing AI integration rather than performing interest in it. One of her best recent performing posts examined why some experienced developers resist AI, drawing 58 reactions and 11 comments.
Women in Tech & Inclusion - Tanya co-runs or is deeply involved with Women in Tech Aotearoa NZ, and this shows up consistently in her content. Posts recruiting speakers, recapping events, and advocating for practical gender equity actions rather than symbolic gestures tend to generate strong comment engagement. Her IWD post listing three concrete things male leaders could actually do (rather than post a cupcake graphic) drew 67 reactions and 8 comments.
Neurodiversity - An area she has posted about with real care and specificity. A post recapping a Women in Tech event on neurodiversity in the workplace drew 119 reactions and 8 comments, one of her stronger organic performers.
Personal Reflection & Identity - Tanya occasionally writes about her own experience as a queer person in tech, the importance of being visible, and what her seven-year anniversary at Auror has meant to her. These posts are infrequent but generate meaningful comment engagement, suggesting an audience that values her when she is personal.
Format & Presentation Style
Tanya writes in a warm, direct register with occasional emoji that feels purposeful rather than decorative. Posts are typically medium length — enough context to be substantive, not so much that they lose momentum. She uses bullet points selectively, mainly in hiring posts where clarity matters. Many posts tag colleagues, partners, and community members, which extends reach organically. She occasionally uses bold text for emphasis within posts, particularly in hiring content.
Engagement Strategy
Her highest engagement consistently comes from company milestone posts, which benefit from Auror's own network amplifying the signal, and from hiring posts that are unusually well-written. Her personal and advocacy content generates the highest comment-to-reaction ratios, indicating an engaged audience that feels moved to respond when she writes from conviction. She promotes Women in Tech Aotearoa NZ events regularly and functions as a visible community host rather than just an attendee.
Performance Indicators
Reactions per post range from around 20 to 374. The Series C announcement is a clear outlier driven by company news. Excluding that, the practical ceiling for her original voice content sits around 150 reactions, with most posts landing between 30 and 100. Comment counts are notably high on opinion and inclusion posts relative to reactions, which is a healthy engagement pattern. One post about a career transition (someone else's Salesforce layoff) generated 27 comments despite no visible reaction count, suggesting strong community support impulse in her network.
Overall Strategy Summary
Tanya has built a profile that works because it is genuinely integrated. Her work, her values, her community, and her voice all point in the same direction. The Auror mission gives her content a level of moral seriousness that most product leadership accounts cannot claim, and she earns it by posting about the actual hard work rather than just the wins. The clearest opportunity is posting more frequently in her own voice on product leadership topics, where her thinking is clearly sharp but her output is relatively infrequent compared to the company-led content.
Perrin Rowland – Chief Product Experience Officer, Academy EX
Perrin Rowland is an expert in the field of learning experience design. At Academy EX, she focuses on how to make education more engaging and relevant for the modern world.
She has a background in media and education, which she uses to create learning environments that are both fun and functional.
Perrin believes that the way we learn needs to change as fast as the world around us.
About Academy EX
Academy EX is a New Zealand-based education provider that focuses on postgraduate and undergraduate courses in technology and change. It is one of the leading independent education companies in the country.
LinkedIn Content Strategy Analysis
Who should follow Perrin: Customer experience practitioners, CX leaders, digital transformation professionals, and anyone navigating AI adoption in organizations. Also worth following for anyone who wants smart, funny content about the intersection of technology and human behavior.
Core Value Proposition: Perrin positions herself as a CCO and CX strategist who understands both the human side of customer experience and the disruptive potential of AI, and can communicate both with wit and genuine insight. She is also the visible face of academyEX, an education platform, and threads her thought leadership with authentic promotion of its programs.
Key Themes & Topics
Customer Experience & CX Strategy - Her professional bedrock. Posts challenge conventional wisdom about journey mapping, process-first thinking, and what CX strategy actually fails on. Her post "Your customer journey map is a beautiful lie" drew 216 reactions and 26 comments, one of her best recent performing posts. Another strong performer argued that customers compare you not to your competitors but to whoever gave them their last great experience — a reframe that clearly struck a nerve. The writing is sharp and confident, drawing on culinary metaphors and everyday observations to make CX concepts accessible.
AI — Honest, Critical, and Enthusiastic - Perrin occupies a nuanced lane on AI: she genuinely loves it, says so loudly, and is actively building with it, but she is also one of the more honest voices calling out AI slop, lazy prompting, and the gap between organizational AI strategies and human reality. Posts about building her first technical agent, using Claude and ChatGPT across multiple projects, and the tension between AI adoption and organizational certainty all reflect someone who has done the work rather than just read the headlines.
Personal Stories with Professional Payoff - Some of her most engaged content is anchored in personal experience. Her Philippines travel post, opening with "I am not a photographer. Please adjust your expectations accordingly," drew 121 reactions and 13 comments. A post about reaching 10,000 followers for academyEX hit 88 reactions and 6 comments. These work because they don't separate the personal from the professional — they use the personal to make the professional more human.
academyEX & Education Promotion - A recurring thread promoting academyEX's programs, micro-credentials, and leadership courses. These posts are generally lower-engagement than her opinion content, but they serve a clear pipeline purpose.
Viral & Playful Content - Perrin has an eye for the shareable moment. One of her best recent performing posts was an AI-generated image experiment — photos that looked like her but she hadn't taken, in an orange shirt she doesn't own — which drew 171 reactions and 22 comments. A post about a 37-year-old CEO rejected by Google four times who built an AI company became her most-liked post in the dataset at 546 reactions and 135 comments, though its format (a founder profile story with a link) suggests it may have had unusual algorithmic reach.
Format & Presentation Style
Perrin's writing style is distinctive and hard to miss. She writes in punchy, sentence-per-line bursts that build rhythm and momentum. Parenthetical asides and self-deprecating interjections are common and feel genuinely natural rather than performed. Posts are often structured around a provocative opening line, then a build, then a payoff. She uses humor consistently without undermining her authority. Images appear regularly, often screenshots, event photos, or AI-generated visuals she's riffing on.
Engagement Strategy
Comment counts are proportionally high relative to many LinkedIn accounts, which reflects writing that invites disagreement or conversation rather than just validation. She tags sparingly and purposefully. Hashtag use is minimal and often ironic. She doesn't seem to use a newsletter, but academyEX courses function as her primary conversion vehicle. The mix of genuine personality, credible expertise, and self-aware humor creates a profile that feels worth following even for people not immediately in the market for CX consulting.
Performance Indicators
Reactions per post range from roughly 10 to 546, with most original opinion content landing between 40 and 220. Comment-to-reaction ratios are high, particularly on CX strategy posts and AI opinion pieces, which is a strong signal of content that provokes genuine response. The outlier post (546 reactions) appears to be an audience-borrowed viral format rather than typical content, so the truer engagement ceiling for her original voice content sits closer to 200 reactions.
Overall Strategy Summary
Perrin is building a reputation as one of the more interesting CX voices in the New Zealand market, with a style that combines genuine expertise, playful irreverence, and real-world AI experimentation. The blend is unusual and it works. Her biggest opportunity is probably doubling down on the opinion-led CX content, where her voice is clearest and her audience most engaged, rather than the more promotional academyEX posts which visibly underperform by comparison.
Peter Thomson – CTO, Icehouse Ventures
Peter Thomson is a key figure in the New Zealand startup ecosystem. As the CTO of Icehouse Ventures, he looks at the intersection of technology and venture capital.
He has a background in design thinking and brand strategy, which he applies to help startups grow.
Peter is also a prolific writer and has spent years documenting his thoughts on business and technology on his personal blog.
About Icehouse Ventures
Icehouse Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage New Zealand startups. The firm has invested over 600 million dollars across its various funds and maintains a network of over 3,000 investors.
LinkedIn Content Strategy Analysis
Who should follow Peter: Founders, operators, and investors in New Zealand's startup ecosystem, as well as anyone interested in early-stage venture capital, software development, and the intersection of AI and business.
Core Value Proposition: Peter positions himself as a CTO, builder, and VC insider who translates the complex worlds of venture capital, software engineering, and startup culture into grounded, story-driven posts. He writes with genuine curiosity and a distinct New Zealand perspective.
Key Themes & Topics
NZ Startup Ecosystem Cheerleading - His most consistent thread. Peter regularly celebrates New Zealand founders, portfolio companies, and milestones, often with strong personal context:
- Fund launches and Demo Days at Icehouse Ventures
- Portfolio company achievements (Partly, Tracksuit, Dawn Aerospace, Tradify)
- NZ diaspora networks and how Kiwis punch above their weight internationally
Software Engineering & AI - A growing focus that reflects his CTO role:
- AI coding tools (Claude, GPT-5, Cursor's Composer)
- Laravel development and internal tooling
- Domain testing, venture ledger systems, and in-house software builds
- Posts about video game interfaces for coding agents and agentic workflows
VC Mechanics & Policy - Posts that go deeper into the plumbing of venture capital:
- Employee stock option exercise periods (strong opinion, high engagement)
- Fund secondary transfers, carry waterfalls, FIF tax
- Global VC trends from conversations with Andreessen Horowitz and PitchBook
SF/Silicon Valley Dispatches - Real-time trip reports from market immersion visits with the IV team, naming the people they met, the frameworks they discussed, and what it means for NZ startups.
Format & Presentation Style
Peter writes in long-form narrative prose. Posts tend to open with a hook that is personal or counter-intuitive (throwing up before meeting Tim Brown at IDEO; a surprising observation about a city street) before pivoting to the insight or announcement. He tags a lot of people and companies throughout, which likely drives notifications and secondary reach. Photos accompany most posts. He writes the way a thoughtful operator blogs, not the way a personal branding coach would tell you to.
Engagement Strategy
Peter's engagement is driven largely by community investment rather than pure content optimization. He participates in NZ startup conversations naturally and his posts read as genuine reflections rather than engineered content. One of his best recent performing posts was a simple infographic asking "Who am I missing?" about the NZ startup ecosystem, which generated 475 reactions and 168 comments. Another standout was a post advocating for longer employee stock option exercise periods, drawing 185 reactions and 79 comments, suggesting strong resonance when he takes a clear public stance on policy.
He uses hashtags sparingly (#newzealand, #startups, #venturecapital) and does not push a newsletter or external funnel.
Performance Indicators
Engagement ranges widely, from around 12 to 475 reactions per post. Posts tied to strong personal narrative or community recognition tend to outperform pure announcements. Comment counts are notably high on opinion-led and community-mapping posts.
Overall Strategy Summary
Peter is building credibility as the technologist inside NZ's leading VC firm, while simultaneously nurturing the broader Kiwi founder community. His strategy is less about reach optimization and more about being a genuine, visible participant in the ecosystem he serves. The combination of software depth and VC insight is rare, and that niche is working in his favor.
Wyndi Tagi – CEO & Co-Founder, WE Mana
Wyndi Tagi is a Māori business leader who is redefining the accounting industry. She co-founded WE Mana with the belief that business should be about more than just numbers; it should be about people and whānau.
She incorporates Māori values like manaakitanga into her business model.
Her company has won multiple awards for its human-centered approach to financial services.
About WE Mana
WE Mana is an accounting and business advisory firm. It is the only organization to win three or more awards in a single year at the Xero awards. The company focuses on the health and well-being of the business owner alongside their financial success.
LinkedIn Content Strategy Analysis
Who should follow Wyndi: Business owners, entrepreneurs, and founders navigating growth, burnout, succession, and sale-readiness, particularly women in business and those drawn to values-led leadership in New Zealand and the Pacific.
Core Value Proposition: Wyndi positions herself as a business advisor and community builder who helps purpose-driven founders grow their businesses without losing themselves in the process. Her content blends professional insight with raw personal disclosure, rooted in her Samoan-Pakeha identity and 14-plus years in business alongside her husband Eli.
Key Themes & Topics
The Cost of Business Success - Her most resonant content explores what success quietly takes from founders: sleepless nights, relentless pressure, a nervous system that never fully switches off. Posts framed around "the hidden cost of success" generate strong comment threads because they name something many business owners feel but rarely say out loud.
Identity, Culture & Belonging - A recurring and distinctive thread. Wyndi writes about her mixed heritage (Samoan, Greek, English), the cultural significance of receiving Matai titles from Samoan villages, and what it means to hold multiple identities in a business context. One of her best recent performing posts explored her mixed ancestry in depth, drawing 80 reactions. Another, celebrating her and Eli's new Matai titles, reached 130 reactions, her highest-performing original post in the dataset.
Running a Business with Your Partner - A practical and deeply personal topic she returns to often. Posts challenge the common advice against business partnerships between couples, drawing on her own 15-year marriage and business partnership with Eli. These posts tend to generate strong comment counts, suggesting they connect with a specific and engaged readership.
Intentional Living & Personal Growth - Posts around annual words of intention (SOVEREIGN, FREEDOM), saying no, protecting time, and the concept of "living fully and dying empty." These are not motivational platitudes; they read like genuine working-through of big questions.
Community & Events - Wyndi actively promotes The Table (a women's business networking initiative) and WE Mana, integrating community-building directly into her content mix.
Format & Presentation Style
Wyndi writes in short, punchy paragraphs, often with white space and line breaks that give posts a breathable, conversational feel. Hooks are consistently strong and personal: "I'm so proud of myself," "My Dad was pakeha," "One day you will be in a box." She uses bullet points selectively for lists within longer posts. Many posts include photos, often personal moments with family or at events. She occasionally uses te reo Māori and Samoan words naturally within posts.
Engagement Strategy
Comment volume is a standout. Posts on partnership in business, identity, and wellbeing routinely generate 10-plus comments despite relatively modest reaction counts. This suggests a tightly engaged audience that actually reads and responds, rather than passive scroll-and-like behavior. She also promotes a newsletter and drives traffic to events. Hashtags used include #business, #leadership, #authenticity, and #purposedriven.
Performance Indicators
Reaction counts typically range from 13 to 130, with the Matai title post being a clear outlier. Comment counts per post are proportionally high relative to reactions, which points to above-average audience engagement depth. Her best-performing posts tend to be either culturally grounded personal stories or honest reflections on the harder realities of running a business.
Overall Strategy Summary
Wyndi is building an identity as a trusted advisor to founders who want business success and personal wholeness, not one at the expense of the other. Her Samoan-Pakeha background and willingness to share real personal experience set her apart in what is otherwise a fairly generic "business coach" space. The audience she's building is small but clearly deeply loyal.
Leeann Watson – CEO, Business Canterbury
Leeann Watson is a tireless advocate for the Canterbury business community. She has led the Chamber of Commerce through some of the region's most difficult periods, including the earthquakes and the pandemic.
Leeann is also a regular voice in the media, speaking on behalf of local businesses to local and central government.
About Business Canterbury
Business Canterbury is the region's largest business support organization. It has over 2,700 members and provides services ranging from training and networking to policy advocacy.
LinkedIn Content Strategy Analysis
Who should follow Leeann: Canterbury and South Island business leaders, executives, and policymakers, as well as anyone following New Zealand's regional business landscape, advocacy, and economic development.
Core Value Proposition: Leeann positions herself as the visible face and voice of Business Canterbury, using LinkedIn primarily as a platform to showcase the organisation's events, advocacy wins, and regional economic momentum. Her content communicates authority and access, placing her at the table with prime ministers, reserve bank governors, and major CEOs.
Key Themes & Topics
High-Profile Access & Advocacy - The dominant thread. Leeann regularly posts about meetings in Wellington with ministers, conversations with opposition leaders, and hosting visiting executives and economists. Posts featuring the PM, the Reserve Bank Governor, or Fonterra's CEO tend to be her highest-performing content. One of her best recent performing posts featured the new Reserve Bank Governor's first public address to a Canterbury business audience, generating 221 reactions. Another, hosting Fonterra CEO Miles Hurrell in Christchurch, drew 142 reactions. These posts signal that Business Canterbury is where the conversations that matter happen.
Canterbury Economy & Regional Pride - A consistent and warm strand of content celebrating local business wins: new factories opening, concept stores launching, companies expanding. A post celebrating Business Canterbury members' milestones across the region drew 175 reactions, suggesting this community-recognition angle resonates strongly with a local audience that wants to see its own region succeed.
Events & Speaker Lineups - A practical content type Leeann uses to build anticipation and signal the calibre of Business Canterbury's programming. Posts preview upcoming speakers, thank partners, and recap what happened, often with photos from the room.
Policy & Regulation Updates - Shorter, more functional posts sharing updates on the Holidays Act, government procurement, workplace regulation, and trade. These are service-oriented rather than opinion-led, but they reinforce her positioning as someone across the policy detail.
Opinion & Reframing - Occasionally Leeann steps back from the event-and-advocacy drumbeat to offer a genuine point of view. Her post asking "What if we reimagined the headlines?" and making a case for celebrating business resilience rather than spotlighting failure generated 46 reactions and 8 comments, a notably higher comment count than her typical posts. When she writes from personal conviction rather than organisational voice, the engagement depth increases.
Format & Presentation Style
Posts are consistently short to medium length, mostly prose without heavy formatting. She writes in a warm, collegial tone that reflects the "chamber of commerce" world she inhabits rather than a personal brand builder's playbook. Most posts include at least one photo from an event or meeting. She tags individuals and organisations liberally, which helps posts travel through professional networks. Emojis appear occasionally but sparingly.
Engagement Strategy
Leeann's engagement pattern is distinctly event-driven and relationship-based. High-reaction posts almost always involve a well-known guest or a moment of regional pride. Comment counts are generally low, which is consistent with an audience that likes to signal support but doesn't necessarily feel moved to discuss. The exception is when she moves into opinion territory or civics (her voting encouragement post drew 8 comments). She does not appear to use a newsletter or push traffic anywhere other than Business Canterbury events and opportunities.
Performance Indicators
Reactions typically range from 14 to 221, with the highest-performing posts anchored in high-profile meetings and regional milestone celebrations. One of her best recent performing posts was a photo-led recap of hosting the Reserve Bank Governor for her first Canterbury address, which outperformed most other content by a significant margin. The pattern suggests that name recognition of the guest drives engagement more than the content of what was discussed.
Overall Strategy Summary
Leeann's LinkedIn presence is less a personal brand play and more a visible extension of her institutional role. She is demonstrating, post by post, that Business Canterbury is active, well-connected, and punching at a national level. For members and sponsors, this is reassuring. The opportunity for Leeann lies in posting more often in her own voice, where the data shows she creates more genuine conversation rather than polite endorsement.
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