Nayland College was very excited last week to welcome Alexia Hilbertidou to run two GirlBoss workshops for us. These workshops are sponsored by the Ministry of Education.

The aim of GirlBoss is to empower, confident, resilient, future-ready, young women to lead and change the world.

The first was ‘ChangemakeHer’, a two-hour interactive workshop designed to ignite an interest in girls in a STEAM career (STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics).  Nayland Year 9 students participated in this alongside Year 7 and 8 students from Broadgreen Intermediate School.

Next our amazing Year 11–13 female leaders participated in the ‘GirlBoss Lead’ two-hour workshop that showcased the latest research from NZ’s top recruiters.   It showed how students can learn how to win scholarships, gain internships, and create an online presence which bolsters their career success. 

Student feedback:“The main message from the GirlBoss event is to aim for what you want to achieve, and not just what you think you can do. This event has given me skills in networking that will help and benefit me for the rest of my life and in my future career.”

Alexia, who has just turned 20, has already achieved an enormous amount. Check this out…

• At 16 years Alexia created GirlBoss. Less than two years later GirlBoss has become an 10,500 strong network for ambitious, young New Zealand women.
• At 17 years, as a National finalist for the Eureka Science Competition, she was the youngest person to lead a research project at the New Zealand Treasury.
• At 18 years Alexia was chosen by the US Embassy and NASA for the NASA SOFIA Southern Deployment. She is New Zealand’s first Eisenhower Youth Fellow and has represented New Zealand at the International Future of Work Summit and the Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

Alexia’s passion for gender equity is why she was named a Top 30 Global Teen Leader, a Top 5 Young Leader by the New Zealand Government, The Most Creative in Education at the Idealog Creative Awards, and the Most Influential New Zealand Woman under the age of 25 at the Westpac Women of Influence Awards.

In 2018, Alexia was personally awarded a Queen's Young Leader Award for Services to the Commonwealth by Her Majesty, The Queen, at Buckingham Palace. She was selected from over 20,000 nominations and is the youngest Commonwealth citizen to hold this honour.