Turning creative passions into future-ready skills

The Ōtara-Papatoetoe Local Board, Ministry of Youth Development and The Southern Initiative funded 20 scholarships so students could take part in a tech-focused 14-week programme with Mission Ready HQ (MRHQ).

Ngapeita Leilua-Gotz, MRHQ graduate, shares her story and what this programme has done for her confidence and career prospects.

Where I’m from

I am the sum of many parts – my whakapapa is deeply embedded in Taumarunui but also in Sāmoa, Germany and Switzerland. My mum and dad were born and bred in Taumarunui, in a small, close-knit community of whānau. 

If you don’t know where Taumarunui is, it’s smack bang in the middle of the North Island near Taupō. The Whanganui river, which comes from Mt Ruapehu, runs through our town and down to the sea in Whanganui. Our iwi connections are Ngāti Hāua, Ngāti Hekeāwai, Ngāti Tūwharetoa and Ngāti Maniapoto.

In 1962, my mum’s father Lealamanu’a Seko immigrated from Safotulafai in Sāmoa to Taumarunui, where he worked as a shepherd and met my grandmother Joyce. My father’s grandfather, Ernst, was full Swiss and also immigrated to Taumarunui where he married my great grandmother Noti.

I have a famous ancestor, Puhiwāhine, a well-known Māori poet and composer. She married a German man named John Gotty (von Goethe) and is buried at our family urupā at Takaputiraha Marae just out of Taumarunui.

My creative impulse and intellectual thinking come through all these threads, and education has always been important in our family.

Finding my pathway

My parents raised me in east and south Auckland because of job and educational opportunities. I’ve always had a creative mind, so in 2016 I enrolled at Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design to study graphic design. I was the only Polynesian in my class. I doubted myself a lot and struggled to find my sense of purpose. I felt boxed-in creatively but wasn’t sure what to do. So, after gaining my Advanced Diploma in Arts and Design in Year 3, I decided to take a break and finish my degree later if I chose. That break only lasted three weeks.

Graphic design is a great, transferable skill but I wanted to be multi-functional, rather than a specialist. I’d heard about front-end web design and coding and was curious. Less than a month after finishing at Whitecliffe, I joined the 15-Week Coding Bootcamp at Dev Academy in Newmarket.

A lot of people say coding takes years to learn and they’re right, but you don’t have to know everything to get started. Coding was really hard to grasp and it involved a lot of technical lingo. It also added another string to my bow and was a great introduction to the tech industry. 

There are very few Māori in the tech industry, let alone Māori women. As a young Polynesian woman, I wanted to make my mark with the skills I’d acquired in the creative tech industry, but how?

Embracing a new opportunity

Tired of studying and feeling like I should be getting a real nine-to-five job, the last thing I wanted to do was enroll in another course. But, as Dev Academy was winding down, my mum suggested I look at Mission Ready HQ (MRHQ), a 14-week programme to help people launch their tech careers.

Alan Kan, MRHQ Co-Founder, hosted an open day at Te Haa o Manukau, an event space close to where I live, and I was curious. I found Alan’s friendly, open-minded approach encouraging. He took the time to sit with me and ask about my interests and hobbies. Afterwards, he recommended that I join the Creative Pathway accelerator programme.

Being empathetic with people and a good problem solver were necessary traits I wanted to strengthen in myself. I felt differently about this programme and immediately applied for a fully-funded fees scholarship.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the MRHQ programme would help me combine my creative skills from Whitecliffe and my tech skills from Dev Academy allowing me to create a career path I was passionate about.

Mission Ready HQ Programme

I began the accelerator programme in March 2019 and completed it in mid-July. Following Alan’s recommendation, I chose the Creative Pathway and studied to become a UX Designer.

A UX designer is responsible for peoples’ experiences when they use a business or organisation’s website, app, design or product. A client might want to create an app for rangatahi but isn’t sure where to start. A UX designer’s job is to ask questions, explore rangatahi personas, come up with ideas and create prototypes or design mock-ups for their client.

The programme included classwork and presentations as well as working with a real client to apply what we’d learned, under the mentorship of our tutors. My internship experience with Wellington-based business Study Spy helped me to hone my UX proto-typing skills. Our team redesigned the Study Spy website to make it more functional for students. Working remotely with a team of developers taught us how to manage our workload, be self-sufficient and give the client what they needed.

Datacom competition

In August 2019, I applied to participate in a 48-hour hackathon or design sprint competition called Datacomp, run by global tech company Datacom. Perfect timing! I’d just graduated from the MRHQ Accelerator Programme. How would my skills stack up in a competitive tech environment?

Datacomp hosts about 400 university students and creatives every year. This was my very first hackathon and I was nervous. Named ‘Kai Mana’, my team had 21 people and I didn’t know anyone. Our task was to create a website design solution for Mercury Energy, to enable people that pay their bills on time to give their 12% discount to families in need. 

As the UX designer in our team, I was responsible for building our final design prototypes presented on the competition’s final night. I never thought our team would win the competition, but we won first place, received a large cheque, a large trophy and a plaque each. Without MRHQ’s training, I would not have developed the skills or ability to enable my team to win. 

What’s next?

After already investing a lot into my education, and still feeling like something was missing from my skillset, I am very grateful to MRHQ for the exciting pathway ahead of me. I’m now applying for paid internships and want to work in a tech space that will help to further unlock my creative interests including Māori and Pacific patterns, illustration, and UX design.

I hope that in some way I reflect all the best attributes from my tūpuna, especially their creativity, sense of adventure, courage and aroha.

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe