ALUMNAE NEWS
The
courage to grow In mid February, Dio Old Girl Anna Squelch (2000) returned to school after almost two decades. Anna visited the Diocesan Junior School in a capacity she could never have imagined when she left Dio at the end of Form 6 (Year 12).
er mission was to run a series of workshops with the Year 6 girls, teaching them about emotions, mindfulness, friendships, self love, boundaries and vulnerability. While they’re topics Anna knows well, working with primary school children was a new but entirely uplifting experience for her. “It was an absolute career highlight and I can’t wait to share this with more schools in the future,” she says. “It’s so nice, too, to go full circle and to go back to the place where I started.” An integrative nutrition health coach and mindset and empowerment mentor, Anna launched Conscious World Wellness in 2017. She works predominantly with women in their 20s and 30s, helping them succeed and find alignment in all areas of their lives, from health, wealth and business to relationships, spirituality and mindset. “We are consciously creating everything that is happening in our lives, first in our minds. I only wish I knew that 20 years ago when I was shaping my beliefs about the world. I could have saved myself a whole lot of pain and suffering. But it was necessary for my growth.” From her Auckland base, Anna offers online and face-to-face coaching 76
DIO TODAY
programmes. She currently has clients around New Zealand as well as in LA, London and Fiji. She also organises and runs retreats in Bali and Waihi, tailoring the content to suit her clients. Generally, her Bali retreats involve yoga, massage, surfing lessons, and workshops on goalsetting, visioning and holistic health. “Connecting people, helping them fulfill their purpose and live up to their potential – that’s what I love doing,” she says. But getting to this point wasn’t a straight forward path. Anna initially studied hospitality at AUT University, then worked in the hotel industry in Auckland. In 2006, she moved to Sydney and got her first taste of the corporate world working at Blackberry, first as a facilities manager and then on the marketing team running the company’s campaigns for Telstra. “I’d only planned to be in Sydney for a year before heading to London, but I enjoyed working on the events and launch parties, and with US celebrities, so I stayed longer.” But it was also a challenging role. In her mid 20s and with minimal training, Anna was given huge budgets and lots of responsibility – that’s when the self doubt began to creep in.
“I started wondering if I was cut out for that world. I felt massively out of my depth and developed decision fatigue. I was incapable of making decisions. I just didn’t have trust in myself, and that spilled out into my personal life. Do I go to London? Stay in Sydney? Stay with this boyfriend?” With Blackberry’s popularity waning, the fear of being made redundant prompted Anna to bite the bullet. In 2012, she moved to London and searched for a job in the lucrative financial services industry to help fund her European travels. She admits to embellishing her credentials a little to secure work. “I said that I’d been an EA (executive assistant) before. And when I took that leap into the unknown, that set in motion an idea that maybe I am capable of doing this. “I always say to my clients, going outside of your usual environment is the best place to anchor in any kind of transformation. I was on the other side
