China entices Leadership Network member back once more

Jamie about to head in for her Schwartzman Scholar interview in London late last year

Jamie’s unique power to stand out from the crowd was evident from the very beginning. Literally. She was one of the last babies to be born in Queenstown before they moved the maternity ward to Invercargill. With one impressive achievement under her belt, Jamie refused to stop there. 

Growing up in Queenstown with parents working in tourism, she reflects on how special it was to grow up there. “Mum is one of the most frugal people I know, but in really smart ways”, she says. Jamie’s mum would enter these radio competitions and sometimes win big because of how few people tried. One time they won this giant canvas tent, “so from then on, almost every weekend we would go camping”. 

Between camping trips, skiing, and occasional modelling, Jamie reaped the benefits of Queenstown’s entertainment industry. “My big break though was being the character of Lucy’s body double in Narnia”. 

At 11, bourgeoning celebrity Jamie left behind the fast life of fame in Queenstown to attend boarding school at Columba College in Dunedin. She wanted a change. “Dad joked about finding a boarding school and I took it seriously”, she says. 

Her love of China and studying Mandarin has taken Jamie back to China on multiple occasions

Jamie’s first touchpoint with Asia came in high school when she, by process of elimination, chose Mandarin as her language in Year 9. She reflects, “I loved learning the characters in particular. It was almost like a form of meditation for me”. 

While getting the grades and having fun were initial motivations for learning, a two-week school trip to China in Year 11 would change everything. With a packed itinerary: Beijing, Hangzhou, Xi’an and Suzhou, Jamie’s world expanded exponentially.

Back in New Zealand and ready to head off to university, Jamie never forgot the lessons from her two-week China trip. She attended University of Otago and studied international business and Chinese language.

Throughout her university career, Jamie experienced two more tastes of China. The first came as she was awarded a Prime Minister’s Scholarship to study Chinese in Dalian. She went to a lesser-known university, known for full immersion. “I thought, if I’m going to China, I don’t want to be speaking English — that’s not the point of this.” 

Jamie with a classmate in Dalian in 2017

Over time, Jamie adapted seamlessly to Dalian life, making friends through Mandarin with the other non-English speaking Chinese language learners in the class — from South Korea, Japan, Kazakhstan, to name a few. 

She shares a colourful anecdote of time spent bonding with her friend Mei from Japan: “We clicked over the TV show Prison Break. We would get a whole bunch of Chinese snacks, and in our broken Mandarin, chat together and then watch with the subtitles in both our own languages”. 

Experiences like this were the norm in Dalian. Jamie’s life was dotted with international knowledge exchanges over hot pot, bonding with Bahranian medicine students at the local gym, and even a trip to Xinjiang to visit the family home of her Dalian best friend. 

The quiet comforts of Dalian were replaced with the hustle and bustle of Beijing when Jamie moved to Tsinghua University to study economics and Chinese.

At Tsinghua, Jamie connected with a remarkably diverse group of international students. “My friends were from all over the world, but everybody had the same ambition to learn from people about another culture”.

Jamie on the Great Wall with a group of friends she made while studying in Beijing, China

Jamie arrived back in New Zealand in 2018 and started an internship at Goldman Sachs as an investment analyst shortly after graduation. Ending the internship with an offer for an esteemed grad role at the bank, Jamie turned it down and instead chose to travel for nine months.

Her odyssey offshore reconnected her to the familiar thrill of being in Asia — and soon after this epiphany, she decided to return to China again. 

During university, Jamie worked for a subsidiary of Crimson Education. “I knew people there still, and I knew they had just opened an office in China”. Just like that, she was headed back east-ways. 

Covid-19 devastated China just a few months after Jamie made the move. “It was when the supermarkets downstairs from our apartment started running out of water that we got properly nervous”, she says. 

Jamie touched down on NZ soil in the nick of time. Though happy to be home safe, “I felt like the experience I was looking for was kind of robbed from us a little bit”, she says.  

After moving up to Auckland, Jamie’s newly minted membership in the Leadership Network solidified her gut feeling that her story with China was unfinished. “The Leadership Network far surpasses any other network I’ve been in or know about”, she says.  

It was no surprise then that a Leadership Network hui in Taiwan last year would background her choice to seek out China once again. “I just kept thinking, I miss it”, she says. 

Jamie and fellow Leadership Network members during the network's Taiwan Hui in 2023

She decided then and there that she would apply to be a Schwartzman Scholar, a highly prestigious one-year fully funded master's degree leadership program at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. With two months left to apply and about to pass the 28-year-old age limit, it was her last chance. 

She prepped for the interview, held in London, on the Taiwan hui during extensive back of the bus sessions with Leadership Network members. 

Jamie got back from Taiwan on the Sunday and flew to London for the interview on the Monday. After her 30-minute interview in front of 5 panellists, she felt like she had screwed it all up. 

It’s lucky that Jamie’s vision of failure is a picture of great success to the average person. Two agonisingly long weeks later, the head of global admissions called her and said, “However your day is going, I know something that can make it even better”. In that tearful moment, Jamie became a Schwartzman Scholar — “they saw the whole me and that was okay”, she reflects. 

In Taiwan for the Leadership Network'sTaiwan Hui, Jamie decided she wanted to return to China once more and applied to become a Schwartzman Scholar

Jamie is now headed off to start the programme this September. With highlights including career coaching for life, Mandarin lessons, and access to every high-profile Schwartzman alumnus, the opportunity can’t be understated.  

Reflecting on this journey, she imparts some timeless wisdom (possibly learnt from her mother’s canvas-tent-winning attitude), “I see a lot of people not applying for things because they count themselves out. I think, who are you to count yourself out? You should always count yourself in, and somebody else can always count you out if you aren’t the right fit”.  

With this philosophy driving her, Jamie has found a way to give the story of Jamie and China another glimmering encore.

The Asia New Zealand Foundation Leadership Network equips New Zealand’s 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.