On the Record: Michelle Whitmore from Metro Marketing. Photo/Andrew Warner
Michelle Whitmore laughs her infectious laugh throughout our photo shoot.
"I'm not very good at doing pensive," she tells the photographer. "It doesn't come naturally."
Michelle smiles more than she looks serious and it's obvious she doesn't sit still.
In addition to overseeing 16 staff and spearheading campaigns for an array of clients at her company Metro Marketing, Michelle is also the brains behind a number of successful community and philanthropic ventures.
"If I didn't need to work and I could just do idea generation for charities, I would," she says.
"I love coming up with ideas. I can be out for a run and it's almost like you have to still your brain. It just goes off like popcorn all the time."
One of her biggest ideas yet was this year's Gallipoli exhibition in Tauranga.
Determined to see the city's WW1 soldiers remembered, she secured $100,000 in funding and headed a team who organised the free exhibition in just four months.
A history graduate whose offices are housed in Woodhill, a grand 130-year-old building in Otumoetai, she is vocal about the need for a local civic museum.
She is also chairwoman of the Breast Cancer Support Service Trust Tauranga, conceiving the initial idea for its 200 Club, which has raised more than $50,000 in three years to support people newly diagnosed with the disease.
The 200 Club is a reference to the number of people diagnosed with breast cancer in the Bay each year and the $200 cost of annual membership to the club.
I love coming up with ideas. I can be out for a run and it's almost like you have to still your brain. It just goes off like popcorn all the time.
The mother of three is also a long-time Rotary member and on a board working to build new clubrooms for Papamoa Surf Life Saving Club.
Colour Dash - a 5km fun run during which participants are sprinkled in colourful dust - is her latest charitable effort and, so far, Colour Dash events in six cities, including Tauranga, have raised $75,000 for Ronald McDonald House.
A seventh is scheduled for Auckland in December.
At Metro, Michelle's team has done work for Alzheimer's New Zealand and Rotary's Save a Life and Treasured Art campaigns, and she makes the services of a graphic designer available free to non-profit organisations (NPOs) for 10 hours a week.
Metro is also supporting NPOs to secure Google Ad Grants, a branch of Google that offers charities $10,000 a month in free advertising.
The first to gain Metro's support is Daya Trust, an NPO aimed at empowering women and girls through education in India and New Zealand.
Michelle, the eldest of three sisters and mother to a daughter and two sons, hopes to extend the support to two more organisations as part of a company strategy to "walk the talk" of a core value she learned at Rotary: "Serve first, profit second."
A finalist in The Bay of Plenty Times Person of the Year last year, Michelle also lives by two mantras she learned on Outward Bound at 22 - "Life is not a dress rehearsal" and "You always get out more than you put in".
Like I said, life's not a dress rehearsal and I just don't want to live a half-life. It's so precious, I just try and squeeze in as much as I can.
She says of her community work: "It's not just for philanthropic reasons. There's actually a lot of self-fulfilment."
If all that wasn't enough to keep her busy, Michelle also runs marathons.
Now 47, she aims to "complete not compete" and after doing her first at 39, she now wants to run one on every continent.
"I'm a bit of a list girl," she says. Last year, she did an off-road marathon though a safari park in South Africa, adding to two in New Zealand and one in the United States.
But rather than the African trip being just about her personal goal, Michelle went as the support person of a woman with Alzheimer's, completing the difficult 42km Big Five course in six hours, 20 minutes.
Next on her list is the Tokyo marathon in Asia, leaving Europe, South America and Antarctica to round out her list. "The biggie is Antarctica," she says.
"A lot of people who I know who have done it will go and do South America and then they'll get on the boat and go down to Antarctica so they cross those two off together."
When I laugh incredulously, she says: "I know. I know. So whether I'll get there or not, I don't know, but I like goal setting."
Another of her goals is to do all of New Zealand's Great Walks.
She has already done six of the nine, but when I ask if she wants to attempt the 3000km Te Araroa, she laughs again and says: "I'm not crazy.
I stay within my means. I like being fit and I like doing stuff like that, but the good thing about tramping is you have lots of fun along the way, and I've done them with my kids, which is really neat."
Michelle is mum to Rosie, 19, Sam, 17, and Matt, 14, with former husband Andrew Collins. Rosie works for Metro in Wellington and Sam is heading to Victoria University to study geology next year, while Matt is at Otumoetai College.
Michelle says she has a great relationship with Andrew and being a single parent is not something that has defined her.
"It's been immaterial to my life really. It's because we're such good friends and whatever works best for them, we've supported."
It's been immaterial to my life really. It's because we're such good friends and whatever works best for them, we've supported.
Although now in a new relationship, Michelle says time on her own with her kids has created "some pretty cool experiences".
Tramping began as a hobby she could do with the three, and she laughs recalling their first trip to Waikaremoana when Matt was 8 and she took the wrong food and packed too much.
But regardless of circumstances, Michelle says her approach to life has always been not to waste a moment.
"Like I said, life's not a dress rehearsal and I just don't want to live a half-life. It's so precious, I just try and squeeze in as much as I can."
Marketing is a career that fits her mantras, exposing her to inspiring people and businesses every day.
Michelle also credits her career with providing great mentors, including Peter Gillespie of EziBuy, where she worked for six years, and Leo Smith of Tauranga firm Loadrite.
She also counts former Port of Tauranga chief executive Jon Mayson and his wife, Bev, as "amazing friends and mentors", and says marketing more than anything defines her. "It really puts a fire in my belly."
Michelle has a hashtag #newoldschool, which encapsulates her approach to the profession in the age of social media.
She believes an overall marketing strategy is still key but says the discipline now requires a team of digital specialists, and some of her employees are young people recruited purely for their training in Google.
By contrast, she was one of just three people in the marketing department at EziBuy in the 1990s.
Rotary has also been a defining influence in Michelle's life since doing a Rotary exchange to Arizona in 1985, her last year of high school.
If I didn't need to work and I could just do idea generation for charities, I would
Next month, she returns for the 11th time to visit the last of her four American host families, with whom she became particularly close.
The experience inspired her to go to university, making her the first member of her family to do so.
Michelle grew up in Marton, where her father worked in a wool scour and her mother a clothing factory. She attended Rangitikei College and says her parents, who now live at Papamoa, had an "incredible work ethic" and instilled in their children a great sense of self-belief.
"We were all put on our bikes and we all went to swimming, and we'd swim a mile before school and then we'd bike home and get ready for school. There was just an expectation that if you had opportunities and you could do it, that you'd go out and give it a go." Her parents told her from a young age: "If you want something to happen, make it happen."
She studied business in her first year at Massey, but floundered, and after a session with the university counsellor, she completed an honour's degree in history.
The counsellor's advice - "do what you love and the rest will take care of itself" - is advice she imparts to her children.
She says doing a BA taught her to how to write and think critically, and the hundreds of hours of unpaid work she did on the Gallipoli exhibition testify to her enduring love of history, marketing and the community.
"It was like all those single strands of your life just all came together at that one moment. I feel exceedingly proud of that exhibition," she says, holding her hand to her heart.