Cassie Roma is one of New Zealand's most well-known businesswomen - but won't be staying here for much longer. Photo / Supplied
Cassie Roma is one of New Zealand's most well-known businesswomen - but won't be staying here for much longer. Photo / Supplied
Over the last few years, Cassie Roma has made a name for herself as a “kindness warrior”. From her appearances on The Apprentice Aotearoa and Celebrity Treasure Island, the native Californian has become a household name for her more personable approach to business.
However, two decades after she first moved here, Roma is preparing to pack up and move back to the US.
Revealing it publicly for the first time to Paula Bennett on her NZ Herald podcast Ask Me Anything, Roma said that her daughter has been enrolled to spend her last year of high school in San Diego. It means Roma and her wife will soon be packing up and heading over.
“I’m ready to move home. I am so ready. It’s time,” Roma said, noting that they are still working out how it will work with her and her wife Carly so there’s no date for their departure.
“I didn’t mean to leave for so long. My brother’s got four little girls, and they’re at that beautiful age between 10 and 1 where they just wanna pile on all the time. So I’d love to go back and love on them. My parents are getting older, and I feel like I’ve done my time here for others.”
Cassie Roma starred on Celebrity Treasure Island last year. Photo / TVNZ
Roma said her career is starting to pick up steam back in the States, but she is thankful for all the time she has spent in New Zealand. After she and her now-ex husband moved back to California to get married and give birth to their daughter, they returned to New Zealand to get medical treatment for Roma’s mother-in-law, and ended up staying here as she got better.
“I was navigating a corporate ladder, which because of my Americanness and because I’m not afraid to ask why, and because I wasn’t caught in the tall poppy feelings that I have now taken on in the past 20 years, I was able to create this really neat career that I don’t think I could have created while I was in the States,” Roma said.
“I could do that, while paying my mortgage and being there for my child and being on the rugby sidelines on the weekends and doing all of these things, that didn’t mean nose to the grindstone at all times, and I got to build a really neat network of people.”
Asked about how her positive and kind nature has been shaped or challenged during her career, Roma said she has not compromised at any point during her two decades in business - “which is probably why, if you look back at my CV, the longest job I had was for almost three years”.
“Before that, I would come to these points where every year and a half, every two years, I would look around at the leadership and I would go,’ they’re all just giving me hot air’. They say they care about customers, they say they’re gonna utilise data and spending to make life better for people. They say, they say, they say, and so I would just move on to new places.”
Listen to the full podcast for more from Cassie on life in the US vs New Zealand, her advice for women entering the business world, her time on reality TV and her recent experience with homophobia.
Ask Me Anything is a NZ Herald podcast, hosted by Paula Bennett. New episodes are out every Sunday.
