“I asked my mum if I was the angel of death, because I thought funerals were a weekend hobby that we just kept going to,” she told Cowan.
“I’ve always had a lot of death in my life and at some point I realised I had to learn from and overcome that to figure out how to thrive. You either get crushed by trauma or you learn how to come out the other side of it, so I chose the latter.”
That said, it wasn’t a straightforward path to healing. Simpson openly acknowledges that she threw herself into work so early and so fervently in part to try and escape her emotional turmoil.
“Part of how I ended up getting my job and being in San Francisco was an output of running away from my life and the trauma that I’d been through,” she told Real Life.
“I was numb for quite a while, [but] I didn’t get depressed, because I’d seen what depression had done to so many of the people that I loved and the impact of not getting the help that you need.”
Overlooked for promotion at Vodafone as a 19-year-old – because of her age, rather than her capability, she says – Simpson realised moving overseas was the only way to progress her career quickly.
“I actually say conned, but I convinced these two entrepreneurs to give me internships. But I had a condition: I said if I do really well and do great work for you, you have to hire me – but you have to hire me remotely. This was totally before remote working was a thing.
“So I travelled around the world, worked online and then got a job at the Kiwi Landing Pad. My boss and I had a deal: he said you can do your job as long as you’re in San Francisco when you need to be there, but otherwise travel around the world, do your work.”
Since that first endorsement of her talents, Simpson has worked all over the world, and in senior roles at companies in the community building, telecommunications, banking, AI, venture capital, legal tech and business software industries.
She has earned acclaim and a reputation as one of New Zealand’s most promising young business leaders. But as she told Real Life, this has come at huge personal cost.
“I think achievement is still one of my biggest values, which is why I did end up sleeping under my desk, and sometimes I definitely did hustle.
“Ultimately I ended up breaking my body and being really unhealthy,” she admits.
“I learnt the hard way that if we drive our bodies and minds into the ground, you pay the price for that. I’ve burnt out twice.
“One of the last jobs I had, I worked myself so much into the ground that I actually nearly lost my marriage, several relationships, friends, and my health really suffered. So I had to leave that job to rebuild.”
She says taking a long rest from work helped her bounce back.
“Burnout for me, I was just so tired and, I hope people don’t laugh at this, but literally allergic to my emails. It took me about six months to want to open my computer again, which tells you how much screen time and computer work I was doing.”
Therapy is now a really important part of Simpson’s toolkit as she tries to marry a good personal life with her voracious work ethic.
“I was actually the last person in my family to go to counselling, so that was one of the first steps I took was to get a therapist to talk about what was going on,” she said.
“Fundamentally, what I realised is that my self-talk cycle was really negative and was doing me no favours… and to figure out what was going on, I had to go within and tune into myself.”
That journey of self-discovery, and the extended period away from work, was what inspired her to launch Bountifull, a podcast on which she speaks to a range of leaders – neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers and CEOs – about what it means to live a bountiful life through their lens.
“It’s crazy to me that a little Kiwi girl from the North Shore gets in front of all of these experts from the top universities and some incredible entrepreneurs as well,” she told Cowan.
One of the key things she’s learned from hosting the podcast is that joy is something of a choice: “Your contribution to those people around you, beyond yourself, is what ultimately leads to fulfilment”.
- Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7.30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here.
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