My approach to mentoring is often a game changer for people feeling overwhelmed by change and trying to manage the commercialization of new ideas.
Services
Dorenda Britten Ltd. offers the following services performed by Dorenda Britten herself or her external team of skilled people.
Mentoring
Callum McKirdy
Founder Director
Dorenda cares deeply about people not fulfilling their potential, not feeling valued for who they are and what they can achieve. She is brilliant at helping people seek out better ways to do what they aspire to achieve.
Christian Walsh
University of Canterbury
“I have used Dorenda for the last three years as a design coach for our MBA design thinking elective class and anticipate continuing to do so in coming years. The feedback from the students, who are all experienced managers, is always excellent regarding Dorenda’s involvement. She consistently offers the right balance of challenging, cajoling and…
Dugald Hamilton
Founder, Respond
“I have devoted many years to working on my product idea, developing, testing, and searching for someone to help me move it forward. After a number of bad experiences, I made contact with Dorenda and within three weeks she had listened carefully to my idea, researched it, and came back with intelligent and thoughtful questions. …
Rebecca Miller
Founder, Milk IQ and Farmside
“For me Dorenda was a gamechanger for not only the project I was working on, in other areas as well. She gave me a lot of confidence when I had doubts and helped me identify beneficial connections, connect ideas, and opened opportunities that I hadn’t thought of. Dorenda is a creative, direct, and enthusiastic mentor,…
Michelle Polglase
Enterprise Manager, UC Centre for Entrepreneurship
“Dorenda Britten is a longtime supporter and mentor on the innovation programmes we run through the UC Centre for Entrepreneurship. She has extensive innovation ecosystem knowledge, experience, and empathy that she shares with student ventures, with a high level of professionalism at all times. The UC team highly value Dorenda’s insights and her enthusiastic support…
Geoff Brash
Board of Canterbury Angel/Board of Canterbury Tech/Lightning Lab
“Dorenda has been a mentor with me on multiple Startup Weekend events. Her background spans a multitude of different areas from design through to strategy. She approaches people and organisations with a holistic attitude to product and service development that serves the real needs of real people. She promotes a broad contextual view that includes…
Speaking
I enjoy interacting with audiences. I am a natural storyteller and can make surprising links that stay with an audience well after the event.
Pat Rotherham
Partner
Dorenda spoke at our Cashmere Rotary Club in May 2023 about her work, life and passion – fighting for better design outcomes for New Zealand. Dorenda’s presentation was far-reaching, fascinating, and based on her personal experiences, including various employment in Australia, Papa New Guinea and working with Vitra, a major design organisation in Europe. She…
Callum McKirdy
Founder Director
Dorenda cares deeply about people not fulfilling their potential, not feeling valued for who they are and what they can achieve. She is brilliant at helping people seek out better ways to do what they aspire to achieve.
Peter Crabtree
GM Science Innovation and International, MBIE
“Dorenda opened an Association’s conference with a keynote address titled “Re-Thinking Innovation in Education”. Her address raised many relevant issues and was thought-provoking as well as entertaining. All of the delegates appreciated her message and her openness for the remainder of the conference.”
Mike Roberts
Millpond
“Dorenda walked our members through the element of change that we constantly face as people, technology, and process continually evolve. We looked at the skill-sets and approaches that should be the focus for Project Managers in today’s world, to be able to deliver in tomorrow’s. Dorenda encouraged us to open our minds to new ways…
Janine Manning
Association of Cambridge Schools in NZ Inc, Auckland
“Dorenda opened the Association’s 2010 conference with a keynote address titled “Re-Thinking Innovation in Education”. Her address raised many relevant issues and was thought-provoking as well as entertaining. All of the delegates appreciated her message and her openness for the remainder of the conference.”
Meshweyla Macdonald
Operations Manager
Executive MBA Massev
“Dorenda Britten is a wonderful presenter. Dorenda has presented to a number of Executive Massey MBA students and alumni over a number of years. Dorenda is a dynamic, interesting, and inspiring speaker. She captured and held the audience’s interest and imagination, challenging them to defy their current ways of thinking to explore and invent new…
Teaching
Dorenda has led design for the 21st-century workshops for client companies, tertiary institutes, and annual events such as Tech Week.
Pete Howard
Student Innovation Lead, UCE
“Dorenda’s depth of experience and insights regarding innovation processes, alongside her evolutions of design-based thinking into a values-based design framework is invaluable to our early-stage student founders. Dorenda speaks with passion, wisdom, and conviction, providing students with the principles of diversity and inclusion, as a base of exploring complex problems, helping to refine solutions that…
Callum McKirdy
Founder Director
Dorenda cares deeply about people not fulfilling their potential, not feeling valued for who they are and what they can achieve. She is brilliant at helping people seek out better ways to do what they aspire to achieve.
Craig Osborne
PGG Wrightson
“The food-agricultural industry is facing potential disruption on an unprecedented scale. This requires us to rethink why people buy our products and to understand what attributes they truly value. The Design Thinking course is a brilliant introduction to the design process; practical, interesting and powerfully delivered by an experienced practitioner. I believe that it…
Melissa Robson-Williams
Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research
“I am an environmental scientist and I spend my time grappling with complex and conflict-laden issues such as how to manage land and water to achieve social, cultural economic and environmental outcomes. This type of research demands an integrated research approach, within which both science thinking, multiple knowledge bases and systems thinking are important. What…
Dr Rachel Wright
Operations Director, Centre for Entrepreneurship
College of Business and Law
“Dorenda Britten ran a workshop for students participating at the UC Innovators’ Summer Start-Up Programme at the University of Canterbury. The students were working on a range of ventures covering both for-profit and social enterprises. The intent of the workshop was to encourage the students to be more aware of the needs of society, the…
Mark Revvington
Ngai Tahu
“Tokona Te Ao really enjoyed Dorenda’s “Designing Solutions” workshop. It was both stimulating and fun and as a team, we appreciated the highly relevant content.”
Strategy
Much has been said about the need to increase diversity in governance. Whilst improvements have been made from a gender and culture point of view, creative thinkers are now being talked about as a must to balance out board-level decision-making. For a number of reasons, it is still relatively rare to find creative minds attracted to a career in governance.
Callum McKirdy
Founder Director
Dorenda cares deeply about people not fulfilling their potential, not feeling valued for who they are and what they can achieve. She is brilliant at helping people seek out better ways to do what they aspire to achieve.
Lynda Coppersmith
NZ Young Farmers
“Dorenda facilitated a strategy day for our Board to help us come to grips with our strategic direction and purpose. She challenged our thinking and sometimes got us out of our comfort zones – all of which enabled us to ultimately agree on a NZYF purpose we could all connect and relate too. An incredibly…
Christian Walsh
University of Canterbury
“I have used Dorenda for the last three years as a design coach for our MBA design thinking elective class and anticipate continuing to do so in coming years. The feedback from the students, who are all experienced managers, is always excellent regarding Dorenda’s involvement. She consistently offers the right balance of challenging, cajoling and…
Dugald Hamilton
Founder, Respond
“I have devoted many years to working on my product idea, developing, testing, and searching for someone to help me move it forward. After a number of bad experiences, I made contact with Dorenda and within three weeks she had listened carefully to my idea, researched it, and came back with intelligent and thoughtful questions. …
Rebecca Miller
Founder, Milk IQ and Farmside
“For me Dorenda was a gamechanger for not only the project I was working on, in other areas as well. She gave me a lot of confidence when I had doubts and helped me identify beneficial connections, connect ideas, and opened opportunities that I hadn’t thought of. Dorenda is a creative, direct, and enthusiastic mentor,…
Michelle Polglase
Enterprise Manager, UC Centre for Entrepreneurship
“Dorenda Britten is a longtime supporter and mentor on the innovation programmes we run through the UC Centre for Entrepreneurship. She has extensive innovation ecosystem knowledge, experience, and empathy that she shares with student ventures, with a high level of professionalism at all times. The UC team highly value Dorenda’s insights and her enthusiastic support…
Project Initiation
The many hundreds of people who have attended our workshops come away very excited about the opportunities to work differently. The reality is a whole different challenge.
Callum McKirdy
Founder Director
Dorenda cares deeply about people not fulfilling their potential, not feeling valued for who they are and what they can achieve. She is brilliant at helping people seek out better ways to do what they aspire to achieve.
Angela Clifford
Eat New Zealand
Feels like a life-long commitment rather than a set of boxes to be ticked.
Christian Walsh
University of Canterbury
“I have used Dorenda for the last three years as a design coach for our MBA design thinking elective class and anticipate continuing to do so in coming years. The feedback from the students, who are all experienced managers, is always excellent regarding Dorenda’s involvement. She consistently offers the right balance of challenging, cajoling and…
Dugald Hamilton
Founder, Respond
“I have devoted many years to working on my product idea, developing, testing, and searching for someone to help me move it forward. After a number of bad experiences, I made contact with Dorenda and within three weeks she had listened carefully to my idea, researched it, and came back with intelligent and thoughtful questions. …
Rebecca Miller
Founder, Milk IQ and Farmside
“For me Dorenda was a gamechanger for not only the project I was working on, in other areas as well. She gave me a lot of confidence when I had doubts and helped me identify beneficial connections, connect ideas, and opened opportunities that I hadn’t thought of. Dorenda is a creative, direct, and enthusiastic mentor,…
Michelle Polglase
Enterprise Manager, UC Centre for Entrepreneurship
“Dorenda Britten is a longtime supporter and mentor on the innovation programmes we run through the UC Centre for Entrepreneurship. She has extensive innovation ecosystem knowledge, experience, and empathy that she shares with student ventures, with a high level of professionalism at all times. The UC team highly value Dorenda’s insights and her enthusiastic support…
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