Digital Natives

Technology is allowing women to combine their work and lifestyles in ways not utilised before

- Sarah Catherall

Each morning, after her children have left for school, Sam Rodney-Hudson sits in her yurt nestled in bush on Great Barrier Island and switches on her computer. At least twice a day, the mental health nurse attends video conferences with her colleagues, who are scattered in offices around the country. Thanks to a microwave internet cable sitting on a hill opposite her house, which the 43-year-old personally helped install, Sam can do her job from the island she calls home.

She muses that combining her job with her remote lifestyle wouldn’t have been possible even a decade ago. However, technology has allowed her to keep her career going while she lives in one of the most isolated parts of New Zealand.

Great Barrier Island is home to about 900 people. The largest island in the Hauraki Gulf, it is off the electricity grid, so all the homes are solar powered, topped up by generators.

Sam and her partner, Nick, a freelance film contractor, shifted to the island five years ago, keen to raise their sons, Zephyr, 10, and Ari, five, in a place as remote as possible. Four years ago, she began working for Melon Health – a digital health company that develops and runs health programmes via the internet and apps.

At Melon, Sam is part of a development team for mental health programmes, while she also heads a team of health coaches focusing on health self management. Working 30 hours a week, she links in with the Wellington head office and the rest of the team throughout the day using online tools such as Slack and Zoom, and Melon’s own online platform. The company’s coaches are scattered around the country, everywhere from Taranaki to Dunedin and Auckland.