Charlotte Hatlauf oversees our People team. “My role sits across the People team, so everything from recruitment, onboarding, induction, policy and health & safety. I think we’ve gone through a bit of an evolution because of the growth of the organisation and the last few years was about getting some of the foundations right and now it’s time to take the next step.”

Charlotte had been following the Mission for a long time before she joined us. “In 2017 I volunteered for Christmas with a friend of mine and what really struck me was the scale. I’m an immigrant, I left my country of origin because I wasn’t super happy with the way things were going, and what attracted me to New Zealand was how much it’s punching above its weight: the first country to give women the vote; nuclear-free was huge for me coming from Germany; first transgender MP, but I had a bit of blindness thinking that this was the land of milk and honey, and comparatively to other countries it is, but what I’ve really noticed since 2000, is the societal change.”

“When I first arrived here there were only a handful of visibly homeless people in the city but they seemed to be incorporated into society – people knew their names. I’ve really noticed how much that’s changed in 24 years. Some of the fundamental principles that NZ is built on, being so egalitarian and class-less, is really pivoting and changing, and not for the better. So volunteering that Christmas I saw the scale of poverty and despair. It was a real eye opener.”

“The Mission has a history of stepping into that really radical ground movement, like we did in the 80’s with HIV, I was really attracted to that. That has been a driver for me, that this organisation is stepping into the space that a lot of us ignore. I’ve heard Helen speak quite a bit over the years one particular point stuck with me: we have decided as a society that homelessness is acceptable – and we have the power to decide that it is not.

Charlotte’s background is in employment law which lead her into Human Resources. “What I like about it, is it affects all of us. Challenging norms, that’s the sort of stuff that I find interesting. Obviously, it can be a slow burn because those things are culture shifts that don’t happen overnight, but if we have seen anything over the last few years, it’s that it’s possible.”

Outside of work, Charlotte loves to swim, that’s her meditation, “it’s when my brain gets real peace.” She also has an eleven-year-old god child who is the light of her life and two dogs, Freddie Mercury, a mini dachshund and Blondie, a Cavalier King Charles as well as Billy Idol, the cat. “I love exploring Auckland. My best friend and I do a movie every week and I’m a big foodie – eating our way up and down Dominion Road with my friends.”

Asked to share something about herself that people might find surprising, “Being a flight attendant in the late 90’s, which is not something I would want for young women, and the other is that in 2017 I got a really rare neurological disease, it’s called Guillain-Barré syndrome, only about 80 people in NZ get it annually and it took quite some time to be diagnosed. I ended up paralysed from the hip down and had to learn to to walk again. I was totally dependent on people and it’s created a huge soft spot I have for Occupational Therapists without who I would be in a wheelchair today. Being struck with GBS was an absolutely fundamentally life changing situation, it was terrifying but it was a life saver as well.