The Transformation Issue | Idealog.co.nz
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Kendall Flutey,
co-founder and CEO of Banqer
Accountant and software developer Kendall Flutey is
the co-founder and CEO of Banqer, an online education
platform teaching financial literacy and business smarts
to kids in classrooms across Aotearoa. She is also no
stranger to change.
The Kiwibank 2019 Young New Zealand of the Year
winner has forged a reputation as someone who can
brighten a room with her limitless passion for both tech
and education in Aotearoa.
The visionary Kiwi’s story is embedded in
transformation – it is something she talks about candidly
at events and conferences – and she even sold her
corporate wardrobe when she left one of the big four
companies, KPMG, to traverse the entrepreneurial path.
While shedding a corporate identity is one thing, a
change in Flutey’s subconscious prompted her to change
the path she was going down.
“If I Iook back five years, I can say with certainty that
I was narrow-minded,” she says. “My beliefs were rooted
in success and compensation. I didn’t know who I was on
a fundamental level, and I started to realise that if I didn’t
change, these negative traits would have grown.”
For Flutey, she says her primary focus at the time was
possessions and status.
“It wasn’t an ‘A-ha moment’ I often hear some people
talk about, it was a slow undoing on my practised and
embedded belief system,” she says. “I was so unhappy.I was working at KPMG, and I looked around and thought,
‘Okay, maybe this is it.’ I looked at the milestones ahead,
and I knew I didn’t want it – this doesn’t look or feel like
happiness to me – this version of success will never bring
me happiness.
“It was overwhelming: the stress and anxiety,
alongside unhappiness. I had invested so much in myself,
and now I was questioning it. I know there must have been
excitement in there somewhere at the prospect of trying
something new, but all I remember is the fear. It felt like a
midlife crisis; it really did feel that dramatic.
“I would have still been a depressed accountant
in years to come, I just knew this was the right time to
change. It’s like we [society] have this linear view of career
progression, and I certainly had that.”
Flutey knew she wanted to build and design tech.
Once she’d enrolled at New Zealand’s leading codingschool, Enspiral Dev Academy, she said she could feel the
weight lifting. While training to be a software developer at
the 15-week boot camp, she did an exercise to explore what
made her happy and decided to swim with the current
instead of fighting against it.
This exploration led her to sell 90 percent of her stuff
(she is, after all, a self-confessed all-or-nothing person)
and dedicate everything to being the kind of person she
wanted to be.
“I feel like moving into tech and creating Banqer was
fortuitous timing and luck, but having the courage to listen
to myself and knowing that I find immense fulfilment in
helping others and enriching their lives brings a great deal
of satisfaction to me,” Flutey says.
“Sometimes I still get jealous and think the grass is
greener and wonder if it would be easier to get a 9-till-5 job
and go for work drinks and go travelling, but I want to be
more complete as who I am and not let the ghost of what
success looks like linger.”Sometimes I still get jealous and think the
grass is greener and wonder if it would be
easier to get a 9-till-5 job and go for work
drinks and go travelling, but I want to be
more complete as who I am and not let
the ghost of what success looks like linger.