The inaugural Taki Tahi Women in Business Summit has been successful in reaching its goal of encouraging and inspiring women in business and entrepreneurs while also helping them overcome the challenges they face daily.

Businesswoman Ana File-Heather, founder of the Taki Tahi “start-up” project, was pleased with the outcome from the two-day event held at The Edgewater Resort and Spa.

The Taki Tahi Women in Business Summit started on Monday. Participants attended presentations from renowned women in business, Ministry of Finance and Economic Management officials and ANZ Bank representatives who tackled online challenges faced by businesses, including online portals and payments.

In an interview with Cook Islands News, File-Heather said the summit was more successful than she had envisioned based on various feedbacks from the participants.

Ana File-Heather with photographers/digital media experts, Manine Lynch, Alisha Street and Tayla Beddoes. TAKI TAHA COOK ISLANDS/24072304

“I am very happy that they found it as useful as I would have hoped,” she said. “Basically, the main goal is to connect and inspire young women in business and I do believe that it has been achieved.

“We had several things running throughout the summit from technology, social media, to accessing capital, payment gateways, payment portals, websites and high-performance leaderships.”

File-Heather said they also discussed the issue of managing burnouts “because these are real issues for people in business”.

“I’m a small business owner so these are the challenges that I have been facing in my journey and so I was thinking we’ll just have some kind of big summit where we can share and connect with everyone and hopefully find some motivations in it.”

When asked about the main challenge faced by most women in business who participated at the summit, File-Heather said a range of challenges were discussed.

She said women entrepreneurs voiced a range of challenges, including difficulties with freighting goods, accessing payment portals for online businesses, obtaining access to their online sales revenue and more.

“Those are the real issues and there’s things like funding your business, buying stock, those are the kind of things that were shared over the last two days,” File-Heather added.

“There could also be stuff about product development, supply, for myself personally, we’ve also had issues with staff, trying to get staff. It’s really hard.”

The two-day summit also featured presentations from several local experts and international speakers from Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and the United States.

From left, Davina Hosking-Ashford, co-founder and director of Socially Conscious Outsourcing, Addrienne Hosking-Tinirau, chair of Chamber of Commerce and Air New Zealand country manager, Tessa Vaetoru, development programme manager at Ministry of Finance and Economic Management, Olivia Heather, chief finance and operations officer at Vonnias, and Ana File-Heather, founder of the Taki Tahi “start-up” project. TAKI TAHA COOK ISLANDS/24072303

Discussions and insights covered a range of topics including: What’s your problem? Problem solving; Innovation and the creativity hub; Chasing Dollars – making money work for you; Tech and the world online; The business of health; and High-performance leadership.

The Taki Tahi Entrepreneur Development is supported by its partners including the US Embassy, East West Centre, the Cook Islands Government as well as many local agencies.

Since 2019, the number of women in business in the Cook Islands has increased indicating that during times of adversity, women persevere.

File-Heather said she has seen a growth in female entrepreneurs since 2019 and during the Covid period, more women increased their “side hustle” turning it into their full-time jobs.