Limitless is a Charitable Trust with the mission to equip young New Zealanders to lead lives of passion and purpose.
We see young people better equipped to navigate with confidence toward careers where their creativity, innovation, strengths and values can be unleashed. Our vision ultimately is to see young people with greater agency over their career pathways.
Based in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Limitless empower secondary students to discover their strengths and values, and to envision future potential careers based on this self discovery. We create space for young people to explore their “what’s next?” for after high school.
We will each work around 80,000 hours in our life, and research tells us young people today are likely to work 17 different jobs over five careers in their lifetime. Limitless helps youth explore the topic of career pathways in meaningful ways. Our conversations and kōrero give them a new sense of confidence and focus.
Limitless was founded in 2016 by Christchurch-based April McLennan at age 18 through a social enterprise accelerator. We quickly grew an epic community to see the Limitless vision come to life and continue to iterate and grow.
The Year 10 Limitless Conference is back, coming to Christchurch on the 22nd and 23rd November 2021! The Conference programme will focus on exploring Strengths, connecting the dots and inspiration. We recommend the Limitless Online course to be taken prior to Limitless Conference so we can build from this.
Year 10 Limitless Online courses run throughout the year. This is a fun and engaging module based course that plays a key part in building confidence, self awareness and greater agency for pathways to work.
For either programme, get in contact with us via the form below to learn more
Our values ground our decisions:
Passion: We are passionate about what we do. We exemplify passion & encourage others to find theirs.
Purpose: We do everything with a purpose, and our purpose is to empower.
Empowerment: We believe in empowering people. We believe that when every young person is empowered to reach their full potential, we will see generational change.
Optimism: We believe the future is bright, and young people are our future. We face every challenge with optimism.
Responsibility: We are aware that every action we take affects others. We are responsible to uplift and respect others with every word and action.
April McLennan
Founder and Chairperson
April founded Limitless in early 2016, after finishing high school in 2015, and having taken part in a social enterprise accelerator. In mid 2016, she was selected as one of 3 New Zealand delegates to attend the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in California. Prior to starting Limitless, April gained experience organizing events for various causes. April now works full time on growing and developing Limitless.
Brent Hefford
Limitless Trustee
Brent has over 20 years of experience in financial services, specialising in people leadership, retail banking, lending, and business banking. Currently in the role of Regional Manager Retail Distribution for lower half of South Island for Kiwibank, Brent has held a various positions across a number of New Zealand banks, and enjoys seeing people thrive and develop to be successful.
Quynh Vallance
Limitless Trustee
Quynh is a Senior Tax Manager at PwC Christchurch. She has worked in professional practice for the past 10 years advising a variety of clients ranging from small businesses to large corporates, particularly in the not-for-profit space. Quynh enjoys contributing to our community and seeks to make a difference by being purpose driven, someone who challenges the status quo and a champion for change.
Hannah Duder
Limitless Trustee
Hannah is the CEO of indigo & iris - a beauty social enterprise and a Project Manager at the Christchurch Foundation. Hannah has a background in sales, fundraising and marketing for social enterprises in New Zealand. She is passionate about doing good business and doing good at the same time.
Colin Hogg
Limitless Trustee
Colin is the founder of Etive Business Advice sales and marketing consultancy. Colin is a passionate advocate of great businesses and ideas, and loves helping them grow to make as large an impact as possible. Colin has worked across a number of industries, laterly specialising in growing companies in the Education sector, and supporting them in governance. Colin is excited to be able to work with the Limitless Trustees to help Limitless make the biggest positive impact on our young people’s lives.
Stephen Henry
CEO, Kode Biotech Group
Hannah Duder
CEO, indigo & iris
Jaye Pukepuke
Founding Director, Bros for Change
Sophie Kennedy
Sustainability Engineer, Fulton Hogan
Grant Ryan
Founding Coordinator, The Cacophony Project
Andrea Brewster
Strategy Development Manager, Girl Guiding NZ
Zion Tauamiti
Suicide Prevention, He Waka Tapu
Rochelle Faimalo
Social Recovery Coordinator, Hurunui District Council
Emily Muli
Singer/Songwriter
Chris Jupp
Youth Partner Manager, World Vision
Katie Cowan
Founder/Director and Lawyer, Cowan Litigation
Dace Caldwell
Director of Corporate Finance, PWC
Chris Mene
Director of Mene Solutions
Guy Ryan
CEO/Founder, Inspiring Stories Trust and Young New Zealander of the Year 2015
Dr Victoria Metcalf
National Coordinator, Participatory Science Platform
Eva Riddell
Programme Creator, Live the Dream & Independent Design Thinking consultant
Seung-woo Hong (Suggie)
Filmmaker and Visual Storyteller
Merenia Hudson
National Kaitiaki of Manawa Ahi
In August 2018, we held our fourth Year 10 Limitless Conference with 230 students attending from 18 different schools around Canterbury. We ran the programme over the span of three days in comparison to our past two days, with 6 speakers and 6 break-out workshops. The three days providing the opportunity to go into more extensive detail and depth with the content created for the students.
In 2017 we ran two Limitless conferences in August with the involvement of 360 students and 27 schools. This conference was built upon the input and feedback gathered from the 2016 programmes, and incorporated a wider variety of speakers and workshops. This was also the first year we invited students from the broader Canterbury region.
In October 2016, the first full Limitless Conference was held at the La Vida Centre with 140 students from 20 schools coming together to participate. This 2 day conference, with the help of over 60 others, focused on strengths, values, wellbeing and goal-setting.
In February of 2016, April and her team ran the first pilot of the Limitless event at Ao Tawhiti Unlimited Discovery school. The pilot consisted of 2 half-days that included 18 students, 3 workshops and 3 talks from speakers.
Thank you to our generous sponsors and supporters
With thanks to the Community Organisation Grant Scheme
and a big thank you to RedSeed, our Learning Management System partner
Your generous support will help power our mission and grow our impact.
Limitless is a registered Charitable Trust, CC53597. All donations over $5 will be eligible for a tax rebate.
