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Natalie Bowie, our next teacher at Shandan Bailie School

Natalie BowieNatalie Bowie will soon be taking over from Brendan Corbett as our next teacher at Shandan Bailie School.

She is presently preparing to arrive there in February and is relieved that her visa has finally arrived – in time!  Natalie was born in Masterton in 1980 and spent her childhood on a farm in a small village called Makuri in the Wairarapa. She has many happy memories of tootling up and down hills along with Jock, the naughty Jack Russell and the other farm dogs.

She was educated at Otago University and attained a Bachelor of Commerce degree (Marketing) as well as a Bachelor of Consumer and Applied Science (Design).  

In the course of her working career, she has tackled a variety of occupations and, as a result, will bring a wealth of experience to her job at Shandan.

She left university in 2001 and, in February 2002, joined the Cobra Group International in Auckland as Assistant Manager of the Charities Division being responsible for training and developing sales reps, business-to-business sales and assisting in the training of other agents which involved travelling internationally to places like UK, Malaysia and Australia. She also set up and managed an office in Wellington.

In 2003, she joined Auckland Gas Company/Pacific Energy as a Marketing/Sales Co-ordinator/Designer dealing with in-house advertising material, management of sales, customer service surveys and design as Assistant Marketing Manager.  She was then promoted to Sales Manager being responsible for designing and implementing marketing campaigns as well as in-house training of sales reps and sourcing external training for staff.

In 2005 and 2006 she decided to travel to pastures new and joined the British Council Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland and then visiting  Madrid in Spain as a Vaughan Town volunteer, teaching and speaking English to Spanish business people.

Returning to London she joined Eurowatch as Marketing Manager and in August of that year she returned to Leon, Spain as an English Language teacher at Leon University.

In January 2009, as a Liaison Officer at Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre in Masterton, she was responsible for recruiting students to Wairarapa campus as well as dealing with media communications and events co-ordination and designing and implementing marketing and communications plans.

She was then appointed Marketing Manager and covered many aspects of management, including design, implementation and management of the brand, updating the website and all other marketing collateral. She was also involved in interviewing and recruiting staff, events management and scholarship management with responsibility for recruiting students (around 2500) and some staff throughout New Zealand.

Once again she was promoted as Education Relationships Manager dealing with budget management, and worked with ministers, government officials, Iwi groups and industry organisations as well as reporting to the Board, working on communications crisis management, new business development and project management.

She has had some experience of working with the Chinese people, as the Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre has a partnership with Guizhou Animal Husbandry School (GAHS) whereby Taratahi  teaches GAHS staff in methods of tuition in vocational agriculture (‘Train the Trainer‘ programme).

Winning several awards during her working life she also has a whole swathe of interests which should stand her in good stead when she arrives at Shandan.  These include music, gardening, interior design, theatre, farming, painting, sewing, photography and sports including rugby, skiing, tennis, netball, rowing and water skiing.

Natalie is looking forward to heading off to Shandan in February. She says she has had countless coffees with interesting people who have either taught English in China, are part of the NZCFS, or doing Ph.Ds about the Gung Ho initiatives, or working for the Embassy in Beijing, etc.   She says she has thoroughly enjoyed meeting all these wonderful people who have described their experiences in China and been so enthusiastic in supporting her on her latest adventure!  Being able to email and skype Brendan has also given her insights into Shandan and she hopes they will eventually meet up at some stage.

Teri France, January 2014