What growing a children's mental health programme across Aotearoa New Zealand has taught its chief executive about scale, hard decisions and being seen.
Children turned up in their rugby kit, with proud parents and whānau beside them, to see the Bledisloe Cup up close. The adults’ eyes lit up as much as the children’s. The trophy travelled to rugby clubs and communities around New Zealand with Sir John Kirwan, on the road trip chapter of Mitey Drive for Five, a campaign to raise $5 million for children’s mental health education in schools.
The money is for something most children will meet in a classroom, and the need is not small. In the Ministry of Health’s 2024/25 New Zealand Health Survey, one in eight children aged 2 to 14 were likely to have emotional or behavioural problems. By June 2026, Mitey was reaching 100,000 children across 329 schools.
Sarah Manley is the chief executive of Mitey, the mental health programme for children in years 1 to 8 developed by the Sir John Kirwan Foundation. “Mitey supports teachers to deliver evidence-informed, curriculum-based mental health education as part of everyday school life,” she says. “Our coaches work alongside schools to help embed it.” She has been on the road with him during the campaign, and on the eve of the Mitey Match at Eden Park, where more than 520 children were due to play alongside current and former All Blacks, Black Ferns and sporting legends, she wrote: “It’s the faces I’ll remember the most.”
Of the growth to 100,000 children, she says: “I’m proud of the part I’ve played in that growth, alongside our team, schools and partners.” The way she got here runs through Geneva, a decade of community health and a change programme that taught her how long change takes.
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An Internship in Geneva
The first turn she names is World YWCA. She was selected for a one-year internship in Geneva and stayed for several years, working as communications manager, serving as vice chair of the UN (CoNGO) Committee of Youth Organisations, and going to New York as a World YWCA delegate to the 54th UN Commission on the Status of Women in 2010.
“It opened my eyes to international advocacy and the connection between women’s leadership, opportunity and stronger communities,” she says.
Back in Auckland, she became strategic development manager at YWCA, where, as she puts it on her profile, she “designed and led major community programmes and initiatives.” The next turn took that community work to national scale.
A Decade at Hato Hone St John
She joined St John in 2012 as manager of community programmes for the Northern Region, supporting more than 3,500 volunteers. In that role she expanded charitable health transport, improving access for 20,000 people, introduced animal-assisted therapy and support for vulnerable communities, and scaled community education so that 20,000 children learned first aid.
In 2015 she was promoted to Deputy Chief Executive, Community Health Services and Engagement. She oversaw three regional governance boards, six senior managers and 800 community health volunteers, and sat on the executive leadership team. She led the roll-out of St John in Schools, which delivered first aid education to a million children, and founded the St John Women’s Network, mentoring more than 100 emerging leaders. In 2016 she was awarded the Queen’s Service Medal for contributions to community and women’s leadership.
“It was an opportunity to turn purpose into services at national scale, while learning to lead through complexity and significant change,” she says. That change took longer to settle than she expected.
Eighteen Months to Embed a Change
In community health services, the challenge was how to reach more people while making delivery financially sustainable. “There was enormous commitment from staff and volunteers,” she says, “but we needed to change how services were organised.”
The starting point was understanding what communities needed and where the delivery model was making things harder than it needed to. Service delivery changed, some functions were centralised, and there were difficult decisions about structure and roles, including redundancies. The programme delivered approximately NZ$2 million in savings and took around eighteen months to embed.
“A decision can make sense on paper and still be deeply personal for the people affected. As a leader, you have to make room for both.”
Sarah Manley, Chief Executive, Mitey
“My lesson was to communicate clearly, stay flexible about timing and keep showing up for the hard conversations,” she says. What she carries from it is a view of scale she now applies at Mitey: “scaling requires strong relationships, clear decisions and an operating model that can support the ambition. People also need time to understand the change and find their place in it.”
Hired to Scale Mitey
In 2023 she became chief executive of Mitey, with a brief to scale it and position it as a leader in mental health education, in New Zealand and internationally. “The opportunity to lead Mitey brought together children, education, wellbeing and the challenge of growing an organisation,” she says. “Helping children build understanding and skills early in life is work I feel deeply committed to.”
The case for early is a well-documented one. The World Health Organization has said up to half of all mental health conditions start before the age of 14.
Region by region, the programme has grown. In the Bay of Plenty, Mitey is in 16 local schools, helping tamariki understand their emotions, strengthen their wellbeing and ask for help, and she has written that every $1 invested creates an estimated $5.80 in social value. She does not treat the headline number as the finish line. “That reach is a meaningful milestone, although reach alone doesn’t tell the whole story,” she says. “We also need to understand the quality of delivery and what changes for children and teachers. Growing well means keeping those questions at the centre.”
Asked after reading the draft to add to this, she put it this way: “Scaling is an art and a science. It requires a lot of bold thinking and decisions, some of which pay off and some don’t. When scaling programmes too, it becomes very easy for it to become a numbers game, as if the total of what you deliver is the measure of success. But to scale well, it’s absolutely about your people and culture scaling with you.”
Growing it also means asking people to back it, in public.
Asking People to Notice the Work
After a recent masterclass on managing up, she wrote that “quietly hoping people notice your great work isn’t a strategy.” Asked for her answer, she gives it plainly.
“You need to help people understand what you do, why it matters and how they can be part of it.”
Sarah, Chief Executive, Mitey
“I understand the discomfort around putting yourself forward, particularly when you work in a purpose-led organisation,” she says. “But if people don’t know about your work, they can’t support it, fund it or connect you with someone who could help.” For her, that means sharing evidence, telling the human story and being clear about the opportunity.
Drive for Five shows what that looks like in practice. Writing about Sir John Kirwan’s days on the road, she said: “I know he would never ask this for himself, so I will.” Ahead of a draw for a family pass to the Bledisloe Cup, she was more direct: “Yes, this is a shameless plug. And yes, I’m recruiting a cute dog to help.”
“You can be humble and still be ambitious about the difference you want to make,” she says. Some of that she learned by watching other people.
Learning From the People Around Her
She says she has been lucky to have a lot of people invest time and energy in her, too many to name without leaving someone out. “I am always looking at others around me and am curious about the various strengths they have and look for ways to learn from them.”
She has worked with “some very strong women leaders who showed me conviction matters,” she says, and that reinforced her belief that every voice counts. “Whatever role you hold, you need to stay connected to people and understand what your decisions mean in their lives.”
The line she lives by is Brené Brown’s, that you can choose courage or comfort but not both. She has found it true, and says that as a leader she has realised “courage usually is the best choice!”
Where Sarah Is Now
The road trip chapter of Drive for Five has closed, and she has written that it is “just the beginning of an enduring fundraising movement for Mitey and our children’s mental health.” Alongside Mitey she has been an independent director of AUTSA, the AUT Student Association, since 2024, and her training includes Director Essentials with the Institute of Directors in New Zealand.
Over the next twelve months she wants this piece to open conversations with people around the world about purposeful leadership and children’s mental health education. “At Mitey, we are building something in Aotearoa New Zealand that I believe has something valuable to contribute internationally,” she says. She wants to share what Mitey is learning, hear what others are doing and explore what could be achieved together.
Outside work, she says: “Being a mum to my son, Lachie. It makes the future feel very personal. When I talk about children having the skills to understand their feelings, build relationships and ask for help, I think about the world we are creating for him and his generation. It gives the work meaning, and it reminds me to make space for the life happening alongside it.”
She is also, she says, a big lover of culture and the arts. “My happy place is watching a great drama or musical,” she says. She writes for Audacious Global, a magazine that features women founders from around the globe. “All of this fills my creativity cup and helps me be a better executive overall.”
Leadership comes in many forms, she says, and there are people doing extraordinary things in their communities who would never think to call themselves leaders. The reader she has in mind is someone with the ambition and influence to make a difference, wondering where to put their energy next. “I would love someone to read this and think, ‘Perhaps I could do that too.'”
Five Lines from Sarah’s Diary
“Scaling requires strong relationships, clear decisions and an operating model that can support the ambition.”
“People also need time to understand the change and find their place in it.”
“For me, visibility is part of the job.”
“To scale well, it’s absolutely about your people and culture scaling with you.”
“It makes the future feel very personal.”
From the Diary of Sarah Manley
Sarah Manley is an Auckland-based purpose-driven executive and the Chief Executive of Mitey.
| Role | Chief Executive, Mitey (Sir John Kirwan Foundation) |
| Based in | Auckland, New Zealand |
| Previously | Hato Hone St John (2012 to 2023), YWCA (2010 to 2012), World YWCA (2007 to 2010) |
| Also | Independent Director, AUTSA, AUT Student Association (2024 to present); writer for Audacious Global |
“You can be humble and still be ambitious about the difference you want to make.”
Editor’s Note
Executives Diary features Sarah Manley for the way she describes scale: as a matter of relationships, clear decisions and an operating model, and of quality as much as reach. Her record runs from international advocacy in Geneva, through national programmes at Hato Hone St John, to Mitey’s growth to 100,000 children in 329 schools. The editors were convinced by how plainly she names the cost of change alongside its results, including the eighteen months it can take to settle. She argues that making the work visible is part of leading it, and the campaign she is running shows her doing it.
Executives Diary, Editorial
