Learn more about Norie's pathway to becoming a Digital Product Manager.
Video transcript
[Video shows aerial view of Wellington's central city area and harbour]
You need to recognise that learning isn't linear. Like school, like secondary school, uni. You can actually do a really good balance which is, even at secondary school and when you get to uni:
Work a bit, can be a small job, can be like a holiday job, because one of the things that you'll learn from working and learning is that learning doesn't stop.
I went back and finished my Bachelor's in History and Politics, and I did a one-year honours degree. What I figured after that was I wanted to work a bit, because theory without experience is really hard to make a difference if you just have theory and no practical experience.
[Video shows Norie sitting in a meeting room and speaking]
Uh, because change happens from doing. Yeah. I knew different points on what I wanted, but I think it was almost consistently that I wanted to do a job that had impact.
So most of the jobs I really enjoyed have been in some form of not-for-profit or public because you're there for a particular shared purpose.
[Music plays]
My name is Norie Ape. I am Samoan. Mum is from Saleimoa and Dad is from Fasito'outa. My family moved to New Zealand in 1987, Christmas.
Because at the time New Zealand's technology didn't allow long names, Dad's title name was constricted to the shortened abbreviation name and that's how we got Ape. Very lucky in that Mum and Dad were like “education”.
But, yeah, my siblings were like, “nah, communicate, play as a team.” And then because I was a twin, I had to share from the womb. So that's something that's really equipped me well for what I do.
Having to grow up in a family of nine kids meant you had to be a team player from the beginning. Working in a male dominated environment was okay because I grew up with five older brothers, who used things like wrestling and testing it on me and my twin.
[Video shows Norie working in an office and interacting with co-workers]
So I work with really smart people, And I will say to them, "this is the problem that we have. How do we make the technology achieve whatever that goal is?”
It's really allowed me to use the skills that I learned growing up in the family being Pasifika; that core framework of like, talanoa. That is actually my bread and butter of what I do. I deal with people.
I use humor. I do problem-solving. It's communal. We leverage that everyone's talent and viewpoint is valuable. And as a result, things come out better over time. So I love that part of it. The technology is only a tool, but I actually love that technology is only a tool. It's the humans that work together that make it really cool.
Pasifika have culture, language, song, dance. And when you know that you have that as you're got a wider community, that really back you want you to succeed and thrive. You're already in that advantage. You're already really super smart. I mean, you're the descendant of people that sailed the Pacific Ocean. There's no way you can't do this.
[Video shows Norie sitting in an office and speaking]
Definitely a technology kind of paper if there's anything. How to use statistical data, so stats if you use that. You want to do some type of human sciences type paper, so there might be, I don't know, social studies or history.
Now the reason for that is you actually need to learn human skills. Because if you are just the developer, it's literally lines of code. But if you don't understand the human element of “why I do this and how this affects me”, and if you can't explain that in normal English, no one will buy it. No-one will give you money.
You may have beautiful code, but no one knows what you're talking about.
Outside of stats probably if there's anything regards to ethics because technology is evolving at a pace that you want to be developing and designing for good. So whatever you're building shouldn't be something that could hurt your wider community.
Tolofa lava, everyone. My name is Norie Ape. I'm from the villages of Fasito'outa and Saleimoa in Samoa.
I live in Pōneke or Wellington. I went to school in Auckland Girls' Grammar School, and I am from Aukilani, or Auckland, Tāmaki Makaurau.
I am a sister. I am a twin. I am Samoan. I'm a friend. I'm a colleague and a leader, and this is how I became a Product Manager or a Digital Product Manager at BCITO, also known as a 'technology explainer'.
[Music plays]