IT girl

Nothing about Vanessa Sorenson’s upbringing seemed likely to set her on a path to success. She was the poor kid from the wrong side of town, the one that mothers didn’t want their daughters to hang out with, and she left school at 16 with no qualifications at all.

Yet today, Vanessa is among this country’s leading businesswomen, having broken through numerous barriers to reach the top as head of tech company Microsoft NZ.

For a long time, Vanessa didn’t talk about her past. She struggled with imposter syndrome and worried that if people knew where she came from, they would judge her for it and think she wasn’t good enough.

“I always felt, through my whole career, ‘What if they find out I grew up in a caravan park and was trailer trash?

What if they find out I’m not educated?’” she says.

But recently, Vanessa realised her story has the power to help other people, so she is starting to share it. It’s a story that begins when she was nine and moved to Australia with her mother, stepfather