New Zealand entrepreneur Diane Foreman, left, was introduced at the Cambridge U3A meeting by her admiring former mother-in-law, Yvonne Foreman. Photo: Viv Posselt
Diane Foreman’s start in life was less than auspicious.
She was the unwanted child of a teenaged mother who rejected her not once, but twice. She was told all young women needed was straight teeth and an ability to type, and by her late teens, was herself an impoverished single mum.
With such odds stacked against her, there was little to suggest she would become one of New Zealand’s most successful business leaders. Diane was, however, a determined young woman with a thirst for knowledge … one who with gritty self-discipline and a fair dollop of good luck went on to lead an extraordinary life.
She told her story to the final Cambridge U3A gathering for 2023.
Now in her early 60s and married to broadcaster Paul Henry, she remains wedded to the entrepreneurial world. She has run businesses across multiple sectors, is involved in recruitment and runs a large residential and commercial real estate portfolio. She serves on private company boards, dividing her time between New Zealand and London where she consults to international businesses; has built and on-sold successful ventures, run massive teams and amassed significant wealth of her own.
In 2009, she was named New Zealand’s Entrepreneur of the Year and has since become a judge based in Monte Carlo for the World Entrepreneur of the Year. She has taken titles that include the New Zealand Manufacturer of the Year, and New Zealand Franchisor of the Year.
Diane and the late Bill Foreman, pictured on their 25th wedding anniversary. Photo: Supplied
How she got from then to now smacks of feisty ambition meeting with good tutelage.
Diane was adopted into a working-class family who placed little value in books.
“I was told that education for girls was unnecessary and all you needed was straight teeth and an ability to type,” she said.
Against her will, she left school at 15 then worked as a shorthand typist and developed her other ‘must have’, a good telephone voice. By age 18, the first of three seismic events occurred – she upgraded to a job as secretary to the secretary of New Zealand businessman, Sir Robert Kerridge. It was a lowly role, but as she attended board meetings and typed up minutes, she absorbed by osmosis the ideas of the top businessmen of the day.
By her early 20s, Diane was mum to two children, one of them adopted, with no marriage. To make ends meet, she worked her day job, typed university students’ theses at weekends and rented out rooms in her home.
“I know what poverty looks like, what’s it like to not have enough to pay the power bill. I shared baths with the children, turned lights off three days a week. We were dirt poor.”
Diane Foreman telling her story to a packed U3A meeting. Photo: Bruce Hancock
She and an equally poor friend purchased a purple skirt and black blouse that became a shared ensemble for important outings like dates or interviews.
When she became practice manager for an ear, nose and throat specialist, she was sure it was the best job of her life. “I learned how to run people and be a boss, and having to wear smocks meant I didn’t need a full working wardrobe.”
She worked through lunch so she could pick the kids up after school and waitressed three nights a week.
The next seismic event occurred when she met established businessman Bill Foreman and his then wife, Mary Pat. Bill was running Trigon, based out of Hamilton’s Foreman Rd. A nagging hearing problem brought him into the practice and the family soon bonded with Diane over their shared experience as adoptive parents. Bill regaled her with business chat and gave her copies of National Business Review to read.
Time passed and Diane, seeking more in life, left the practice and became a real estate agent. Later, when she dropped into her former boss to get property papers signed, she stumbled across Bill. Mary Pat had died a week earlier and conversation was awkward, but a month later, Bill invited Diane for tea. She was sure he would offer her a job as a secretary, or perhaps as nanny for his children. Several similar meetings followed until Diane asked when he was going to offer her the job … instead, he asked her to marry him.
Mary Pat, concerned at leaving young children for Bill to raise alone, had prophetically reminded him of the sharp young woman at the ENT practice. Bill conducted his own appraisal, something Diane later learned was a key component to his business success, and the two married in 1988.
She was instantly propelled into a different world. “It was the best decision I ever made … he changed my life,” Diane said. “First, I learned to be a corporate wife. We travelled the world and I’d sit in boardrooms and meet with his directors. Then the third big thing happened. Bill had a stroke and asked me to go onto the board at Trigon as a director… he wanted me to take it over.”
Despite her terror, she deftly navigated the misogynism and mastered the challenges. When they sold Trigon in 1995, they pursued numerous other business interests that took them across the globe until Bill’s death in 2017 marked the end of an era.
“I learned so much from him,” she said. “He taught me that people are the biggest asset to any business… through him I learned how to select and hold on to the best people.”
Diane continued to blaze her own path as a highly respected businesswoman. She reckons she was lucky to learn from the best, and in 2015 published her best-selling book on entrepreneurship, In the Arena.
