We’re Building a Team We’ll Be Proud Of

Founder of EMPIXO

Brett Cole

Brett spent 17 years in banking with Westpac NZ and The Co-operative Bank, including residential lending and financial education, before becoming a Financial Mentor with Moneywise Manawatū, where he’s spent the last 5+ years supporting hundreds of Kiwis through debt, redundancy, housing challenges and rebuilding financial confidence. He founded EMPIXO on a simple belief: information alone rarely creates change. Real progress comes from having someone in your corner who helps you see the path forward and take practical, achievable steps towards it.

Brett is on the journey too: a property owner, a business owner of around 14 years, and still building EMPIXO itself. He doesn’t position himself as someone who has everything figured out. Where he knows a subject from professional experience, he speaks to it confidently. Where he’s still learning, he says so. Today, Brett currently delivers EMPIXO Mentoring personally, spending time between New Zealand and Dubai, with Dubai giving him exposure to different ideas, technology, entrepreneurship and international thinking, while New Zealand remains the market and community EMPIXO is being built for. Dubai is the classroom. New Zealand is home.

“Helping people see what they cannot yet see, so they can move forward with greater confidence, purpose and hope.”

Read Brett’s full story →

Director

Yvonne Cole

People, Business & Governance

Yvonne has been part of our business journey from the beginning. For more than 14 years, Brett and Yvonne have worked together behind the scenes of their business interests, navigating the realities of building businesses, developing ideas, investing, managing risk and balancing business decisions with family life.

Alongside that journey, Yvonne brings more than 20 years of professional experience across human resources, people leadership and management, both in New Zealand and internationally. Today, she is gaining further senior management experience in the United Arab Emirates, working in a complex international environment and leading people from a diverse range of cultures and professional backgrounds.

While Brett is the founder and current trust bridge for EMPIXO, Yvonne plays a quieter but important role behind the scenes, providing perspective, challenge, support and governance as the business develops. And she’s been on the journey too: the businesses, the investments, the property decisions, the risks, the successes and the lessons.

Together, Brett and Yvonne bring complementary experience across financial services, financial mentoring, business ownership, property investment, human resources, leadership, management and international experience: the combination that will help EMPIXO build something much bigger than either of them individually.

Read Yvonne’s full story →

EMPIXO Scout

Falco

Kārearea by nature. Falco to his mates. Scout by trade.

Falco is not just a logo character. He is EMPIXO’s Scout: curious, sharp, independent and always looking ahead. His job is to explore, observe, question and bring useful things back to the EMPIXO community. He’ll keep an eye on money, technology, financial products, risk, opportunity and the changing world around us.

Falco wasn’t created in a boardroom. The idea started in Dubai, where Brett experienced falconry on a desert trip, and then realised New Zealand had a falcon of its own: the kārearea, an endemic bird found nowhere else in the world, sitting on the back of the $20 note. Money. New Zealand. Dubai. A falcon. Suddenly the connection felt much bigger.

A good Scout doesn’t make the final decision for you. A Scout brings information back to the team. Because the financial world is moving quickly, and somebody needs to keep watch.

Read Falco’s full story →