With Wild Chix growing so rapidly it was necessary to get more passionate girls on board to help with the seminars. We are extremely proud and happy to welcome Shanel to the Wild Chix!
My love for our oceans and outdoors started when I was very young, growing up on a farm and having a family who spent every spare moment on the ocean meant I was destined for a future in this area. Never seen without a book on the sea, the forest, mythical creatures, or literally anything with a heartbeat (from camels to clownfish!), I was a sponge for information, which lead me to a lifelong desire to do better for this planet.
Now an adult and mother, that love of learning continues. I have since coupled that passion for learning, with a desire to inspire and educate to help the future generations, my children and their children, also do better and be safer on this earth, and what is learning without a little touch of magic ✨ Conservation, water safety, sustainability, fun! Have all played a huge part in the way I live my life and how I raise my children. I also have this ability to love the unconventional – sharks are like my dream animal, they are the puppies of the ocean, misunderstood and mistreated, they deserve to have more spotlight for how special they really are 🦈
I have a list of achievements from ranging from a Marine Science Degree, Project Management Cert, Skipper Restricted Limits Qualification, Radio Operators Cert, Marine Mammal Medic, as well as more practical teaching qualifications like Emergency First Responder and Coastguard Search and Rescue Training, Bay of Plenty Harbourmaster, PADI Open Water Scuba Instructors Cert, Playcentre ECE Cert… I think my most favorite to date is adding that I am one of New Zealand’s first PADI Professional Mermaid Instructors 💖
Along the ups and downs of my life, I have found home in the sunny Bay of Plenty, where I have lived for 15 years. I have spent countless days at sea, and under it, with an intense love of game fishing, freediving, scuba, swimming, singing, and watching the sun rise out of the ocean. It is literally the safest place on the plant for me.
In my life I have been judged, knocked back, told I wouldn’t be able to do the things I have, and it’s been a huge task for me to pick myself up and keep going. It has taken some special and inspiring people to help me get through the trials and tribulations of being a woman in a heavily male dominated industry, and it is still very much a struggle. Wild Chix is something that I am so passionate about because I have been in that place so many times – asked “why would you want to do that, you’re a girl” SO MANY TIMES. It creates doubt, fear, feelings of being unsure. Wild Chix is something that is by women for women, without the judgement, without the insinuation that we are less than capable, without the fear that we will be told we did it wrong and to get back in our places.
There is this quote that I truly love by Amy Morin: “Be the woman who fixes another woman’s crown without telling the world it was crooked”. I think this is what Wild Chix is to me – no judgement, a safe space for women to support one another on a journey of learning and fun, the space to get it wrong, make mistakes, and still feel confident that we can keep trying without being laughed at or ridiculed <3 I am so grateful for Isabell and what she has created with this brand. It is going to be gooooooood :-)
