Welcome to My Net Worth, our regular column on the lives and motivations of our country’s top business, legal and political people in their own words.
Charlotte Lockhart is the managing director of 4 Day Week Global, a not-for-profit organisation she started with her partner, Perpetual Guardian founder Andrew Barnes. The couple, classic car lovers who split their time between the United Kingdom and New Zealand, have become synonymous with the four-day work model since it was implemented at Perpetual Guardian in 2018. Lockhart, who spent her early career working in legal services and administrative roles in the Middle East, worked at Perpetual Guardian from 2014, serving as head of marketing and partnerships, following several years with Mike Pero Mortgages in Auckland.
A strong believer in the personal and productivity benefits of working fewer hours, Lockhart is a passionate advocate for changing how people work. Her non-profit works with businesses and governments to extol the benefits of a reduced-hours approach, overseeing pilots in workplaces around the world.
The Waiheke Island resident and philanthropist has stage-four breast cancer, a diagnosis she says makes her focus on the things that matter.
I’ve got metastatic breast cancer, so looking after my health is a major priority. The interesting thing about something like this is it’s never out of your mind. I have a fairly good prognosis in that it’s expected that I will live for quite some time and my cancer isn’t very aggressive at the moment, but it’s not going away. For me, it just sharpens the knife in terms of not drifting with my time.
I feel enormously blessed to be going through this journey now, simply because there is a real chance that medical science will catch up with me. There are generations of people who have gone before me who haven’t had that hope.
I manage my stress poorly because I’m a Gen X female who is hopeless about that sort of thing. I lecture and nag pretty much everybody else in my life to do as I say, not as I do. On Sunday, though, we hopped into one of our ridiculously classic cars and drove to the south of England and had a picnic on the side of the road in a field of wheat. That’s the sort of thing we like to do.
Andrew and I are very much into our cars. My ridiculous car that makes no sense is a 1961 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, a convertible. It’s burgundy with cream leather and named Clementine after Winston Churchill's wife, because Andrew has a Bentley "Blue Train" replica which is called Winston, and clearly Winston needed a Clementine.
Andrew Barnes and Charlotte Lockhart with her 1961 Rolls-Royce, Clementine. (Image: Supplied) In 2019 BC (before covid), we drove from Beijing to Paris in a 1941 Chevrolet called Eleanor, after Eleanor Roosevelt. It’s 36 days of car rallying, doing between 250km and 650km a day. It’s crazy. You come into Russia from Mongolia via Siberia. We were in the middle of summer, and it was just incredibly beautiful. You’re driving through all these villages and people come out; you’ve got generations of people standing at their front gates waving to you.I went to the Middle East because my husband-to-be at the time went to work for DHL. Simon planned to save a deposit for a house and then come back and we’d start our life. He came back after eight months and said, "I’m not coming home, so maybe we should get married."
We spent nine years living in the Middle East, and our first son was born in Egypt. We were all over because Simon was moving around. We were in Abu Dhabi, we were in Dubai during the Gulf War, and then we went to Kuwait straight after the war finished and were part of the rebuild there.
Do you remember when you’re in your early to mid-20s and you’re able to take on the world? We did that. My job in Kuwait was with Royal Ordnance, a privatised division of the British army, which had the contract to do all the mine clearing for the British zone in Kuwait. It was an interesting time.
I have no favourite food, because, where to start? I have travelled the world and people tell me all about "the food in San Francisco", "the food in London". The food in NZ is exemplary. We have the most amazing cuisine. We eat fresh food that’s in season and we do it well. Your local cafe serves far better food than half the restaurants in any of the large cities around the world.
Charlotte Lockhart with Eleanor, the 1941 Chevrolet she and partner Andrew Barnes drove in the Beijing-to-Paris car rally in 2019. (Image: Supplied)
Everyone can be a philanthropist. When I was a young mum and my children were young, I was on the local Plunket committee and we used to fundraise door to door with buckets. Andrew and I are in a fortunate position now. We have surplus money, so we give money away. But it doesn’t have to be about cash. It can just be about helping out.
Family for me is the most important thing. We’re an extended and blended family. A typical Christmas for us is about getting as many people together as we can. Conveniently, my son, who’s 24, is marrying a beautiful young woman in November, so now I have an extended, extended family. Christmas is going to get bigger.
If I could give someone a piece of advice, I’d say: Work less, be clear about why you’re at work – negotiate that clarity with your employer – and hug your family more.
Growing up, I really wanted to be a teacher. I would have been really terrible, I think. That’s why I ended up in sales and marketing, because I’m going to teach you how to like my product.
My feature quote would be: As employers, we have to remember that we borrow our people from their lives. Someone has a life, and they bring it to your workplace. As a society, if we can find the right place for work, we will have a functioning economy and we’ll have excellent fulfilment from being at work.
As told to Oliver Lewis.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
