TED Community » Kaila Colbin

About Me

Kaila Colbin is co-founder of the non-profit Ministry of Awesome, co-founder of project management training company Falcon Training, and the founder of social media marketing consultancy Missing Link. She is the curator of TEDxChristchurch and TEDxEQChCh, has spoken at TEDYou at TEDActive in Palm Springs as well as at TEDxAuckland, and did social media for TEDxAuckland and TEDxSoMa. In 2012, she won a Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year Local Hero award for her contribution towards the Christchurch rebuild.

She's an entrepreneur, a communicator, a PMP-certified project manager, and a social media maven. As a regular contributor to the US publication Online Spin, she has developed a reputation for provoking disruptive thinking about the future of the Internet. Her articles can also be found in outlets as diverse as Search Insider, Electronics News, NBR and Top Gear NZ.

She is a founder shareholder of and, until early 2012, was CMO of the kids' virtual world MiniMonos.com, which she took from zero to 750,000 registered members.

Kaila has successfully implemented national and international public relations campaigns, including case studies, newsletters and press releases on a wide variety of topics, including the Tear Down The Wall campaign, which saw a group of Christchurch schoolkids advocate to Parliament for a ban on tobacco displays in retail outlets. With Kaila’s guidance, the children created a website, ran a YouTube campaign, held a media event in Cathedral Square, and appeared on Campbell Live and in The Press. Ultimately the group was invited to present to the Health Select Committee, which subsequently formally recommended a ban on tobacco displays. This was not an isolated incident, either; Kaila has obtained coverage and established relationships with journalists in both national and international media outlets, including The Press, NBR, One News, Breakfast, ASB Business, Sunday Star-Times, The Dominion Post, The Advertiser (Adelaide), the Courier-Mail (Brisbane), Top Gear NZ, and Forbes.com.

The Canterbury Development Corporation, Christchurch Employers' Chamber of Commerce, Wellington Chamber, Deloitte's CIO Roundtable and the West Coast Development Trust all look to Kaila to teach businesses large and small digital strategy and social media. She also delivers consultation services to public and private companies in the U.S.

In 2009, Kaila trained with Al Gore to deliver the Inconvenient Truth presentations, now one of 17 New Zealanders trained to do so. She has presented to professional groups (such as IPENZ and PMINZ), schoolchildren (such as at Boys' High and The Reading Bug), and at TEDxAuckland.

She served as national Director of Communications for the Project Management Institute of New Zealand, helping improve their email communications, update their website, and implement a LinkedIn Group that now has over 800 members.

In one of her earlier ventures, Kaila co-founded ThoughtSource, a computer and Internet training company, where she created and implemented the ParentsConnected Nationwide Seminar Tour, designed to teach kids and parents how to use computers and the Internet in a fun, safe and educational way. The tour traveled the United States putting on stage shows at schools across the country, and garnered nearly 5 million impressions in the spring of 2001.

At ThoughtSource, Kaila also co-developed "The Real People's Learning System" book and video series and the "ParentsConnected" line of videos including concept design, video editing and graphic design. She was featured on television, radio, and print media throughout the U.S., including CNN, ABC News, NBC News, and Entrepreneur Magazine.

A native New Yorker, Kaila is fluent in English, Spanish, French and Italian, holds a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Administration from Cornell University, and has been a serial entrepreneur since the age of 22. Her purpose in life is to be an uplifting presence, and she LOVES TED!!!