RISE
Built Through Adversity. Driven By Advocacy. Designed For Impact.
From hospital beds to national headlines, Catherine Cooke has spent a lifetime turning adversity into action, leadership into impact, and lived experience into powerful advocacy that creates real-world change.
Strategic Advocacy. Storytelling. Influence. Momentum.
RISE exists to help organisations, causes, and communities amplify their voice, build strategic momentum, and create meaningful impact.
This work combines:
- advocacy
- strategic communication
- storytelling
- media positioning
- campaign execution
- lived experience
- leadership under pressure
to create movements that cannot easily be ignored.
Advocacy & Campaign Strategy
Building advocacy campaigns that create visibility, traction, pressure, and meaningful public engagement.
This includes:
- campaign creation
- public narrative strategy
- petition development
- media positioning
- stakeholder messaging
- advocacy momentum planning
- community engagement strategy
Designed for organisations, causes, and leaders needing more than awareness alone.
This work is focused on creating movement, visibility, accountability, and action.
Advocacy Strategy Intensive
Half day strategic workshop and campaign direction.
FROM:
$3,000 + GST
Advocacy Campaign Partnership
Multi-week or ongoing campaign support.
FROM:
$5,000–$15,000 + GST
National Advocacy Campaigns
Large-scale public visibility and stakeholder pressure campaigns.
CUSTOM PRICING
Storytelling & Narrative Positioning
Turning lived experience, organisational purpose, and human stories into powerful narratives that connect emotionally and drive action.
This includes:
- strategic storytelling
- personal and organisational narratives
- media feature positioning
- keynote messaging
- social impact storytelling
- public-facing communication strategy
Stories only create change when they are structured, amplified, and directed intentionally.
Story Development Sessions
FROM:
$2,500 + GST
Full Narrative & Media Positioning
FROM:
$5,000–$10,000 + GST
Ongoing Content & Visibility Strategy
CUSTOM PRICING
Strategic Advisory & Speaking
Helping organisations, leadership teams, and advocacy movements navigate adversity, influence, communication, resilience, and impact.
Drawing from lived experience, commercial leadership, public advocacy, and decades of business development experience.
Speaking topics include:
- advocacy through adversity
- resilience and rebuilding
- women’s health
- healthcare inequity
- leadership under pressure
- navigating grief, loss, and reinvention
- purpose-driven leadership
ENGAGEMENT OPTIONS
Keynote Speaking
FROM:
$5,000 + GST
Advisory Sessions
FROM:
$1,500 + GST
Strategic Retainers
FROM:
$3,000–$8,000/month + GST
Long Before Cancer, Catherine Cooke Was Learning How To Survive.
“I had two choices. I could let it define me and become the same person, or I could find my power and the opposite. That’s what I’ve done.”
“I never leave anyone behind, and I will walk with you to the end.”
Advocacy In Motion
February 2025
Petition Launch
Catherine launched a national petition calling for funded access to Keytruda for early-stage triple negative breast cancer patients and the removal of advanced-stage-only funding criteria.
This advocacy campaign was created while actively undergoing cancer treatment.
31 May 2025
Petition Closes
The petition closed with:
17,096 signatures across New Zealand.
Not from a campaign office.
Not from political machinery.
From a hospital bed while critically unwell and receiving three blood transfusions.
27 June 2025
National Media & Petition Presentation
28–29 June 2025
Back-To-Back NZ Herald Coverage
RNZ & Checkpoint Features
National discussions surrounding:
- treatment inequity
- patient advocacy
- access to life-saving medicines
- healthcare pressure facing New Zealanders
A Lifetime Of Building, Leading, Giving Back, And Rising Again.
90 Staff
Built a multi-group business empire from home into a nationally recognised operation employing close to 90 people.
Global Innovation
Created a franchise-style operational model never previously developed in that industry.
Thousands Of Businesses Supported
Worked alongside businesses nationwide through strategy, leadership, culture, growth, and reinvention.
$76,000 Raised For Muriwai
Created and delivered a major fundraising event following Cyclone Gabrielle.
February 2025
$20,000 Raised During Cancer Treatment
Continued advocacy and fundraising work during active treatment in support of Dress for Success.
6,000 Garments Donated
Delivered a major Dress for Success event shortly after spinal and bariatric surgery.
Grounded In Heritage. Driven By Purpose.
Catherine is proudly descended from Dutch, German, Portuguese, M?ori (Ng?puhi), and English heritage.
She is also a proud mother of two adult children, both serving New Zealand in meaningful roles.
Her life and leadership are deeply shaped by resilience, community, family, advocacy, and an unwavering belief that people deserve to be seen, heard, and fought for.
WHY ORGANISATIONS WORK WITH CATHERINE
Why This Work Resonates
Catherine brings a combination few people possess:
- lived adversity
- commercial leadership
- strategic thinking
- emotional intelligence
- public credibility
- advocacy traction
- media influence
This is not theoretical.
It has been lived publicly, nationally, and under immense pressure.
NO PRICING.
Premium positioning.
Ways To Work Together
Advocacy Campaigns
Storytelling & Narrative Strategy
Strategic Advisory
Speaking Engagements
Leadership & Resilience Conversations
Some People Experience Adversity.
Others Rise Through It And Create Change.
RISE exists because stories matter.
Because systems should be challenged when they fail people.
Because advocacy requires courage.
And because lived experience, when combined with strategy and purpose, can become a force powerful enough to move communities, conversations, and change itself.