#296 'Empowering People to Thrive, Responding to Disaster and Crisis', Kate Slater, Head of Community Investment, Rātā Foundation

#296 'Empowering People to Thrive, Responding to Disaster and Crisis', Kate Slater, Head of Community Investment, Rātā Foundation

From People Inspired By Purpose - Purposely Podcast by Mark Longbottom

June 28, 2026 · 56 min

About this episode

Kate Slater discusses her work at Rātā Foundation and the importance of empowering communities in times of crisis.

Welcoming Kate Sclater, Head of Community Investment at Rātā Foundation, to Purposely Podcast. Rātā Foundation is one of twelve community trusts acrossAotearoa New Zealand, formed following the deregulation of the banking sector in the late 1980s. With a fund of around $700 million, it operates in perpetuity across Canterbury, Nelson Marlborough and the Chatham Islands, striving for an equitable and sustainable society under the kaitiakitanga of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Its name comes from the Southern Rātā tree, a flowering native that lives within an ecosystem and lifts those around it. Kate grew up in Exeter, Devon, in a low-socioeconomiccommunity. At eleven, she was awarded a scholarship to attend a private school, an experience that gave her a daily, lived view of inequality. Walking between two worlds shaped a belief that would carry through her entire career: whatphilanthropy gives people is not just money. It is belief in themselves. Her early career in the UK took in the National LotteryCharities Board, where she ran a small grants pilot designed to reach the parts of the voluntary sector other programmes had not reached. She recalls a man in Plymouth who received a grant…

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