Jenny Wheeler

Company Director
Jenny launched Herbal Ignite with the late Tim Bickerstaff after a successful career in journalism editing national New Zealand magazines and newspapers where she developed entrepreneurial skills with two successful publishing start ups.

In her publishing career Jenny also co-wrote a book (with Gill Ellis) on women in management and developed a strong interest in health, all of which helped her when she turned her focus to establishing a health products company.
 
Jenny launched two successful publishing ventures during her last decade in journalism; firstly as a member of a five-person management team that began the Sunday Star newspaper (now the Sunday Star Times) which she ran as editor for 6¹/₂ years, and then as founding-editor of the hugely successful NZ House & Garden magazine, which enjoyed the distinction of going into reprint on its launch issue and into profit from day one.

Her early years in journalism were spent on two NZ giants of print – the NZ Herald and the NZ Woman’s Weekly. From school she had completed a Bachelor of Arts degree, then a Diploma of Teaching. A year as a History and English teacher convinced her staff rooms were not her natural milieu. 

She became a general news reporter on the NZ Herald, a feature writer on the NZ Woman’s Weekly, worked in Melbourne as assistant press officer to the Anglican Archbishop, and free-lanced for Woman’s Day magazine. She was Maori Affairs reporter on the Auckland Star after doing an intensive Maori language course during her summer holidays for personal interest, and then was features editor at the Auckland Star.

In her final years in media Jenny was the first woman editor of the NZ Listener weekly magazine before teaming up with partner Tim Bickerstaff to launch Herbal Ignite. 

“My years in journalism showed me I loved start ups and could manage the process well,” she says. “I decided to do it for myself so I could enjoy the benefits.”

She met Tim when he interviewed her for his radio show when she was Sunday Star editor, and the pair decided to build a business around a subject they both knew well – health products for mid-life men and women.  

Jenny had written a lot about health during her magazine days and had been an enthusiastic health consumer – she was a vegetarian for ten years and is a regular gym user, cyclist and hiker.

“Our skills were quite complementary,” says Jenny. “Tim had many of the health problems associated with mid life – an arthritic knee from a teenaged sports injury, and other lifestyle related health issues common to many older men. I had taken a personal interest in health, written on it and was comfortable researching it.

“It’s very interesting after living through the early years of feminism when women were claiming the right to control their own health and take back the initiative from health professionals on issues like child birth and menopause.

“I wrote many health stories for the Woman’s Weekly on these issues, and now 30 years later I see a similar thing happening for men. They are taking control of their own health, asking questions about options, and taking responsibility for preventative care in the area of prostate health for example. It’s exciting to be part of that process.”

Raised on a Waikato farm, Jenny is a fifth generation New Zealander – her great-great grandfather and great-grandfather arrived in New Plymouth in 1845 from Worcester – and she is passionate about the land of her birth and keen to walk its length before she gets too old to totter up hills. 

As a founding trustee (and 7¹/₂ years as chairperson) of Te Araroa, The Long Pathway, a charitable trust to complete a 3000km New Zealand long, north south walking trail, she has embarked piecemeal on this goal. 

She is an enthusiastic member of LIFE Central, a non-denominational Christian church in Mt Eden Auckland.

Jenny has been amicably divorced from journalist Adrian Blackburn for more than 30 years. She was a devoted stepmother to Roger, who died in a car smash in Northland in 1995, and feels very lucky to have two adorable step-grandchildren, Stephanie and Zach.