Lisette Reymer

There is a certain irony in the fact that Lisette Reymer (2007 – 2011 Alumna) – a woman who has reported from the frontlines of the Ukraine war, stood in the crowd as a monarch was mourned, and went toe-to-toe with the chaos of the Trump indictment – traces it all back to a moment of heartbreak in a Hamilton school hallway.

She didn’t get a head prefect position. But we’ll come back to that.

Lisette arrived at Sacred Heart Girls’ College, Hamilton in 2007 already steeped in its traditions. Her mother had walked those same corridors. Three of her older siblings had too. The youngest of five, with three sisters, she felt she knew the school inside and out by the time she set foot through the gates.

“It felt like family from the outset,” she says. “There were so many family connections.”

Growing up on a dairy farm in the Waikato, Lisette was the kind of student who gravitated naturally towards English, drama, history, classics and media studies… and ran a mile from anything involving numbers. 

“I hated maths,” she laughs. “I was so bad at maths and science.”

Her teachers, it seems, were not surprised by the direction her life would take. When the newly minted author recently attended a book signing, a couple of her former Sacred Heart teachers turned up. Their verdict? They could see her doing exactly this kind of thing all along.

Outside the classroom, Lisette threw herself into school life with the same energy she would later bring to breaking news. She played in the premier netball team, touring to tournaments and revelling in the camaraderie of team sport. She joined drama clubs, the student council, and theatre sports on Monday nights. “Those were all the icing on the school life cake,” she says warmly.

But Year 13 brought with it a pivotal turning point. When the head prefect roles were announced, Lisette’s name wasn’t among them. It stung – deeply. But in that disappointment, a door opened.

“Someone said to me, ‘You need to focus on what happens after school now and where you’re heading’. And so, I put all my energy into getting into broadcasting school,” she recalls. Her brother had already graduated from broadcasting school, which gave her the impetus she needed.

Heartbroken but galvanised, she poured herself into work experience, joined a radio show at what was then known as Hamilton Community Radio, now Free FM and applied to Christchurch’s Broadcasting School. She got in.

As part of her degree, Lisette spent a six-month internship with TVNZ’s Breakfast programme – a placement she describes as feeling like walking on clouds. 

“It was so surreal to be in that building with all those people and soaking up their knowledge and wisdom.” Lisette was subsequently employed by TVNZ after her internship, and her career took off from there.

In 2021, she became Newshub’s Europe correspondent, based in London. She had always dreamed of being a correspondent, not the presenter reading the news, but the journalist out in the field making it. What she hadn’t dreamed of, not even slightly, was becoming a war correspondent.

“No way,” she says simply, when asked if covering conflict was ever part of the plan. “At B School, I used to think entertainment and light stories would be my forte.” Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and everything changed.

Over three years in Europe, Lisette covered stories that would define a generation: the war in Ukraine, the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the Turkey/Syria earthquakes, the famine in East Africa, the Olympics, Commonwealth Games, America’s Cup, and the political theatre of the Trump indictments.

“Every day you’re pinching yourself and trying to keep up. The adrenaline is immense.”

Those years overseas have now found their way into Lisette’s debut book, ‘No, I Don’t Get Danger Money’ and is subtitled ‘Confessions of an Accidental War Correspondent – a title that perfectly captures her own bemused relationship with the role she somehow fell into.

Described as funny and brutally honest, the book was written, at its heart, for an audience of two. “Really, I wrote it for my parents. It’s a cool way of saying, ‘Here, Mum, this is actually what was going on.”

She confesses she didn’t quite expect anyone else to read it. Strangers, however, had other ideas. Messages have flooded in from readers who had no idea what journalists in the field actually deal with on a daily basis. “It was therapeutic letting it all out,” she says.

For the young women at Sacred Heart today who harbour dreams of a journalism career, Lisette has advice that is as practical as it is generous in spirit: steal everything.

“Be as greedy as possible and soak up all the wisdom around you. I came into the newsroom and started stealing all my favourite things about the journalists around me.”

She loved Tova O'Brien’s questioning style, Kate Rogers’ distinctive way of writing for her own voice, and the way Mike McRoberts was always at the heart of the action in his war reporting, for example.  

“I’ve picked out my favourite bits from all of the legends I have worked with and tried to weave those elements into my own unique style.”

These days, Lisette is back in New Zealand working as a senior journalist for Stuff, covering international and national affairs. She presents news on weekends – a role that comes with its own unexpected challenge. “It’s actually quite hard to read off an autocue,” she laughs.

For the first time in her career, she says, she doesn’t have a burning goal driving her forward. She is simply enjoying the moment – the studio, the work, being home. It is, perhaps, a well-earned breath after years of chasing the world at full tilt.