After completing a degree in English and art history at the University of Canterbury, she did get a job in a gallery.
But "for whatever reason", it did not work out as she thought and the now respected tourism leader was only there for a short time.
Needing work, Ms van Lieshout got a job as a receptionist at Thomas Cook where she would type itineraries for customers travelling overseas.
Working her way up the ladder, she now has more than 20 years senior executive experience in inbound and outbound tourism, and corporate and retail travel.
Now chief executive of Active Adventures in Queenstown, she was recently invited to become an ambassador for the global Adventure Travel Trade Association.
Ms van Lieshout has been named a finalist in the Inspiring Women Leaders category in this year’s New Zealand International Business Awards. The winners will be announced at a black-tie function in Auckland on October 27.
Quipping that there was not a lot of need for high heels in Queenstown, she said she felt like she had already won, just by being selected as a finalist - to be named alongside the other "incredible" women was an honour.
Success in her career had all come through "horrendous hard work" and "sheer grunt’, particularly as a women in a very male-dominated industry at executive level.
"One has to prove oneself."
She was not really an academically-trained leader, rather it was more about being "pulled up by the boot straps", she said when asked about her leadership style.
"I had to do what I had to do. I had to learn on the job," she said, adding that there were some very good leaders along the way that she took guidance from.
Born in the Netherlands, Dutch people could be quite direct and she described herself as super-open and transparent - sometimes she worried too much so, Ms van Lieshout said.
Having high levels of authenticity and being really honest at times could be confronting, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic when she had to be open and honest with her team, without having a "clue what was going on".
It was difficult to keep a team motivated while you just couldn’t see the end of it, she said.
She had "horrific" imposter syndrome, something that she advised other women to be aware of and not deny that it was happening, Ms van Lieshout said.
Despite feeling like an imposter, they needed to have the strength to speak up.
"If you’ve got something to say, say it, even if its making you feel uncomfortable or scared," she said.
Ms van Lieshout’s family emigrated to New Zealand when she was eight and she was brought up in Christchurch.
Prior to enrolling in university, she had felt the "travel itch". She had always been interested in geography and used to read books about overseas travel.
She took a gap year and travelled around Europe by herself, aged 18. Being a parent, she could now understand why her parents were always in tears when she rang once a month - "they were probably grateful I wasn’t dead".
She was also influenced by their pioneer spirit, packing up their own family to move somewhere they had never been and to a country which spoke a different language to them.
One of her highlights had been working for a travel startup which started with two agencies and had more than 40 when she left six years later.
"It was a pretty cool position to build something from pretty much nothing."
Active Adventures was "the other side of travel" - inbound from the United States to New Zealand.
It is New Zealand’s largest and most globally diverse adventure travel company, run from Queenstown and has about 140 staff around the world.
It operates trips in New Zealand, North America, South America, Africa, the Himalayas and Europe, mostly selling to the American market.
It started 28 years ago as a New Zealand inbound company and customers liked what it was doing and asked where else they could go, which led to it growing into other markets.
Ms van Lieshout started in her role in July, 2019, hired to double the business. During Covid-19, the company bought a business in the US, needing to be able to operate trips where its customers were, given the borders were shut.
"That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever done, buying a company in the middle of a global pandemic," she said.
Unable to meet the vendors or see what they were buying in-person was "very interesting". She only just met the owner that sold the business in July this year, 18 months after they started talking.
The company’s goal was on track, through both that acquisition and rebuilding the business. Trips "back on the road now", it was having "an absolute blinder of a year".
There was still a sense among staff they could not believe the situation had come right, until they saw clients with their seatbelts done up, she said.
She felt blessed to be able to travel herself again, Ms van Lieshout said.
She recently returned from a conference in Switzerland and a trip to Copenhagen, in Denmark, where a small group of travel company founders and chief executives heard about food sustainability and how that kind of thinking could translate for adventure travel.
She went to a restaurant where what New Zealanders would call food waste was turned into fine dining meals, an urban farm in an industrial area and a regenerative mussel farm in Copenhagen harbour.
New Zealand still had some challenges around sustainability; it was a small destination and it was hard to get infrastructure to support was needed to be done for tourism - and that was something that would have to be addressed, she said.
But there was also an opportunity.
The future of tourism needed to be far more regenerative. New Zealand had come "a really long way" in the last couple of years, Covid-19 providing a chance to "pause or think". Prior to the pandemic, it was "growth upon growth" of tourists coming into the country.
A lot of companies her company worked with had "taken the plunge" to do things better and there was "certainly a lot of really good stuff going on".
In the immediate future, the summer was going to be tricky from a tourism perspective given the workforce constraints.
She wanted to see more young people attracted to the industry, especially women. Initiatives like the Young Tourism Export Council (YoungTEC) did an "amazing job" of giving people a pathway into tourism.
"We’re not selling frozen peas. It’s very fun. You’re selling people their dream," she said.
As far her own future, she was "definitely not done yet" at Active Adventures, Ms van Lieshout said.
She and her family also loved living in Queenstown - "I feel like I’ve won the lottery living here" - and it was good to see the vibrancy in the resort town return.
When she was not working, she was getting to do what her company’s customers did - hiking, biking and kayaking.
She was grateful for having such a supportive family, particularly her husband, who was instrumental in keeping the household running, and it was good for her two children to see that gender equality.
Education Perfect, founded in Dunedin, is a finalist in best large business and leveraging investment for international growth, while Silver Fern Farms is a finalist in excellence in sustainability
