By Frances Martin
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Thursday 1st August 2002 |
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She's a hard road finding powerful women in New Zealand business, mate. When Unlimited asked the boss of a big agricultural company if there were any Sheilas among his managers, the reply came back: "There is no place for women in this conservative, provincial company, apart from making the tea."
Now, there's a reality check for anyone who thought having a female prime minister might've made it easier for Kiwi women to make it to the top. Success is still a hard-won battle for women in some sectors - in fact, they're pretty much missing in action when it comes to some jobs.
When Unlimited took a tour through New Zealand's economic landscape to identify our most powerful businesswomen it seemed that female chief executives are rare birds - except in the public service, perhaps. Women are making it to general manager level, though, often coming up through marketing and human resources. They're also doing well in law. Some have found success by jumping off the corporate ladder to go into business for themselves.
And while not storming the boardrooms, the number of women climbing the career ladder is changing the corporate landscape and the way business is done; paid maternity leave and greater acceptance of part-time work are obvious examples. Women are also harnessing new mobile communication technology to help them juggle work and childcare duties. Who's to know if they're emailing from the office or their daughter's piano lesson?
When Fisher Funds Management founder Carmel Fisher first started working as a share market analyst, social invitations from companies were for the rugby or cricket. Fisher says she is now more likely to be invited to the theatre or opera. Women have also played on their reputation as good talkers, filling fund managers' marketing departments and improving communications: "There's less jargon and more talk about the things that really matter to customers," she says.
Those women who do manage to break into the financial sector as analysts have done well, Fisher says. "They tend to ask straightforward questions, rather than try to show how clever they are, meaning they get better information and access to chief executives."
The way women talk is also changing the way meetings are conducted, says insurance industry high-flyer Naomi Ballantyne. "Women tend to be more upfront in discussions," says Ballantyne, founder of boutique insurer Club Life. She suggests that men often rally support for their point of view before meetings, then won't say anything during them. When women managers stamp their mark on the way meetings are conducted it can be quite confrontational, she says.
Public relations supremo-turned-MP Sue Wood says the biggest trend is for women to opt out of corporate life and set up their own businesses. The consultancy she set up 10 years ago now employs about eight people and counts the cream of the corporate world among its clients. Increasingly, skilled female executives are turning their backs on the hierarchies that have previously excluded them, Wood says. Owning your own business also offers greater flexibility and autonomy.
Academic and former human resources executive Robyn Leeming says the female perspective is gaining strength as people become more aware of the complexity of markets. The need for employers to attract and retain good people is also forcing them to accept alternative perspectives, though in Leeming's view the changes so far are slight. "The new catch-cry is valuing diversity; intellectual, gender, ethnic and cultural diversity."
Ross Pearce, a human resources consultant with Monday (PricewaterhouseCooper's consultancy arm), says having more female partners has turned the spotlight onto issues like workplace stress, diet and exercise, and the balance between work and family life. "Men are benefiting because they're affected by those issues, too."
Women's increasing participation in the workforce has been one of the biggest employment trends since World War II, according to the 2001 census figures from Statistics New Zealand. Over 515,000 women are in full-time work, and a further 288,000 work part-time. Women are also becoming better educated. While overall 34% of men and 31% of women have a post-school qualification, among 20- to 29-year-olds 41% of women and only 35% of men have post-school qualifications. Even more encouraging for women's future role in business is that 19% of 20- to 29-year-old women have a degree or higher qualification, compared with only 14% of men.
That said, women still trail in the earning stakes; their median income in the March 2001 year was $14,500, compared with $24,900 for men, according to the census figures.
Ballantyne says things haven't gotten much easier for executive mums, either. Although childcare options are better and society's acceptance of working mothers has eased the guilt, motherhood remains one of the biggest stumbling blocks to success. Few women return to work with the same level of power they had when they took maternity leave, Fisher says. Frequently they return part-time, take on roles with lower status and less stress, or they do what she, Ballantyne and dozens of others have done: dump the boss and do things their way.
Cow girls get the blues
Dairy industry giant Fonterra tells us a lot about how well women are doing in the agricultural sector. There's one woman on the board of the nation's largest and most important company: Marise James, an accountant and dairy farmer from Taranaki. Whether the three women on Fonterra's 46-strong shareholders' council (Catherine Bull, Christina Baldwin and Barbara Kuriger) turn out to be powerful depends on whether the council itself is seen to be a genuine performance watchdog on the dairy giant or, as some suspect, a toothless tiger.
The three most powerful women in Fonterra management are group treasurer Mary Jane Daly, director of corporate communications Jody Stewart, and Jackie Lloyd, director of human resources for the company's global ingredients business, NZMP.
In the meat industry, Patsy Reddy (ex-BIL) has been influential in the long-running takeover war between South Island meat company PPCS and Hawke's Bay's Richmond. Reddy is on the board of Richmond. Gina Rutland is the sole woman on the Meat NZ Board. Affco has accountant Susan Webb as commercial affairs manager, and Dunedinite Susie Staley is a director of Pyne Gould Guinness.
Christchurch director Sue Suckling is something of a force in agriculture, as chair of the Agriquality and NIWA boards, while Wrightsons has Ruth Richardson and Alison Paterson on its board.
Raise the bar
The law, on the other hand, is practically run by women. We've got Margaret Wilson as attorney-general, Sian Elias as chief justice, Christine Grice as president of the New Zealand Law Society, and former High Court judge Sylvia Cartwright as governor-general. The country's largest law firm, Bell Gully, has just appointed Maggie Callicrate as its new chief executive.
There's also an impressive line-up of women on the bench, although they are still well outnumbered by men. Susan Glazebrook became the first woman to be appointed directly to the Court of Appeal earlier this year (Sian Elias sits on the Court of Appeal by dint of her role as chief justice). Three of the 37 High Court judges are women (Lowell Goddard, former Law Society president Judith Potter, and Ellen France), and two out of six Masters of the High Court are women (Anne Gambrill and former Auckland District Law Society president Hannah Sargisson). Joan Allin is principal Environment Court judge.
Biological differences
When Maxine Simmons and Rosemary Sharpin set up ICP Bio 17 years ago, hardly anyone knew what biotech was, let alone whether it was a proper thing for women to do. Sharpin is too much of a scientist to draw hard conclusions about whether the pair had it any tougher in those days than blokes (not without a control group, anyway), but she does say that professional advisers had some trouble comprehending the idea of two female scientists going into business. ICP specialises in animal remedies and test systems for the dairy and food industries, earning 95% of its revenue from exports. Ruth Richardson is on its board.
Dr Diana Hill is chief executive of Global Technologies, a Dunedin biotech company focusing on advanced gene and protein technologies. Hill has just been appointed a member of the government's Biotechnology Taskforce.
At NeuronZ, an Auckland University spin-off focused on the development of treatments for brain injury and neurodegenerative diseases, women hold several key roles, including Elizabeth Hopkins as chief development officer (she's also on the Biotech Taskforce), Connie Parkinson as chief operative officer and Katherine Jones as executive officer of intellectual property.
Diana Twigden is managing director of biomodelling and medical engineering company Enztec. Former Genesis scientist Claire McGowan is now a senior investment analyst with Northington Partners, where her brief is to help get biotech companies investment-ready. McGowan is also on the Biotech Taskforce.
Please, Miss
Women account for 72% of the teaching workforce but only 39% of school principals, so it seems there are still a few gender issues to be dealt with in the school sector. It's not much better when you look at the universities - every single vice-chancellor is a bloke.
The polytech sector is a bit more advanced, with several woman chief executives. These include Southland Institute of Technology's Penny Simmonds, who put the willies up the opposition a couple of years ago by introducing a zero-fees scheme to attract students to the far south. Simmonds succeeded in lifting SIT's numbers by 46% in the first year of the scheme.
Wanda Korndorffer is chief executive at Otago Polytech, and Shona Butterfield heads the Open Polytechnic. Butterfield has recently been appointed to the new Tertiary Education Commission.
It's easier to find powerful women in the business education market. Philippa Reed is head of Auckland University's executive programmes and Regena Mitchell leads Otago University's executive MBA programme. Gael McDonald is dean of the business faculty at Unitec.
Women are also well represented in the burgeoning international education market, particularly among the private providers, who account for 26% of the $1 billion industry. Barbara Takase is the owner-operator of the Auckland English Academy and chair of the umbrella industry group Association of Private Providers of English Language. Other successful language school owner-operators include Frances Woolcott of Languages International, Meiko Cains of Capital Languages Academy, Maureen Hayes of Worldwide School of English, and Judith Kollar of Aspiring Language Institute.
Well travelled
There are plenty of women employed to wait on tables and scrub toilets in New Zealand's 16,500 tourism operations, but there are still relatively few at the top of the industry hierarchy. Among the exceptions are former Labour MP Liz Tennet and the versatile Bronwyn Monopoli, both of whom are on the Tourism New Zealand board. Tennet is also chair of Tourism Wairarapa and runs a small bed-and-breakfast.
Joan Withers is a significant force in the tourism industry as a director of Auckland International Airport and Tourism Holdings - amazing, given that 20 years ago she was a homemaker and mother whose commercial record began and ended with knitting jerseys. In 1980, Withers got a job on the South Auckland Courier and discovered a talent for advertising sales, before moving to the floundering Radio I (now i98FM), playing a significant role turning around the station. Her next stop was Radio New Zealand, where she ended up chief of operations for its commercial arm. Whew.
Meanwhile, Christchurch International Airport has accountant Susan Sheldon and Christchurch City Councillor Gail Sheriff on its board. Carolyn Tremain holds an influential role as senior vice-president of human resources and organisational change at Air New Zealand, and former BankDirect boss Jane Freeman is on the board.
Also at Tourism Holdings is Sue Sullivan, who heads up the company's rentals division in New Zealand, and Heather Young, general manager of Kiwi Experience, THL's backpacker transport division.
At Sky City, Heather Shotter, mother of five daughters including twin toddlers, and wife of managing director Evan Davies, is group manager of marketing, sales and communications. Jan Hunt is general manager of Sky City Hotel. Patsy Reddy and Bridget Wickham are on the Sky board. Queenstown's luxurious Millbrook Resort has Sue Askam as director of sales and marketing and vice-president of operations.
Fiona Luhrs has a key role to play in sharpening up quality assurance in the industry as chief executive of Qualmark, the accreditation system for tourism businesses set up as a joint venture between Tourism New Zealand and the AA.
Building bridges
Gael Ogilvie, one of the four-person team running the 160-staff New Zealand operations of environmental engineering firm URS, gets used to being the only woman at meetings. Ogilvie, who got a masters in fresh water biology before moving into engineering, used to lose sleep wondering about women and glass ceilings, but now reckons women's lack of progress in the high-flying corporate world has little to do with men and their influence. "It's about women's interpretation of what adds richness to their lives. Why would you dedicate your life to climbing the corporate ladder when there are so many other parts to life?" She does her job working only three days a week.
Other senior figures in the field with lives beyond engineering include Sharon Westlake (Opus Wellington, IPENZ board member and Commonwealth champion fencer), Annette Fenton (her own engineering and management consultancy and Waitakere City councillor) and Vivian Kloosterman, who moved to Whangarei for lifestyle reasons and runs her own environmental engineering consultancy firm there.
Other influential figures include Christine Carter, who used to design airports and now is executive manager at Auckland International Airport, and Jennifer Culliford who, as chair of the Engineers Registration Board, had a big influence on the just-passed Chartered Professional Engineers Act 2002.
And, believe it or not, New Zealand has two senior women specialising in fire engineering. Physics graduate Paula Beever is director of fire engineering and research for the New Zealand Fire Service, and US-born Carol Caldwell runs a specialist fire engineering consultancy in Christchurch.
Sisters in science
Asked what her main claim to fame is, scientist Jacqueline Rowarth mentions having a PhD in sheep dung (and its role in moving superphospate around hill-country farms). Besides that distinction, Rowarth is director of research and Dean of Unitech's graduate school, immediate past-president of the Institute of Agricultural Science and on the board of CRI Crop and Food Research. Probably our most influential scientist is New Zealand-born Jilly Evans. While nominally an ex-pat, working in Pennsylvania as pharmacology director for mega-pharmaceutical company Merck Sharp Dohme, Evans creeps into our survey because of her role on the board of Rubicon and because she spends her spare time promoting science to New Zealand schoolkids. Bronwen Holdsworth is co-founder and managing director of advanced materials technology company Pultron, based near Gisborne.
She who holds the purse strings
KPMG managing partner Jan Dawson is the country's top female accountant. Dawson worked full-time during her child-rearing years, so she's well used to the working-mum guilts. Three weeks after getting the top KPMG job, Dawson took a week off to watch her daughter compete in a rowing championship. Between races she sat huddled in her car, cellphone to ear.
Other top bean-counters include former Ernst and Young partner Liz Hickey and KPMG partner Joanna Perry, who are both on the Securities Commission, and Ernst and Young partner Carol Campbell.
American-born PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Suzanne Snively has snatched headlines with some of the consultancy work she's done for the government and public sector. Married to TVNZ boss Ian Fraser, Snively's done time on the Reserve Bank board and was recently tipped as a long-shot contender to replace Don Brash as governor.
Not the ironing board, stupid
While the boards of directors of New Zealand companies are seriously male-heavy (a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey this year showed only 12.3% of non-executive directors are women), there are a few women who have made it onto a number of high-profile boards. Of these, the best-known must be Roseanne Meo (Baycorp, Briscoes, AMP). Also of note are former MP Fran Wilde (ANZ, Tradenz), Alison Paterson (Wrightsons, Tower, Landcorp), Sue Suckling (Agriquality, WestpacTrust), Joan Withers (The Warehouse, Auckland International Airport, Meridian Energy) and Kerrin Vautier (Fletcher Building, Independent News and Media).
People people
Among recruitment agencies, Millennium People principal Makere Papuni would have been ranked as a star performer till her firm's unfortunate encounter with Maori Television fraudster John Davy.
Mother and millionaire Melissa Clark-Reynolds, who previously ran private workplace insurer Fusion, is now back and working for Empower Group, where she has responsibility for leadership development. Surprisingly for someone so frequently quoted in the media, Clark-Reynolds has confessed to sleepless nights when faced with the prospect of having to get up and talk about herself. Associates describe her as a powerful force who's got plenty more to do and say yet.
Recruitment consultancy Pohlen Kean was set up by Nicola Pohlen and Heather Kean, two women tired of the inflexible way the recruitment industry worked. They have 22 staff in New Zealand and are building up a Melbourne office.
Women investors
At first glance the financial services sector looks to be a skirt-free zone, but look closer and you'll spot the odd lipstick-wearer.
Catherine Savage, a qualified accountant who has a school-age son, runs the country's biggest funds manager, AMP Henderson. When appointed two years ago, she was AMP group's first woman country manager and, at 33, the youngest person to head its Kiwi operation.
Diane Foreman is a seriously wealthy, well-connected investor. The Sunday Star-Times' Rich and Powerful List puts the worth of Foreman and husband Bill at $90 million, a fortune built on the Trigon packaging company, bought by US firm Sealed Air. Diane is head of the Foremans' private investment company Emerald Group, which has interests in commercial property and the health sector, including hospitals, in New Zealand and Australia. A new Foreman venture is executive leasing, through the company Emergent and Co.
Other high-profile investors include venture capitalist Jenny Morel, funds manager with ING (formerly Armstrong Jones) Amanda Smith, and Carmel Fisher, who set up Fisher Funds Management.
The country's top woman banker is probably Barbara Chapman, who runs ASB's retail banking business. One to watch in the insurance area is Naomi Ballantyne, who's done what every woman who's ever been overlooked for promotion dreams of doing. One of Sovereign Insurance's first employees, Ballantyne rose to become chief operating officer. When ASB took over Sovereign, she was being groomed to become the insurer's managing director, but she says she soon realised ASB wasn't going to give her the job. So she quit, and in June last year set up a rival firm, boutique insurer Club Life. Club Life has already clocked up premiums of $2 million - with much of the business coming from former Sovereign clients.
Cracking the whip as chair of the Securities Commission is Jane Diplock, an Australian import who's recently been pushing for stricter controls on investment advisers. Funnily enough, the Securities Commission is one of the few boards in the country with equal male and female representation.
Phone operators
The telecommunications sector is dominated by the two divas of New Zealand business, Telecom's Theresa Gattung and TelstraClear's Rosemary Howard. But beneath them are several women running businesses bigger than many listed companies. Rhoda Holmes, for example, heads Telecom's network investment group, while Fiona Beck runs its half-owned Southern Cross Cable Network business.
Making an impact outside the big three is Annette Presley, a co-founder of telco CallPlus, who was also involved in ISP i4free.
In the information technology area, Jenny Mortimer is TelstraClear's information systems manager, and Jeni Mundy is director of technology at Vodafone. Mother and MBA graduate Lisa Buchan runs IBM's software group, after being hired to revitalise the business. Carol Lee Davidson is Oracle's national manager of i-platform solutions and has worked to encourage women within the IT industry - as has Deannah Templeton, senior consultant at Microsoft.
Government gals
You might have heard of Helen Clark and her behind-the-scenes power broker Heather Simpson in the halls of Wellington. While not businesswomen-proper, they have some influence on the business climate. And Jeanette Fitzsimons, co-leader of the Greens, would like to.
MP Sue Wood is better known in some circles as founder of the influential public relations firm that still bears her name.
Several women have made it to chief executive level within the public service. Among them are Belinda Clark (Justice Ministry), Jackie Pivac (Child, Youth and Family), Karen Poutasi (Health Ministry) and Karen Sewell (Education Review Office).
Jo Brosnahan is chief executive of the Auckland Regional Council, and Frana Cardno is the Southland District Council's energetic mayor. Cardno has been nicknamed "the possum lady" because of her determination to eradicate the pest that is destroying native tree shoots in the region.
Forest dwellers
Logging and forestry have long been a male domain, but forestry giant Carter Holt Harvey is an exception, with women in some key jobs. These include Linda Sewell, who runs the group's laminated veneer lumber plant in Whangarei, and New Zealander Vanessa Stoddart, who heads the company's packaging business in Melbourne. Until recently Jenny Aitken-Christie was in charge of the company's biotech development in Rotorua.
Former CHH director Bridget Wickham, now chief executive of University of Auckland Developments and a Knowledge Wave Trust director, has just been announced as a prospective guardian of the government's superannuation fund.
On the forestry biotech front, 31-year-old Dr Julia Charity has been named the Zonta science award-winner this year for her work in genetic engineering at Forest Research in Rotorua. She and her team have altered a cancer-causing soil bacterium to carry favourable DNA, and helped develop designer trees that grow fast and without disease.
Talking heads
If there were a crown for the queen of spin it would be on Michelle Boag's head. She has exchanged her heavy-duty corporate public relations hat for that of National Party president so she can "stop the rot". When the Serious Fraud Office probed donations made to the National Party by her former employer Fay Richwhite, her teary rantings betrayed her usual staunch guard. But with the election in sight and the "dead wood" cleaned out, Opposition leader Bill English is her baby. She finds the words when he can't.
Another public relations heavyweight, Boag's buddy Tina Symmans is National's campaign communications director. With Contact Energy, Guinness Peat Group and Fletcher Challenge tucked under her belt, she was responsible for the syrupy calendar with Bill in playful poses.
Meanwhile, Catherine Judd does PR for Act and the Business Roundtable. They, along with Porter Novelli's Auckland manager Jill Dryden, Sweeney Vesty partner Jane Vesty and Wellington's Sally Logan are among the feistiest of the public relations lot, mostly charging stinging fees for peddling strong persuasion in the political and commercial arena.
Also armed with considerable lobbying power representing business to government is Anne Knowles, executive director of Business New Zealand.
Given that women are the biggest consumers, high-flying female advertising executives are surprisingly scant. DDB's creative director Jeneal Rohrback, Radiation's Jill Brindson, and Mary Robbins, creative director and founder of Robbins Brandt Richter, are the few standouts.
Off the shop floor
Two Christchurch women who swapped careers in health for specialist clothing retailing have had remarkable success. Peri Drysdale shot to fame with her presidential coup. Not only did she supply Apec world leaders with merino polo shirts, she got then-US President Bill Clinton to take off his jacket and parade his in front of an audience of millions. Her Snowy Peak and Untouched World clothing brands make a textbook tale of rags to riches - or contract cottage knitters to export prowess. Local stores are popping up like mushrooms.
Jan Cameron, who founded outdoor clothing retail chain Kathmandu, keeps out of the limelight. When the Sunday Star-Times' Rich and Powerful List touted her as the country's richest woman this year, at a worth of $75 million, it surprised many. Her 13 high-profile stores in New Zealand and 13 in Australia turn over $100 million a year.
Anne Norman - whose grandfather James Pascoe founded the Pascoes jewellery chain in 1906 - has grown the family business with many stores on both sides of the Tasman. Her family and trusts are thought to be worth $150 million. Lingerie e-tailer Jennifer Ann Hannah is a new breed of retailer. In 1999 she persuaded her home town of Pokeno to be renamed JenniferAnn.com for a year. While dot-coms have bombed, she has ploughed on, signing up big name lingerie brands to her website along the way.
Suzanne Hall's Living Nature organic cosmetics and creams business is not only an international success but also one of the far north's biggest employers. Launched in a small shed in Keri Keri, the cosmetics are plant-based, creating plenty of work for growers in the region. Hall now has a factory and sells to the US, Holland, Germany, Asia and Australia.
Maori women
Dame Georgina Kirby can't remember how many times she has planned to retire. These days she is run off her feet administrating millions of dollars in loans to businesswomen through her Maori Women's Development business, formed because Maori women didn't get a fair bite of loan grants. Key to the loans is business success. Dame Georgina writes the curriculum herself, and gives it out to women around the country in her numerous roadshows.
Power suits
Cottage industry, be damned. New Zealand's fashion design divas have beaten a path to the doors of discerning international buyers with a vengeance in the last few years. Their creations - summed up by discerning fashion police as funky, fresh and sharp - are gracing the world's swankiest fashion houses. Since designer queen Karen Walker decked out Madonna in a pair of trousers, a raft of New Zealand designers have outed their creations on catwalk models at star-studded fashion weeks to rave reviews.
World's larger-than-life Denise L'Estrange-Corbet clocked a huge coup this year as the first fashion designer ever to win a Queen's Birthday honour, in recognition of her zany and avant-garde creations. Not so long ago, she recalls, the business was seen as a bit of a folly.
Hip New York nightclub Go recently hosted homegrown designers Zambesi (Neville and Elizabeth Findlay), Nom.D (Margarita Robertson), Insidious Fix (Jason Crawford and Kylie Davis) and up-and-coming Wellington designer Sophie Voon.
Exclusive exporter Trelise Cooper has stamped out her style niche, while Kate Sylvester is also becoming a household name among the fashion conscious.
Hot property
A news report once described Michelle McKellar as the most powerful figure in the high-stakes game of hotel property sales in New Zealand. That was in 1999, after the former Brisbane-based sales whiz had pulled off a string of deals where she flicked off big names like the Regent, Pan Pacific and Quality Inns. Today, she's still a powerful force as chief executive of Auckland One, the company that owns the Two Double Seven shopping mall in Newmarket. One journalist reported a $300 million budget for the recent mall expansion.
Media maids
In publishing, editor Sue Chetwin wields the substantial power of the 200,000-plus circulation of The Sunday Star-Times. A populist with a background in tabloid journalism, she once said: "You can take the girl out of the tabloid, but you can't take the tabloid out of the girl."
That's a certain sort of power, but not the type of financial clout wielded by production company Touchdown maestro Julie Christie, who's taking her television creations from New Zealand to the globe. Jo Tyndall has similar clout, handing out $89 million of taxpayer money this year as head of New Zealand on Air. In radio, former Radio Otago head Sussan Turner sits high up in the management of the CanWest-owned radio group, one of the two biggest in the country and including the More FM and RadioWorks stations.
In magazines, former Gordon & Gotch general manager Sarah Sandley is now the general manager of INL Magazines. Julie Dalzell is doing very well on the back of Cuisine, the stonkingly successful foodie title that the major publishers would die to own.
Australian-born Wendy Pye (MBE) is a publishing force unto herself. Owner and managing director of Wendy Pye Group, publisher of 1800 educational titles, she claims to have sold 188 million copies worldwide. Books, the internet, CD-ROMs, television, research: this company is into it all, operating under the banner "to teach the world to read". Notable quotes from her recent press clippings include: "I have millions and millions of dollars. I can do whatever I like. That's why the blokes don't like me," and, "Even if you have to eat spaghetti for a month, go business class. After all, who are you going to meet in economy class?"
Sporting lass
A long-time sports journalist once called Glenda Hughes "the Jerry Maguire of New Zealand", a description that would no doubt delight her. The former policewoman, shot-put champion and now National Party figure and public relations, communications and marketing practitioner, is influential. Her networks run through the worlds of business, sport and politics, and, reputedly, she maintains those Maguire-like links with sports figures.
Creative whiz
In creative fields, actress Lucy Lawless - formerly of Xena, lately busy with her new baby - stands out as one of New Zealand's few genuine international stars, with both moolah and the clout of fame. Fran Walsh, The Lord of the Rings screenwriter (not to be mistaken for freelance journalist Frances Walsh - an alleged confusion that has resulted in legal action against The Listener), is reaping the rewards of being part of one of the biggest shows on earth.
In design, one to watch is Annie Dow and her nine-year-old Dow Design in Auckland and Wellington, a company that specialises in creating and refreshing corporate brands. Ask for the other top women in this area, and you are likely to hear Paula Dashwood of Dashwood Design mentioned as well.
Rags to riches
Lisa Er made an undisclosed but very respectable sum when she sold her thriving food manufacturing business Lisa's Hummus to Sanitarium this year. Under the terms of the deal that went through in April, she will stay for three years - and she says it may well be longer. The former primary school teacher tells Unlimited she does not expect to start up another business. Her original motivation was to help support her family. And now? "I don't need to earn money any more."
Whatever she does next will be "entirely for pleasure", she says, talking of a desire for travel and a love of music (she's a multi-instrumentalist, choral society singer and would-be cellist). She then adds: "I'll probably do something less self-indulgent than that, as well."
Speaking about one of the sexual divides in New Zealand business, she says, "Personally, I think there should be a lot more women in the food industry." It makes sense, she says, as women have traditionally spent more time than men thinking about, preparing and serving food.
Power families
Suzanne Snively, economist and PricewaterhouseCoopers partner, married Ian Fraser in 1975. Then a well-known television broadcaster, Fraser has also headed the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and is now chief executive of TVNZ.
Venture capitalist Jenny Morel is married to Treasury secretary (formerly Commerce Commission boss) Alan Bollard. The pair's frighteningly bright son Albert was recently awarded a scholarship to Cambridge in England (see "Girdlers turn dux don", July). Someone to keep Morel in her old age, perhaps.
Other powerful partnerships include chief justice Sian Elias' marriage to former Fletcher Challenge boss Hugh Fletcher, recently appointed to the board of the Reserve Bank; University of Auckland Developments chief executive Bridget Wickham, married to Carter Holt boss Chris Liddell; and New Zealand Post director Heather Shotter, married to Sky City general manager Evan Davies. The couple have five children, all girls - potential powerful women, perhaps?
Most eligible
The most eligible of our bunch? How about attorney-general Margaret Wilson - brainy, attractive and single. She dresses well, too.
Richest women
Most powerful playmate
You might not be aware that influential economic consultant (and Fulbright New Zealand chair) Suzanne Snively once shared a bath with the movie director Steven Spielberg. They were neighbours at the time - and were about six years old.
Best connected
The award for networking must go to Christchurch-based clothing retailer Peri Drysdale. She not only managed to persuade then-US President Bill Clinton to take off his jacket to model her Untouched World spun merino polo shirt to millions of television viewers during the 1999 Apec conference, but she recently lured him into her Auckland shop during his BMW-sponsored visit. Networking (getting "brand disciples") is Drysdale's forte. For example, Drysdale used the Clinton connection to persuade Nobukazu Muto, the powerful president of Japan's top fashion department store Isetan, to spend a day and a half visiting Untouched World in New Zealand, compared with the one hour discussion he normally allows fashion suppliers. The result: in 2001 Isetan ran a huge promotion of Untouched World products, including direct mail of the catalogue to one million of its wealthiest customers. That's networking.
Top diaspora
New Zealand women aren't just influencing top business at home. They are doing well overseas, too. Take Linda Jenkinson, founder and chief executive of Silicon Valley-based LesConcierges, the biggest concierge and personal-assistance company in the US. Jenkinson previously co-founded and headed Dispatch Management Services, which has over 6000 employees and contractors in 65 cities worldwide.
In New York, Sarah Billinghurst has an influential role in the multimillion-dollar world of opera as assistant manager of the Metropolitan Opera.
In London, former New Zealand women's golf champion Judith Hanratty is company secretary for oil giant BP, and Judith Mayhew chairs the all-powerful Policy and Planning Committee for the City of London Corporation. Mayhew is said to be the most powerful woman in the City, though perhaps not Westminster, where the Queen holds that title. Linda McDougall is not only married to British Labour MP Austin Mitchell, but is a television director and journalist. She recently made a TVNZ documentary, Pavlova Paradise Revisited, to be screened in the UK, and is the unofficial biographer of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's wife, Cherie.
Frances Martin
frances.martin@paradise.net.nz
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