Those in the room were inspiring and they were all cheerleading one another in what was a friendly, inclusive and supportive space, she said.
Ms Davis, a Dunedin-based strategy consultant, is this year’s winner of the Institute of Directors’ Otago-Southland branch emerging director award, while Central Otago’s Emily Walker was named runner-up.
From Wellington originally, Ms Davis also did a stint living in South Korea as her husband was a project manager for the New Zealand Defence Force.
She moved to Dunedin six and a-half years ago and was keen for life to be “a bit of an adventure”. The South Island was a drawcard for its natural beauty and opportunities.
She has a science degree in psychology and sociology from Victoria University and has additional qualifications in strategy and innovation from Harvard Business School Online and the London School of Economics.
Her career has spanned senior strategy roles in government and tertiary education where she delivered projects such as the University of Otago’s learner success plan, the Centres of Asia-Pacific Excellence strategic direction and evaluation framework, and led policy initiatives at the Ministry for Women on inclusion in the digital economy.
Describing herself as entrepreneurial, she launched Collective Strategy in Dunedin, a business providing strategy development, practical research and stakeholder engagement for government, community and commercial organisations throughout New Zealand.
It was while at the Ministry for Women that Ms Davis was programme manager for an advisory council and had exposure to some leading women in governance.
She saw what they were achieving and both the challenges and opportunities they had.
A service was also run to support women in governance and she decided governance was something she aspired to.
She joined the Institute of Directors a few years ago but then realised she was not quite ready so she went away and got more experience before rejoining two years ago.
“I came back and felt really ready to give this a go and make the most of it,” she said.
In the intervening years, she had a few roles in the not-for-profit sector which she found incredibly satisfying.
As a strategist, she enjoyed being able to add value, look at the long term and what was needed to achieve it.
Ms Davis is on the board of the Startup Dunedin Trust and is an intern director on the board of Dunedin International Airport as part of Dunedin City Holdings Ltd’s Graham Crombie intern director programme.
That internship, which finishes next month, had been an “incredible” opportunity.
She had learned so much from the mentorship and the support from board members, the executive team and the cohort of interns.
Likewise, Startup Dunedin had a “fantastic” board and Dunedin was very lucky to have general manager Rachel Butler leading the organisation.
With governance taking up time, Ms Davis had been thinking about where she wanted to go with her governance career and what boards she wanted to align with.
She felt two boards was enough, along with her business, and Startup Dunedin would be her main focus for the next while. She would be looking for another governance opportunity next year.
Ms Davis was impressed with how supportive the IoD Otago-Southland branch was and she was also grateful for the opportunities for learning and networking.
One of the benefits of the emerging director award was the ability to attend all IoD events next year and she intended to make the most of that. She was also interested to go to events in other larger cities to see what was happening there.
She had some big aspirations in the governance space, particularly around ministerial appointments and public sector roles. It was about working on the next step to get there and what she needed to build on.
At the emerging director award presentation, it was “incredible” to hear from guest speaker Linda Robertson — a professional director with more than 25 years governance experience and an extensive background in the energy and financial sectors — and also Kathy Grant, who was being honoured as an IoD distinguished fellow, about their governance journeys.
Brought up in Oamaru, Mrs Grant moved to Dunedin for tertiary education and she has a commercial background in law, having taught in the Faculty of Law at the University of Otago and as a former consultant in law firm Gallaway Cook Allan.
Her journey in community governance began with her involvement in school boards where she laid the groundwork for future leadership roles.
Over time, she progressed to larger and more influential boards and she has had a prominent governance career over more than 30 years, including in the education, commercial and health sectors.
She was a ministerial appointee of the now disestablished Te Pūkenga board and council, and former chair of the Otago Polytechnic Council, and was previously a member of the University of Otago Council and chair of the council of the Dunedin College of Education.
In 2015, the minister of health appointed Mrs Grant as Southern District Health Board commissioner following the disestablishment of the DHB, a role she held until December 2019.
Mrs Grant is currently a director of Southern Cross CLT Ltd, which operates an elective-surgery facility in Queenstown and board member of Waitaki District Health Services. She is also an appointed director on the Central Lakes Trust.
