It might have been decades since she lived here, but Lisa Futschek still feels a very strong connection to Dunedin.
Returning to her hometown this week, the former diplomat described herself as "a Dunedin girl through and through".
"This might sound corny [but] I’m so grateful for Dunedin for the start in life. I genuinely mean it. It’s small enough you don’t get lost in the crowd and big enough to have so many opportunities for young people.
"There’s so much history and pride in the city and it’s just a great place to grow up. I feel just so grateful to have had my formative years in Dunedin and it will always be my first home."
Last year, Ms Futschek was appointed chief executive of Seafood New Zealand, the representative body for an industry which generates $5.2billion in economic output annually.
She is no stranger to the fishing industry; she has been a voice for it in her previous roles as part of various negotiating and working groups, including chairing an Apec fisheries working group initiative.
But growing up in Dunedin — she was head girl at Otago Girls’ High School — she did not have a future key role in the seafood sector on her radar.
Her dream then was to be a television presenter or journalist but life ultimately went in a different direction.
She completed a double honours degree in English and music at the University of Otago and was then in 1991 accepted for a year-long post-graduate diploma in broadcast communications in Auckland.
As part of the course, she had to do a documentary and, while her classmates all chose worthy topics, she focused on understanding New Zealand’s garden gnome culture. Publishing advertisements to find her own worthy subjects, they turned up gold.
One man contacted her to say he had a garden gnome in the form of former prime minister Sir Robert Muldoon. So she wrote to Mr Muldoon’s electorate agent to see if he would be interviewed and he agreed.
An interview was dutifully set up in the garden of his Tamaki home and she produced the gnome, wrapped in a tea towel, from under her chair.
"He was just the consummate politician but he had a great sense of humour. He laughed."
Another gnome aficionado created an entire garden stuffed with hundreds of gnomes, which became a drawcard for rest-home resident outings and school pupils.
The documentary — for which David Bowie’s The Laughing Gnome played over the final credits — played in several film festivals. Asked if it had made it on to YouTube yet, Ms Futschek said it was still sitting on the shelf in Super VHS format.
While television was still the dream, she got a job offer from a fellow debater at the University of Otago, Michael Laws, who was then MP for Hawke’s Bay.
Initially, she turned it down, so he flew to Auckland, the pair went out for dinner and he persuaded her to join his team. Conscious of her years as a student and rising debt, she decided working in the political environment could be interesting.
She guaranteed she would stay for a year and ended up staying for two. From there, she moved to another MP, Pauline Gardner, for a further two years.
It was while staying with friends on Waiheke Island that a copy of The New Zealand Herald was thrown at her, and she was told to find herself a job that she loved.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Mfat) was recruiting and that was something she had always had in the back of her mind. Her father had also encouraged her to take languages at school.
It had always been her plan to go back to broadcasting and the experience that she gained completing her diploma, along with the technical skills, had come to the fore in her career.
"It’s probably the year I learned the most practical skills I could apply in my career aside from the discipline of analysis and getting your thoughts clearly articulated in writing and essays," she said.
When she first started at Mfat, she was in the economic division involved in the primary sector. At that stage a range of regulations were happening around fisheries and she became so passionate about, and fascinated by, the seafood sector, she was known as the Fish Lady.
She had an 18-year diplomatic career with Mfat, which included five years as the deputy head of mission at the New Zealand embassy in Berlin, and three years as first secretary and consul at the New Zealand embassy in Santiago.
She then joined Education New Zealand in 2013 as general manager international. And when it came to doing brand and marketing videos there, suddenly her old broadcasting skills came flooding back, whether it was removing extra frames or framing up a shot.
She honed her craft in terms of relationship building globally that positioned New Zealand as a "fantastic partner" whether in diplomacy or trade.
Seafood — the country’s ninth-largest export sector — was such an important export industry for New Zealand and it was a natural progression last year to go from a "big picture" role into something very specific.
"It was the right thing at the right time and at a time of quite a bit of change. The challenge of it really attracted me as well. I think I’d be very bored if something was easy and straightforward, so here I am, nine months in," she said.
There was frustration the industry tended to get "an unfairly bad rap". When she looked at where the industry was now compared with the mid-1990s, she genuinely saw a sector where the vast majority were doing the right thing, she said.
She and her team were focused on bringing the stories in the sector up to date, telling those stories and making sure those involved were getting real credit for the hard work that went in.
It was a highly regulated industry. A high bar had been set for standards that must be reached around sustainability of the resource and impact on the marine ecosystem. There was real innovation in the sector to meet those standards and continue to provide "amazing protein".
In February last year, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones established the Seafood Industry Forum to identify barriers and opportunities to growth, saying operational and regulatory costs pressures were reported as holding industry back and making it difficult to invest in growth and innovation. The consultation document outlining the proposed amendments to the Fisheries Act is now out for public consultation.
Ms Futschek said they were common-sense changes that were long overdue. They were "good for everybody" and the bottom line was still that any changes could not affect the sustainability of the resource.
Businesses also had to be sustainable and "untenable" regulations had resulted in some long-serving fishers exiting the industry.
Proposed changes included the likes of a more flexible total allowable catch setting which took into account there was a whole lot more data available to use through electronic reporting.
Use of camera footage was also being discussed, as there were concerns around privacy issues and commercial sensitivity given the public could apply to see that footage through the Official Information Act.
"We don’t think it’s appropriate. We just don’t see a public need for that footage to be released," she said.
Feedback on the consultation document from fishers had been "incredibly positive".
"They see this as a game-changer. Essentially, these changes will make things more certain, more efficient, more responsive. Anything that does that is a real boon. It’s genuinely a positive-positive for everyone."
Mr Jones’ understanding of the sector was very beneficial, she said.
"He knows what will work and can see the stress the sector is under and he wants to address that. His pragmatism has been really valuable."
Bringing government and industry together was a fantastic collaboration. There was no point going down the route of an academic exercise if it was not practical.
"It’s been great to have a minister so focused on getting stuff done that makes sense," she said.
Outside work her music degree has also not gone to waste. Ms Futschek , who taught music for many years, sings in a Wellington community choir called Doubtful Sounds, which sang in the World Choir Games last year.
With radio broadcaster Bryan Crump as choirmaster, the pop choir sings everything from Abba numbers to a plethora of Kiwi and Australian tunes and even the theme to Batman, albeit there were not many words to that.
"I’m still engaged in music and I love it. That’s my true happy place, I think."
