Jackie Lloyd grew up in Dunedin knowing that girls could do anything.
The recently elected Institute of Directors national council president did not have to look far for inspiration. When her parents married in 1957, her mother Helen quit her job as married women could not be nurses in those days.
But finding herself living in Waverley with nothing to do, she demanded her job back and became the first married nurse in Dunedin.
Jackie’s father, the late Tom Lloyd, was illustrations editor at the Otago Daily Times and had many travel opportunities through his work, including three trips to Antarctica.
His wife did not have the same opportunities and so, in 1974, when airfares reduced, she headed overseas by herself to experience travelling, via a camping trip around Europe, meeting up with nursing friends in the United Kingdom.
Tom Lloyd, who died at 52 when Jackie was 20, recognised his wife and two daughters had to be independent women, Ms Lloyd said.
Helen Lloyd went to work at Forsyth Barr; Jackie, who was working in a bank, went to university to study psychology, marketing and management, and her elder sister Michele, a physiotherapist, studied economics at university.
A life-long interest in the relationship between human behaviour and business performance led Jackie Lloyd through an executive career as global human resources director for the New Zealand Dairy Board and NZMP Fonterra, to consulting and governance.
Growing up, she did not know what she wanted to do as a career but she did know that she wanted to "experience things". She recalled having a restlessness and she did a Rotary exchange to Perth. It was a boom time in Western Australia and she saw enterprise and commerce first-hand.
Returning home, her father got her a job at the National Bank in Princes St — no-one in her family had been to university — and she spent an enjoyable couple of years there.
From there, she went to the University of Otago for five years where her curiosity was piqued around understanding the dynamics of people and business.
That area had really come to the fore now with the focus on organisations’ culture, health and safety, and wellbeing, and the impact of leadership. But back then, it was an unusual combination, she said.
She "absolutely loved" her time at university, including flatting in Clyde St, laughing how her mother could not understand why she would want to leave home to move into a grotty flat.
Her first job was at Mobil Oil, which was at the forefront of leadership development. Based in Wellington, she had an interesting few years during the heyday of price deregulation including a short-term assignment in New York.
From there she was headhunted by the New Zealand Dairy Board and ended up head of global HR for the organisation which had 10,000 people in 40 countries.
"It was an incredible role with an amazing organisation," she said.
In 2001, Fonterra was established following the merger of the country’s two largest dairy co-operatives, New Zealand Dairy Group and Kiwi Co-operative Dairies, with the New Zealand Dairy Board. She remained with Fonterra for several years but said there was a very different culture to the dairy board.
So she went consulting which included a tenure with analytics and advisory company Gallup, working mainly in the employee engagement space.
It was the calling of being part of an organisation and being involved at a strategic level that brought Ms Lloyd to governance, and her first position was on the board of New Zealand Post in 2010.
The experienced director’s current portfolio comprised Naylor Love Enterprises, of which she is chairwoman, CentrePort (which is Wellington’s port business) and AgResearch.
She is a board member of Te Papa Tongarewa and a trustee of the Lion Foundation. It was a diverse portfolio and, for her, it was all about the people, she said.
Naylor Love, which had its roots in Dunedin back in 1910, was now the largest privately-owned vertical construction company in New Zealand. It had about 1000 direct employees — more than 20% were women — and hundreds of sub-contractors.
Projects in the South include the ACC building, Otago Polytechnic’s trades training centre, the Dunedin Railway Station, and the Skyline gondola redevelopment in Queenstown.
Asked the appeal of governance, Ms Lloyd said it was being part of a team that was accountable for the guidance and strategy of an organisation, and being able to come together and employ and empower chief executives to do their very best for the organisation, its shareholders and stakeholders.
"It’s such a privilege to be in that position to be appointed to a board and have that responsibility of leading the board, if you’re the chair, to really do its best and maximise its value," she said.
Joining the Institute of Directors was one of the first things Ms Lloyd did when she decided she wanted to be a director.
She won the emerging director award on her second attempt for the Wellington branch and then became involved with her local branch committee and, through that, the national council.
IoD was a membership-based organisation with more than 10,000 members covering a diverse range of governance interests.
The organisation had recently been through changes to its own governance structure and it now had a skills-based board appointed by the national council, as well as its chief executive and management team. Trish Oakley, of Dunedin, became vice-president of the council while Ross Buckley was appointed chairman of the board.
It was all about driving excellence around governance in New Zealand and continuing to raise the bar of governance.
"The more we can help create fantastic governance in New Zealand, the better for the future for New Zealand," she said.
There was also a need to continue to grow the pipeline of board-ready people and for talent to be mentored and coached to equip them for leadership roles to ensure the best people were at the board table.
The last few years had shown the power of how a group of people was able to help guide organisations through turbulent times.
Covid-19 impacted organisations in a huge variety of ways. Some organisations were meeting daily, if not hourly if cashflow suddenly dried up.
For others, it was more appropriate for boards to step back while the operational needs of the organisation were being ramped up.
One lesson for boards was to be agile and respond to what was happening in the immediacy but also to keep an eye to the future of the strategy.
Asked about her own experiences, Ms Lloyd said it was "like sitting in your office 24/7".
While some directors found it enormously difficult and challenging, she found it interesting and enjoyed that challenge of being by herself and having to find online tools and capabilities.
Now most boards were meeting virtually at least a couple of meetings a year which was great for the planet and reducing emissions, she said.
Governance came in many forms, from a school board of trustees — in itself, a very complex organisation — through to small community organisations and not-for-profit to "big-end-of-town" commercial companies, and people could participate in governance in many ways.
When she first started looking at governance in the early 2000s, it was all about creating value for shareholders. One of the biggest shifts had been that it was no longer just about that; it was about impact on the environment, communities and creating value, not just for the shareholders but for employees, management and customers.
Conversations around the boardroom table, whether on cyber-security or artificial intelligence, were substantially different to those 10 years ago and they were not just from a risk perspective, but also opportunities.
And when Ms Lloyd looked back to when she studied at university, business was "here" and people were "there".
"Actually it’s completely integrated," she said. And that had been her "internal engine of curiosity" — the impact people had on business and performance.
When asked what made a good leader, aside from experience, knowledge and expertise, she said real leadership was also about empathy, understanding and listening and also clarity — "what’s important and why".
She also enjoyed the networking and connecting , saying so much could be learned from fellow directors and presenters at events.
"If you’re interested in something, you just keep bubbling along," she said.
Now living in Wellington, she found similarities to Dunedin with the capital also boasting a harbour and hills. Still a regular visitor to Dunedin, she said her Otago upbringing had "without a doubt" stood her in good stead for her career.
"I grew up in a very grounded community, one that had tentacles elsewhere.
"Dunedin is a great-sized city to be who you want to be and have big aspirations and you can live and work anywhere in New Zealand and around the world with great organisations. I have the best job ever," she said.
