The Queenstown-based director was one of only two South Island mentees in the 20-strong 2024 cohort and it was such a diverse range of people in terms of professional backgrounds and levels of governance experience, she said.
Applications were open until March 31 for the 2025 programme which offered a year of one-on-one mentoring with a senior director and Ms Illingworth urged anyone contemplating it to give it a go.
Targeted at experienced directors aiming for a non-executive role on a large private company, public sector, not-for-profit or NZX-listed board, it aimed to help them enhance their governance capability, identify their skills strengths and gaps and refine their value proposition.
Successful applicants were matched with a mentor for a year, and there were also four networking and knowledge-sharing events held with the cohort through the year.
Governance could also be somewhat isolating so those events were beneficial, she said.
Ms Illingworth’s first exposure to governance was when she worked in planning and funding at the newly-established Southern District Health Board and her first governance role was with the Eldernet Group in 2017.
She is an appointed member of the Lakes District Hospital local clinical governance group, a director of Mercy Hospital Dunedin, a trustee of the Royal New Zealand Society Wakatipu District Trust, deputy chairwoman of Presbyterian Support Southland, and chairwoman of Eldernet Group’s advisory board.
When she came across the terms of application for the programme, it was quite last minute, but it was something that appealed to her.
While she had been involved in governance for a while, she said she would not describe herself as especially experienced.
She would like to be a professional director and that took time and the programme was something that really helped towards that aim, she said.
Ms Illingworth felt fortunate to have been matched with a ‘‘fabulous’’ mentor, also from Queenstown, and it had been a very enjoyable process to go through.
‘‘I found it brilliant in terms of really defining what direction I want to take from a governance perspective and what further education or personal development I may look at,’’ she said.
