If you compiled a list of powerful Queenstowners, Sarah Ottrey would be near the top.
She mightn’t have a high public profile, but she’s a highly rated company director, chairing Christchurch International Airport and Oamaru’s Whitestone Cheese and sitting on the boards of Queenstown-based Skyline Enterprises and Mount Cook Alpine Salmon.
And just before Christmas, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon appointed her to the APEC business advisory council — she was also on Luxon’s three Asian trade missions last year, leading the last one to Malaysia and South Korea.
Sarah grew up on her family’s West Otago farm, near Tapanui, and boarded at Dunedin’s Columba College.
While at Otago Uni she worked for an accountancy firm but her true love was marketing — she graduated with a B.Comm in marketing.
She then got on to a six-year graduate programme for consumer goods company Unilever, including a secondment to Thailand.
Sarah was then New Zealand marketing head for DB Breweries/Heineken, overseeing its famous Tui ‘yeah right’ campaign, which has just been revived.
While there she was appointed, due to her marketing expertise, to the board of newly-formed Crown-owned entity Public Trust, in 2001, which was the start of her governance career.
Sarah says she and a friend who’s also a longtime director are "just country girls who get on with the job, because you learn a lot, when you’re young on a farm, about not being fazed about issues you’ve got to sort out yourself".
"And my parents, especially my mother, were very strong on ‘girls can do anything’."
Sarah says Queenstown was part of her upbringing — "our family holiday home was a crib on the front row of the [Man St] camping ground".
She and her husband Phil bought a house at Tucker Beach in 2004, having decided to ultimately live here — "and, thank God, I probably couldn’t afford to live there now".
After living overseas, including Hong Kong and London, they moved here in 2015.
Encouraged by Queenstown entrepreneur/philanthropist, the late Sir Eion Edgar, she got involved with the Institute of Directors’ Otago-Southland committee.
She says the compliance aspect of governance is much more onerous than it was — "there’s no room for just turning up to a board meeting and not knowing what your obligations are".
Christchurch International Airport’s purchase of Tarras land for a future airport has ruffled Queenstown feathers, but Sarah’s unapologetic.
"There’s a really long-term view that really needs to be addressed around infrastructure in this part of the world — and as an infrastructure organisation your view is always 30 [to] 50 years out."
She has a soft spot for the airport’s emphasis on sustainability — "we’re in the process of building NZ’s largest solar farm to give the airport, and Christchurch, resilience, so that will be a game-changer".
She’s also proud of Skyline’s success — "our international expansion is actually exceptional".
Meanwhile, she notes in the 17 years she served on the board of Australasian medical products company Ebos Group, stepping down in 2023, it went from turning over $300 million to nearly $12 billion.
Like many, Sarah, whose only child, Rory, is a Colliers valuer in Wellington, is mad-keen on Queenstown’s lifestyle.
"I’ve got a shed of kit — bike, skis, golf clubs."
The skis will get an outing this month during a two-week powder camp in Japan.
"A good mate of mine from school who lives in Sydney and I decided [last year] to do a few legs of the Te Araroa, from Rangitata to Tekapo on the Two Thumbs Range, which for a couple of women our age was probably a bit ambitious.
"Anyway, we made it, minus my two toenails.
"So I do love the great outdoors, and for me it’s a great way to decompress."
Sarah acknowledges Queenstown’s infrastructure issues but says "they’re not backwards problems, they’re forwards problems".
"Yes, it would be great to have more funding to do a whole lot of extra things, but at the end of the day, when you come to Queenstown and walk down the street, there’s an energy, there’s languages from all around the world, there’s a positivity — you don’t walk in a lot of cities and towns in the world and get that vibe."
Meanwhile, she enjoys mentoring up-and-coming female directors.
"It’s a proven fact companies whose boards have females and diversity, longer run, are higher-performing companies."
