Erica Dill-Russell is a former St Hilda’s Collegiate School pupil who now works in the United States as director of international operations for Liberty Alliance.
She has come a long way since being a pupil at St Hilda’s Collegiate School from 2002-06.
"It was a very good school and certainly offered a lot of options in terms of the things that I was interested in at the time."
She was "very impatient" as a pupil and while in her last year at high school had already begun two papers at the University of Otago.
This led to further studies including a bachelor’s degree in international business as well as studying French, Japanese and Portuguese languages.
Her next move was joining the New Zealand Army, where she was deployed to Bamiyan province in Afghanistan.
"That was the last operational tour in Bamiyan so we were shutting down the provincial reconstruction team deployment there."
During her time in Afghanistan she became interested in the operational effectiveness of female military personnel.
"People would say, we need a female to come and do this, because of cultural sensitivities, which I thought was very interesting."
She began looking into this more deeply, and it formed the basis of a master’s degree in international security.
That led to Ms Dill-Russell working for the Defence Technology Agency of New Zealand, working on special operations capability development including researching, testing and procuring new capabilities and technologies.
This work included special operations, capability development and collaboration between partner nations and led to her being offered a role at Liberty Alliance.
"As a company we work on next-generation, generation after next and horizon-scanning technologies."
Sometime it might be modernisation of technology, such as a 5% or 10% better gun scope.
But it also meant being able to consider future conflict spaces and what capabilities might be needed in five, 10 or 15 years in the future, she said.
"How do we know what we are going to need, and how might we develop those technologies."
Some of the events the company was involved in brought together military government personnel, academia and industry to explore future battlefield requirements.
"So where might we be operating, and what impacts might those have on operators?
"Is it going to be temperature, is it going to be in the air, is it going to be on the ground, is it going to be under water?"
Ms Dill-Russell is planning to visit New Zealand soon to talk about how more New Zealand defence technology companies can be part of the global defence market.
She also hopes to see and support more women into the defence industry.
In the meantime there is no rest for Ms Dill-Russell, who is training for a full IronMan triathlon in Arizona.
