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Having spent nearly half her life in international roles Mary Quin
is heading home with plenty of ideas up her sleeve
Palmerston North born, Mary
Quin has become hot property since taking on
the inaugural CEO of Callaghan Innovation last
month. Having travelled to nearly one third of
the countries in the world Mary is a witness of
innovation at its best. Yet she has never supposed
herself 'above' taking lodge in oil field camps or
sleeping on classroom floors in remote Arctic
villages.
The saying is true… you can take the girl
out of New Zealand but you can't take the
New Zealand out of the girl.
The seventh of nine children, Mary's
most beloved childhood memories were
of summer holidays at the family bach
at Waitarere Beach. Her father, a police
detective turned businessman and mother (a
fulltime homemaker) both encouraged their
children to pursue individual interests and
goals whether that was joining the family
business or going on to university.
Mary is a woman of many
accomplishments. In 1976 she joined the
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PhD program in Materials Science and
Engineering at Northwestern University
in Chicago. Although she did not expect
to remain in the USA after graduating,
Mary was offered a position developing
new alloys and products for Raychem, a
telecommunications company in the San
Francisco Bay Area. With the exception of a
year in France with Raychem, the USA has
been her home ever since. Mary eventually
obtained American citizenship after the USA
changed its policy to allow dual citizenship
and from 1986 -1988 she took two years
out from her career to obtain her MBA at
Harvard Business School. Since then Mary's
expertise have been shared across start-up
companies to global Fortune 500 companies
like Kodak and Xero.
"I have broad experience of how
innovation is nurtured and commercialized
in very small and very large organizations."
This is clearly a woman who lives in the
moment and now with her most recent
appointment the sky truly is the limit for this
high-flying innovator.
Congratulations on your recent
appointment. What will your main
objectives be as CEO of Callaghan
Innovation?
The opportunity to join Callaghan
Innovation as its first CEO was completely
unexpected. I was initially contacted by the
executive recruiter. Once I had an opportunity
to meet the Callaghan Innovation board and
understand the mission and potential of this
newly created organization I realized it was
a very exciting and challenging role which
would utilize every aspect of my career to date
– research, engineering, product development,
corporate leadership, strategy, bidding and
delivering on services contracts, even my
experience as an entrepreneur running a retail
store. I felt it was a unique opportunity to have
a positive impact on future economic outcomes
for New Zealand and I couldn't wait to get
started.
