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her inspiration "One of the challenges we've had in New Zealand is the lack of attention to succession planning and there's been a tendency to appoint directors that tend to look similar to each other..." education, but I believe I received an excellent education and by the sixth form the numbers were such that I was able to do some subjects entirely on my own with a weekly check-in with a teacher." This independence followed Sue her into 7th form when she became a prefect and then into her tertiary education and beyond. She enrolled at the University of Canterbury where she completed a Bachelor of Commerce at just 19-years-old whilst also working at Christchurch accounting practice, Pickles, Perkins and Hadlee during the holidays. "At the time I was thinking about pursuing accounting I talked to a friend in the field who gave me one of the greatest pieces of advice I've ever been given. He told me that what was important in life was people, and business only existed to improve the lives of people via the challenge and the economic benefits it gave them." At a time when female partners in accounting practices were in short supply, Sue changed roles three times in as many years through SMEs in Christchurch. Each move was driven by opportunities presented to her – never once did Sue need apply for a position. There were two key factors she attributes to her appeal for senior roles; firstly, her preference for up-to-date technology, and secondly, taking action towards her frustration of completing the same amount of work, if not more, than her seniors but with compensation at a junior rate. "I have always been driven to do better on the path of better technologies and opportunities. A perfect example of this was during the computerisation of accounting practices. When I started we would typically have paper-tape punch operators in our offices and those tapes were hand delivered by juniors, like myself, to a computer processing bureau. The next day you'd collect your printouts which would be used for typing the financial accounts. In the early years of my career accounting systems began to be developed that were installed in practices that did the full job and printed a set of accounts in-house." In 1979 Sue joined her then-husband, a fellow accounting student she had met at university, in his practice Bullock, Taylor and Sheldon. "It worked well because we had different attributes and abilities. We also shared the client base which gave them the benefit of our different skills." "We filed a very small number of tax returns because that simply wasn't our focus. We only ever focused on building businesses for our clients, which set us apart from other practices at that time." Over the next 23 years in the practice Sue was exposed to the perfect foundation for her career today. The opportunity to lead her chosen profession in 2000, as the first woman president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in 93 years, was a chance too good to turn down. Her most recent venture was the Telecom demerger of its network business into Chorus; a newly listed company that Sue will be chairing. As a director of Telecom and assisting the Chairman, Wayne Boyd, Sue appointed additional directors to the board of Telecom as well as assembling a full slate of directors for Chorus. "One of the challenges we've had in New Zealand is the lack of attention to succession planning and there's been a tendency to appoint directors that tend to look similar to each other. In this latest exercise we looked widely and started by drawing up a list of particular skills and competencies we required for each of the businesses, as well as personal attributes needed. It's important to employ members to a board who interact well and work as a team." Sue is instinctively aware of the place women hold on boards. She believes leaders who are serious about getting more women into senior management need a hard-edged approach to overcome the invisible barriers holding them back. After all, despite significant corporate commitment to the advancement of women's careers, progress appears to have stalled. According to the World Economic Forum in its Global Gender review of 135 nations, women hold less than 20 percent of key national positions. The economic benefits of gender diversity are compelling. "What I look for is diversity in thought and you can't have this unless you think broadly about the community we live and work in," Sue says. "The Chorus board has achieved 50 percent women – the only listed entity to do this in New Zealand. And out of four new appointments for Telecom, two of those are women." Sue is also on the board of Global Women, New Zealand's premier dynamic women's organisation. Although Sue admits she lives "in the wrong city to socialise", with only six members of the network based in Christchurch, her numerous Auckland and Wellington based roles means she can "take care of her business contacts from time to time". The proud Cantabrian stays close to her son Scott, an aeronautical engineer for Air New Zealand and her mother, Cara who in her late 80s lives independently in Christchurch. "This is my home and it needs fixing," says Sue. "Like everybody else my house is broken and my family have broken houses; I've moved my mother five times since the September quake – all of the usual impacts that have affected Christchurch residents. 26 | December/January 2012 | HER MAGAZINE