CHANNEL FEATURE INTERVIEW: ANN TOD
Commitment to business and community By Christine Young
Long-time Takapuna resident Ann Tod is the personification of the wisdom of asking a busy person when you want something done. Recently retired from KPMG where she was an audit partner, she has for the last three decades combined a busy family and professional life with involvement in sporting and community organisations. Most recently, she was appointed as chair of the board of Harbour Hospice. Christine Young talks to Ann about work, family and volunteering. Ann has lived for the last 40 years on the North Shore, shifting here after she and husband Alastair moved to Auckland where he completed teacher training. Ann was born in Hastings and went to university at Massey in Palmerston North. She laughs about the longevity of her time at KPMG, where she spent her entire business career, and in audit. It was not a path she had specifically planned, but one that she found suited her. Initially, it was simply that she needed a job where she could get her post-university professional qualifications, and “audit firms were hiring” when she arrived in Auckland. Better still, “I found myself good at it”. “I didn’t aim for a corporate role,” she says. But once in the workforce, “I learned very quickly that I was team-based and that team values motivate me. I thrived in the professional services environment.” She admits she may have a different approach to many auditors, as she takes a collaborative approach. This enabled her to build longstanding trusted relationships with many clients, one of whom was to play a role in her joining the Harbour Hospice board. But more of that later… Her career at KMPG could have been derailed when in 1987 Ann had the first of her and Alastair’s three children. In those days, there was little room for anyone in a professional services client-facing role to work part time. “The feeling was that if you’re not full-time, you’re not focussing 100% on your job.” Ann’s solution was to return to KPMG part-time, in the learning and development team, working on internal training and large change projects. It meant she was made partner later than many of her contemporaries, as that didn’t happen until she resumed full-time work. But it also meant that she stayed connected, and was able to step back into a client-facing role with confidence, as she had kept up to date
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with changes, and developed her communications, presentation and facilitation skills. But she attributes her success above all to her “knack of recognising that listening and good questioning was the foundation of getting everything right” for clients. “That’s motivated me all through my career. My success came from caring for people and building relationships.” Just as work was important, so was family. Ann played netball at community level and at university, and as her girls grew, although she was no longer playing, they became involved in the sport. Like many parents, Ann was always on the sideline – and the team needed a coach. As she had some experience, she “ended up” coaching her middle daughter’s team. “And I’d umpired, so I found myself umpiring” as there was a shortage of umpires. With an attitude that’s served her well in her career and her community involvement, there was a job that needed doing, she had the skills, and she stepped up. Not content to umpire at school level (again an attitude that I suspect defines Ann), as her girls advanced through the sport, she thought she should improve her skills too. By “working hard” she attained her New Zealand C level umpire qualifications. She umpired until 2016, and now coaches North Harbour netball umpires.
I have a view of governance that we are there to ask good questions to enable the organisation to look forward. Just as she became involved in netball as part of a family activity, Ann’s leisure activities also revolve around family. She and Alastair enjoy walks along Takapuna or Milford beaches, or up Te Mata Peak when in the Hawkes Bay; she knits, and says she does “a bit” of sewing. Questioned, she admits that this “bit” might on occasion involve making up to 15 costumes for a dance performance, as one of her daughters is a dance teacher. And the family holidays together, over Christmas always in the Hawke’s Bay, where she and Alastair both grew up. In the early 2000s, Ann added Rotary to her already busy
