14 minute read
An Interview with 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 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.
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
Ann Tod at the Harbour Hospice redevelopment site ahead of a meeting.
schedule. She confesses that this was purely for herself: she had deep community networks, but needed to develop her business networks as she built her career. She joined the Auckland club, as it was close to the office and had lunchtime meetings – and as is her style, threw herself into full involvement, becoming Director of Community Focus on the Rotary Auckland board. Her early focus was on youth programmes – the family hosted a number of young people through the Rotary Exchange programme, and two of their three girls went overseas on the programme. At the same time, she was also involved with the Auckland club’s participation in RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards, a week-long leadership development programme for 20-28 year olds), supporting six young people to attend a one-week residential camp each July. This involved interviewing them, making sure they understood what they were committing to, transporting them to camp, attending the associated dinner, and supporting them in speaking to Rotarians.
A more recent programme, and one she is still involved in, “which is very cool”, is Give Every Child A Future, a project initiated to celebrate 100 years of Rotary in which the Auckland, Wellington, Sydney and Melbourne clubs (the four original clubs in New Zealand and Australia) have combined to fund vaccinations against rotavirus, pneumococcal disease and cervical cancer to reduce child mortality in the Pacific. Ann’s role (not unexpectedly) is as treasurer, and she is excited that after several years’ planning and fundraising, the first vaccines will be given soon.
While Rotary and netball both require hands-on involvement of several hours a week of Ann’s volunteer input, her most recent role, as chair of the Harbour Hospice trust board, is more like a full day a week. But, she notes, the role at Harbour Hospice is a genuine governance role.
“I have a view of governance,” she says, “that we are there to ask good questions to enable the organisation to look forward. For example, with the risk register, I also like to look at opportunities. Our role is not to be a hand brake but to drive the organisation forward.”
She is also actively committed in a more general way to improving governance and financial reporting in the not-for-profit sector. She became aware of a need as financial reporting standards changed for not-for-profits, and encouraged teams at KPMG to engage with charities; she also reached out to funders, many of whom had strict and sometimes unrealistically high reporting standards for small charities applying for funding. Some financial reporting by charities, she comments, was “abysmal”, and on occasion charities and their auditors were compromised by the auditor having to become involved in completing the financial reports, as well as trying to remain independent as an auditor. As a result of her work, she says that KPMG ended up doing around 80% of charitable audits – a win for the charities, in that they were dealing with people who understood their needs, but also for KPMG.
Ann became involved in Hospice, as alluded to earlier, through her role at KPMG, where Mercy Hospice had been one of her clients. She had built a strong relationship with Jan Nicholls, then chief executive at Mercy Hospice and now at Harbour Hospice. For once, when Jan first approached Ann about joining the board, Ann said no. It was only on Jan’s second approach in 2017 that Ann agreed to join the board. Two years later, repeating the pattern of giving full commitment to whatever she takes on, she was appointed chair of the Trust.
Planning for the new building was under way when Ann joined the board, so she knew what she was taking on. She is also fully engaged with other board activities and she has continued the ethos of the board engaging with the large number of Hospice volunteers (who are looked after on a day-to-day basis by paid staff who manage the volunteer programme) through ensuring that someone from the board attends all fundraising events, inviting people in, and taking time out around Christmas to have morning tea together and celebrate with service awards.
Ann is clearly committed to and passionate about the work Hospice does in the community, as she is with all the roles she maintains. She may have retired as a partner at KPMG but there is little sign that her workload is decreasing or that she has any inclination to sit back and relax. As she says, she is an “active relaxer” and that seems unlikely to change any time soon.
Local Life
In Channel Magazine we love highlighting people in our community who make a difference. Two local Devonport Peninsula people, Kate and Lauren, have created ‘Local Life NZ’ a social media entity doing similar online. We love what they do, so we’re now collaborating with them to include Art by the Sea, Ike's Emporium, and North Shore Croquet Club.
Ike's Emporium
Fancy dress parties just won’t be the same with the closure of Ike’s Emporium, a Devonport institution, after 20 years. “It’s the end of an era,” says Raewyn, who grew up in Devonport and has worked in the store for the past seven years. What she loves most about Ike’s are the people she meets, including the tourists (when they could come) from all around the world. “I'll miss keeping up with the locals and seeing all the babies we’ve seen being born,” she says. The shop was due to close its doors next Wednesday, but with stock levels fast running down, it may close sooner than that. “It’s the sort of shop where you pop in for one thing and come out with a bagful.” Ike’s stocks everything from fabric to glue sticks to sunglasses, but the most popular items remain art supplies and wool. The busy times of year are very seasonal, says Raewyn, with the Halloween crowds stretching right to the back of the shop. And the most unusual item she’s sold? “Whips,” she says with a wry smile. “But we haven’t had those for a while.”
Art by the Sea
“It was a gathering place -- people had a connection with the wairua (or soul) of the space, and we’re hoping to instill that same feeling in Takapuna.” Art by the Sea may have moved from its original Devonport base, but Mike Geers and his wife Linda continue to share a special relationship with their artists as caretakers of their work. Mike Geers. “We’re the kaitiaki of the space. We’re also a bridge that connects people with art,” says Mike. The corner site on King Edward Parade used to be the Duders General Store in the days when produce was ferried over from the south side and taken to Takapuna by horse and cart. After 29 years in the century-old building, Art by the Sea has moved to a new home in Takapuna. But Mike says the ethos of providing a place of connection and reflection remains the same. “When people walk through the doors, they leave the world out there. This is a place which offers a respite from that.” “We keep a diary in the gallery with occasional entries remembering some of the people and events that have made the place special. “We feel privileged to be a part of these stories,” he says. ”We love what we do.” Art by the Sea is now at 162 Hurstmere Road, Takapuna (Just down from the Bruce Mason Theatre).
North Shore Croquet Club
Kiwi ingenuity is alive and well at the North Shore Croquet Club in Devonport where the players’ handmade trolleys contain a special slot for the 1957 penny used to do the coin toss at the start of a game. The tongue and groove clubhouse, once believed to house jockeys’ silks when the surrounding land was a racing club, is a treasure trove of croquet history.
Every mallet has a story, and most carry inscriptions of their owners’ names.
A game believed to have been first devised by the Egyptians and then brought to Britain from France during the reign of Charles II, croquet was an event at the 1900 Summer Olympics. Although the North Shore
Croquet Club was established in its current form in 1905, its origins go back to 1886, making it one of New
Zealand's oldest clubs. Back then, croquet was essentially a game for ladies, who in Devonport first played on the Men’s Bowling Club lawns in Cambridge Terrace.
The club’s oldest member is Stan at 96, and their youngest -- well, they’re working on that. “It would be lovely to see younger members taking part,” says Club President Murray Henshall. “It’s a highly-skilled game and very Credit: John Robertson. strategic. It’s also a lot of fun.”
Players have the choice of either Golf Croquet or Association Croquet with the latter game “a lot more complex”, according to Murray.
Current club membership is around 40, half of that enjoyed in the heyday of the 90’s. The club’s working hard to attract new members and OUR PLACE Stories of Local Life Murray says the game has enjoyed a degree of resurgence over the past three years. Along with Murray, committee members, Grant and John were all members of a local walking group before they joined the club -- they happened to play a game of croquet one summer’s evening and have been hooked ever since. Although at times ‘viciously competitive’, croquet is widely acknowledged to be a gentille sport with manners to match. This is perfectly summed up in the etiquette rules posted to the clubhouse wall, where players are urged to “at least acknowledge your adversary’s presence, for without him there would be no game...It is only a game after all and, win or lose, the sun will still rise the next day.” North Shore Croquet Club: http://www.northshorecroquet.co.nz/page/club-history/
Club Days are Monday and Wednesday afternoons, Thursday and Saturday mornings. There’s also a Twilight Group over the summer.
If you have a story you would like to share or know of a local hero, contact Kate Dobbin & Lauren Lulu Taylor at hello@localifenz.com Follow Local Life NZ on Facebook and Instagram – @LocalLifeNZ OUR PLACE Stories of Local Life “We’re all in this together. Laura Foote u are a bloody legend!! Oh Hannah you really are wee shining light in this dark time for many. Keep glowing n growing you special woman you. Thank you Sam for your welcoming smile, a joke or song. You cheer up my day. Sam is such a delightful and special human being who goes out of his way to be helpful to everyone. Poems, politics, saving the world are but a few of his attributes. Love the Patriot, guess that makes me a Patriot! We as a family have been going there for around 25 years. Amazing how little we need and how much we have. Ron- I know this man and what a privilege that is. I have many happy memories of this lovely Vic theatre, used to visit in the late 50’s - early 60’s. I’m a big fan of Devon on the Wharf. Nigar is very welcoming and warm hearted. Nilesh & Dosa- They are just lovely human beings, love them. LOVE Paradox books! A wonderful selection of books and great service always and ambience. It’s not what you do that’s important ...It’s the passion you do it with! Thanks so much for the yummy croissants Alan. Can’t wait to claim the table again on Wednesday mornings. Sam is wonderful and my dog Ivy is absolutely besotted with him. Sam, you are a legend ... such a star and we hope you keep on shining your bright light. Thank you for being you.We love Whites. Legends. Brilliant ♥ lovely! Amazingly inspirational. Laura- a very special uniquely gorgeous being ♥ One of Devonport’s unsung heroes! Laura’s positivity is inspiring. Just simply the best! Love this all the way! The Pub looks (and is ) Amazing. Well said Ken. You’re a good man ♥ Some of my favourite people right here! Kate Walden Ben Walden Bill and Gerri, two big hearts. Making a huge difference and changing lives. ♥ ♥ Thank you Kashish & Sam, you’re both so friendly and helpful, every time I walk in I feel so welcomed. Wonderful...there are some great people out there… It just goes to show how valued you are in the community Josie. You provide us a happy place to come to.” OUR PLACE – STORIES OF LOCAL LIFE DEVONPORT LOCAL LIFE NZ Late in 2020 we published a book “OUR PLACE” featuring 50 Local Life stories from our community. The interest saw us sell out of the first two print runs so we did a third run. We still have a few copies left that can be purchased. If you missed out and are interested in a copy then email us at hello@locallifenz.com. The book is available for purchase at Paradox Books, Devonport for $30.
