The woman behind all the mayors
WAVENEY Parkinson knows more about the past four Wellington mayors than most – she’s been senior executive assistant to Mark Blumsky, then Kerry Prendergast, Celia Wade-Brown and now Justin Lester.
‘‘We have a team of seven in the mayor’s office. We all specialise in what we do, but I basically run the mayor’s life,’’ she quips.
In any one year about 30,000 invitations and meeting invites come across Parkinson’s desk and it’s up to her to sift through them and reply.
‘‘I meet regularly with the mayor to go through them, to talk about what will clash, and what is do-able.
‘‘Every day is a juggle, because sometimes Justin will start at 7am or 7.30am if he’s got a breakfast, and he can be back-to-back every single half hour until the end of the day, and sometimes he might have one or two functions in the evening.
‘‘And it’s not just Monday to Friday, it’s Saturday and Sunday – he can have numerous functions on at weekends as well.’’
It’s up to her to ensure the mayor isn’t double-booked, and to liaise with staff inhouse regularly about events, meetings or functions.
‘‘Today, for example, Justin is down on the waterfront with the Hungarian Premier where they are unveiling a plaque, and everything about that event must go into the diary.
‘‘I have to put processes in place so the speechwriter writes something for him, I have to allow travel time, where he has to go, the time he has to arrive, the time he’s speaking, who’s going to meet him, the contact for the day, and all correspondence that has happened to get to that point.’’
Every Friday Parkinson will call the organisers of each meeting and event scheduled for the following week to ensure the details are still correct.
What does throw the mayor’s diary into chaos are the unforseeable events – the death of a notable person, or the occasional natural disaster.
‘‘The November earthquake meant we couldn’t get into the building, so I had to sit at home and cancel everything in the diary for the next week.’’
It’s not just an organisational role – because Parkinson works so closely with the mayor it’s a matter of forming a relationship with them and their families as well.
‘‘It’s a matter of adjusting for each mayor. You have to be flexible, you have to be adaptable and you have to want to learn new things, because you learn something different from each one.’’
Parkinson says she’s still getting to know incumbent mayor Lester.
‘‘Justin is the new kid on the block, if you like. We’ve had a restructure so it’s been a bit of a disruptive start, but he’s very passionate about Wellington and very driven, and it will be really nice to see where his career takes him in the future because he’s just so smart.’’
Parkinson recalls her very first ‘‘boss’’, Mark Blumsky, who she says was a delight to work for.
‘‘Mark was Mr Charisma. He made everybody he met feel special, he was always positive and he put Wellington on the map. He changed our city.
‘‘He was an outsider really, because he owned a shoe shop, but he was passionate about the city. He was an entrepreneur, he was good for Wellington.’’
Kerry Prendergast took over the reins from Blumsky and over the following nine years Parkinson formed a close relationship with her.
‘‘Kerry, oh my goodness, I have such admiration for her. She’s a workaholic, there is nothing false about her. If she said she would do something, she would do it, she would never promise what she couldn’t deliver, and her work ethic is just phenomenal, she’s a machine.’’
Parkinson remembers accompanying Prendergast as part of a delegation to China for 10 days.
‘‘That is probably the highlight of my time in the mayor’s office – the public seems to think that these are junkets, but my goodness that’s far from the truth, there is no downtime.
‘‘I saw first-hand what a mayor has to do when they go away – they are on the go from morning till night and they are constantly meeting with people and promoting Wellington.’’
Parkinson says Celia WadeBrown was a compassionate, genuine, community-minded mayor.
Because she strikes up such a rapport with her mayors, it’s always tough when their tenures end.
‘‘It is emotional when they leave, but with Mark, even though he’s living in Niue, when he comes back he’ll often pop in and we’ll have coffee. We’re Facebook friends. Kerry and I still keep in touch and Celia, we had a coffee just the other day.
‘‘It’s never easy for them either, all of them have found it difficult because there’s no me to arrange their lives,’’ she laughs.
It’s not all about arranging diaries though – Parkinson has been invited to many an occasion she wouldn’t have otherwise had the opportunity to attend.
‘‘Celia would invite me to go the ballet with her or to go to some of the embassy national days. Justin and I have been invited to an administrative breakfast for people in the same profession as mine in April where we’ve both been invited to speak . . .’’
In 2014 Parkinson got to accompany Prince William and Princess Kate on their walk through Civic Square.
‘‘That was awesome because I was so close to her and I got to say hello briefly to her, but not to him.’’
Others of note are the Prince and Princess of Japan, Peter Jackson and Richard Taylor, as well as former prime minister John Key who had time for a chat.
She is also very fond of the last hurrah to Tana Umaga after his last game for the Hurricanes in 2007.
‘‘Kerry knew that I was a huge fan – she let me go down to the stadium with her, the city had bought him a gift and I got to present him that gift on stage on the pitch.
‘‘There happened to be a reporter there who took a photograph the instant that he kissed me on the cheek – that photo lived on my wall here at work for a long, long, long, long time!’’
Parkinson has worked in high level roles since her career began in 1971.
She believes the skills she developed in those jobs have allowed her to play her part in the mayor’s office.
She got a ‘‘good grounding’’ at Queen Margaret College but despite her mother telling her she needed a good education, she married young and left school without any qualifications.
She learned her administration skills from the then Gilby’s Business College and stayed on to teach after she qualified.
The following year she stepped into her first admin role, at the American Embassy, and from there she moved to the Motor Trade Association for seven years and then spent a further seven years at the New Zealand Shipping Corporation.
‘‘That was a really interesting era – I originally learnt to type on an Imperial 66, a manual typewriter, then at the Shipping Corporation we moved to the IBM electric ‘golfball’ and then on to the first computers.
‘‘Those were some of the happiest days in my working career. We don’t walk out of the office anymore and go home and forget the job like we did back then. There weren’t cellphones, there weren’t e-mails, nothing was electronic, we had paper diaries and while it wasn’t an easy pace it wasn’t as frantic as it is now.’’
A stint at KPMG followed, then Parkinson applied for a role at the council, as executive assistant to the chief executive and after three bosses, she moved over to the mayor’s office where she’s been ever since.
‘‘I’m very proud to be able to say that I work for the mayor of Wellington.
‘‘To work for the leader of the city who can make a difference is very satisfying.’’
She jokes that she’s now armed with so much ‘‘inside knowledge’’ of four mayors she has enough material to write a book in her retirement.
‘‘People often ask me what the mayors’ secrets are, but I tell them they’re going to have to wait until I write my book, though I’ll probably have to write it under a nom de plume,’’ she laughs.