Breaking the mould
Women are still rarely in charge of listed company finances,
Jennifer Whooley is one of only a tiny handful of women to hold the position of chief financial officer on an NZX50 company.
Whooley was named the EY Chief Financial Officer of the Year earlier this month, the first woman to win the title in the nine years of its existence.
Fresh from her triumph, and challenged to estimate the number of women who hold CFO positions in the largest 50 listed New Zealand companies, Whooley guessed five.
She was right, but only if she counted herself twice for being CFO of Stride and of Investore, both NZX-50 companies she serves.
While the NZX does report on the gender diversity among company directors and officers, there’s no report specifically on CFOs.
The NZX’s research shows that while 19 per cent of directors and officers on NZX-listed companies were women, when it comes to CFOs, they were just 10 per cent, and that’s only if Whooley is counted twice.
A survey of NZX-50 companies’ websites showed a small band of women CFOs have broken into the traditionally white, male domain.
There’s TradeMe’s Caroline Rawlinson, who like Whooley built her career at Fletchers.
There’s also Julianne Keast at manuka honey company Comvita, though the company’s website shows she is currently only ‘‘acting’’ CFO.
And there’s Denise Jensen at NZ Refining, the country’s only oil refinery, and the largest supplier of aeroplane fuel in the country.
When Whooley was in college, the gender split of her cohort was roughly 50/50, she recalls.
The gender split among CFOs worries Whooley, but the issue is wider than merely financial controllers.
‘‘It’s certainly something that I think all organisations need to work on. It’s not just the CFO role. It’s for all those in senior positions to encourage the pipeline of women rising up to reach their full potential.’’
Diversity is wider than just gender, she says. Diversity of ethnicity and sexuality are also important.
All are part of companies ensuring they have diversity of thought on their boards and in their executive teams.
Whooley is grateful for the support and encouragement she’s had, and she aims to give others the chances she’s had.
CFOs are executive leaders, and need to consciously hone their leadership powers, she says.
‘‘It is really important to have a leadership style. My leadership intent is for others to grow and develop to give back to the business.’’
During her career, the role of CFO has changed, widening significantly, with the modern CFO playing a far larger executive and strategic role than was the case a decade ago.
Whooley, for example, led the rebrand of the the DNZ Property Fund into Stride in 2015. ‘‘That was quite out of the norm for a CFO,’’ she says.
Investors had already been on quite a trip by that point. Whooley was part of the team which formed the DNZ Property Fund from 31 individual property syndicates, and then listed the entity on the NZX in 2016.
She also had a hand in a NZX first. Stride is a ‘‘stapled’’ listed entity made up of two companies: Stride Property (which owns Stride’s commercial properties) and Stride Investment Management (which manages properties).
Together they form Stride Property Group, which are ‘‘stapled’’ together much as two sheets of paper.
The aim was to give the investment management company freedom to grow, Whooley says. The value of properties under management by Stride Investment Management have grown from $1.37 billion to $2.1b since the listing.
Whooley also played a role in creating another listed company Investore which owns DNZ’s retail properties.
In her time at Stride, she’s helped raise $1b and had responsibility for finance, treasury, compliance, governance, risk management, human resources, property and lease administration and investor relations.
At the CFO awards in Auckland earlier this month, presented by Stuff (the owners of Sunday StarTimes), EY and Conferenz, Whooley played a part in an historic evening.
The award for Emerging Financial Manager of the Year went to Hannah Howard from the rapidly-growing My Food Bag.
And the award for Outstanding Contribution to Finance & Business went to Dame Alison Paterson, chairwoman of KiwiSaver provider KiwiWealth.
"It is really important to have a leadership style.''
Jennifer Whooley, Stride