Young Executive of the Year: Natalia Rimell talks to Lucie Drummond
Mercury NZ’s Risk Assurance Officer Lucie Drummond is the 2020 Young Executive of the Year in the 2020 Deloitte Top 200 Awards.
Drummond joined Mercury more than four years ago, initially as governance and sustainability manager before being promoted to risk assurance officer six months later.
She drove the delivery of the renewable energy company’s first integrated business plan. This began in 2015, when she reviewed what investors were seeking, delving into the reasons capital providers were looking for a focus on long-term sustainability and discovering Mercury could increase its value by evolving “more explicit integrated thinking”.
She worked with a range of internal stakeholders to identify key drivers of value creation and in 2019 took the next step by devising a plan that aligned Mercury’s operational activity with its strategic intent.
The Young Executive of the Year judges were left in no doubt that Drummond is a popular and persuasive leader in her organisation and felt strongly that she has “a rare combination of passion and technical capability that made her stand out as this year’s Young Executive of the Year”.
The judges said what stood out to them about Drummond was that she “could have headed for Greenpeace or some other NGO, but has recognised the business world as the place where she can be most effective and deliver the most positive change — and the place she wants to be”.
Drummond has a biology degree with a specialisation in environmental science as well as a law degree. She worked for two years as a resource management lawyer then moved to the UK where she worked in an environmental law team focusing on climate change and large energy projects.
At Mercury, she worked closely with the group financial controller and the sustainability manager. This resulted in changes to Mercury’s 2030 goals, as evidenced in their 2020 Annual Report with two pages covering their Integrated Reporting framework focusing on five pillars: customer and partnerships (social & relationship); kaitiakitanga (natural, manufactured); people (human, intellectual) and; commercial (financial).
In July, Drummond was handpicked by chief executive Vince Hawksworth to lead the a team developing an initiative — “Thrive” — which is a review of the business’ operational excellence, to strengthen the company’s existing positive impacts as well as applying a critical lens in order to improve and align company resources with its aspirations.
“Lucie is able to achieve clarity by listening with empathy and demonstrating curiosity in her questions,” said Hawksworth. “She has a laser-like focus on the goal, the ability to keep the horizon in focus and at the same time ensure the team has the momentum to overcome organisational resistance.
“Lucie is able to understand the detail and wrestle with the ambiguity without leaping to conclusions — she is the epitome of leaders of the future.”
Drummond said she gained valuable insight into team management back in 2014 when she ran her first large project — Mercury’s Retail Transformation. She said she learned early that “even if you aren’t a line manager, you need to dedicate significant time to having really open conversations and being visible and available to the team”.
Judge and independent director Rob Campbell said, “Drummond’s views are deeply held and deeply thought through. She is about business as it will be in the future. We liked her collaborative approach to business issues and finding holistic solutions”.
Asked to name her biggest achievement to date, Drummond says she is always pushing to work outside of her comfort zone.
“Taking on things outside my areas of expertise, working on things like retail transformation programmes. They’ve been massively challenging experiences. But I’ve found that those are the times when I’ve learned the most.”
Her goals include building on her existing strengths to provide value in how the company achieves its outcomes through the way she leads, learning more about the Ma¯ori world view and establishing relationships with Mercury’s iwi partners, as well as identifying opportunities that can aid her scaling the company’s contribution to New Zealand’s long-term sustainability.
“I’d really love to expand my work around the future of energy to be a broader strategic portfolio as well.”
Drummond said she felt inspired to submit an application for the award in response to Mercury’s support of its employees offering every
Rob Campbell, Joan Withers and Liam Dann judged the Young Executive of the Year award.
Due to her connection with Mercury and potential for perceived conflict, Withers stood down from the final decision.
one the opportunity to do their best work and bring their “whole self to work”. She hoped it would inspire other young women and those working in the sustainability and risk areas.
“The fact that I’m on the executive team of one of the largest companies in New Zealand, is quite remarkable,” she says.
“I’m hoping that I can inspire some other people who work in this field to continue to work in this field, because your voice can be heard.”
Finalist: Craig Ward, Kiwi Wealth
Kiwi Wealth Chief Technology Officer Craig Ward left school at 16 and went straight into an IT apprenticeship as the Dot-com era was taking off.
He moved to New Zealand a decade ago from the UK, doing a short stint at the TAB before moving to Gareth Morgan Investments — later Kiwi Wealth — working his way up to become CTO eight months ago reporting directly to CEO Ian Burns.
His career history has been “kind of hands on technology, engineering, infrastructure, a bit of development, so kind of “on the tools”, says Ward, who leads a team of 40 and is a “firm believer in hiring people smarter than you”.
The Young Executive of the Year judges were impressed by Ward’s “strong executive leadership and success in his field”.
They praised him as “a fascinating example of someone with a specialist skillset who has worked hard to expand their capacity for leadership.
“He has clearly succeeded and plays a key role within Kiwi Wealth, having successfully moved from operating in an acting capacity to a permanent appointment in the CTO role.”
Ward set out to understand the current state of the company’s technology in order to create an appropriate strategy for its future including a “technology roadmap” to deliver the growth and retention the business needs to prosper.
The disruption of Covid-19 sparked a rapid change in the company’s tech innovation. A cloud-based telephony call centre was implemented in just two weeks, enabling the call centre staff to be able to work from home during the lockdowns.
Ward is proud of his team’s achievements: “Putting faith in people’s capabilities and balancing the line between giving them the freedom to grow and make mistakes whilst also supporting and mentoring them where necessary.”
Kiwi Wealth is a New Zealandbased wealth and investment company owned by Kiwibank. It is in the top 8 Kiwi Saver providers and employs 200 people with 250,000 customers and over $8 billion funds under management.
Ward has gathered a team of data analysts and scientists to clean up data and provide real business intelligence and insights to customer and product teams.
Results include being the first KiwiSaver provider to be granted a robo advice exemption from the FMA. An award-winning tool “Future You” allows realistic predictions for retirement income based on KiwiSaver contributions, fund type, Government contributions, partner details as well as taking into account property and other assets.
Finalist: Matthew Ross, Infratil
Matthew Ross’s work on one of New Zealand’s biggest business deals —
Infratil’s $3.4 billion acquisition of Vodafone NZ — marked him out as a contender in this year’s awards.
Ross is Infratil’s Group Financial Controller and a finalist in the 2020 Deloitte Top 200 Awards’ Young Executive of the Year category.
He was heavily involved in the acquisition — which was done via a consortium with Brookfield Asset Management — including making due diligence on aspects of the equity raise as well as overseeing several post-completion workstreams.
The deal involved a $700 million raise in new equity and over $1b in new debt.
The judges said “Matthew can already claim some remarkable career highlights and his involvement in Infratil’s acquisition of Vodafone was notable.
“He demonstrated a high degree of responsibility and capability within a company that is regularly in the thick of some of NZ’s biggest business deals.”
Infratil is a listed infrastructure investment company managed by H. R.L. Morrison & Co. Ross has been Infratil’s financial controller for more than four years and also supports its Institutional Investor programme.
Two of his goals over the past 18 months were to enhance Infratil’s Risk and ESG frameworks and support the acquisition and integration of Vodafone New Zealand, which was completed in May 2019 and was the largest corporate transition in the last decade in New Zealand.
Ross has made a number of positive enhancements to the company’s Risk and ESG framework, including liquidity and funding analysis and enhanced reporting relating to portfolio composition. It is now in use assessing all investment and divestment decisions and has provided clarity in complex decision-making
Massively challenging experiences . . . I’ve found that those are the times when I’ve learned the most.
Lucie Drummond
processes. A key part of his role is to keep his teams resilient in times of high pressure — a good example being during the Vodafone transition where the company was also progressing the NZ Bus, Snapper and Perth Energy sales processes as well as working to complete the FY2019 Financial Statements and Annual Report.
Ross is clearly passionate about Infratil.
“It’s a privilege to have what I think is the best job in New Zealand and on that basis I’m excited about moving through our organisation”. He has high ambitions including one day becoming CFO.
“He appears to be on a path to higher executive positions and he has been given increased responsibility within his existing role,” said the judges. “His passion for Infratil and the people he works with was impressive.”