taken six months off to spend time with an ill son.
“It didn’t put me off sailing,” she said of the accident which featured in an Auckland daily paper, The Sun.
“I still don’t like launches though.”
Leyland, whose Christian name relates back to French ancestors, was brought up in Titirangi. Sailing became her single-minded interest after she was introduced to it as a toddler along with her brother.
She was part of the inaugural intake of 30 young sailors into the Royal Yacht Squadron’s youth training scheme about the time the America’s Cup was being contested in Perth. This experience led to her career choice of engineering, not because her father was an electrical and mechanical engineer, but because it could lead to being a yacht designer.
She began studies at Auckland University then dropped out for a year, keen on perhaps becoming a professional wind-surfer. But time in Western Australia and Hawaii gave her a taste of the rigorous training that would be needed.
“I also enjoyed university and I liked using my brain,” she said.
Her chance to pursue her original career goal came after she finished her final exams and through a friendship with Tom Schackenburg was able to join Team New Zealand on a part-time basis.
This grew to full-time, first in NZ then in San Diego for the 18 months of the America’s Cup campaign in that city in 1995.
“It was a very humble team and we worked on so many things,” she said.
It was challenging as a woman spending nine hours a day on the water but she admired the high-functioning team for their professionalism.
She returned to the local yacht design industry but found the pace quiet.
Her move to strategic consulting came about through a family friend and she joined Boston Consulting Group advising local businesses such as the Dairy Board as well as offshore companies.
“Dairying was a fascinating industry and had a lot of potential,” she said.
“But there was a lot of complexity in the interface between players.”
She joined Fonterra in 2005, working in a number of roles in a short time across NZMP and supply chain operations. Two and a half years ago she moved back to strategy with the arrival of new chief executive, Theo Spierings.
Then late last year, after leading the operational review into the WPC80 recall, she was asked to take on her present role linking people and strategy which she describes as “looking at the journey we’re on, and where we need to go yet”.
“The most important work is to link people to deliver strategy,” she said.
“It’s a very exciting role. We’re uniquely lucky because people are passionate about Fonterra and it’s still a young company so there’s clarity to bring to it. We know the capability of our people, but getting that more aligned to our strategy is the lever we need to pull.”
While the co-op is able to attract great graduates, she said it’s fully realised some will want to move offshore to further their careers. But recent appointments such as that of chief financial officer, Lukas Paravicini, and managing director global brands and nutrition, Jacqueline Chow, showed how real global leaders could be brought to Fonterra and NZ.
Leyland said the co-op’s engagement survey showed more positive results every year.
“But we are ambitious for where we want to be,” she said.
The co-op was working towards being more transparent and open and in the wake of the WPC80 recall realised it had to not only listen to perceptions of those outside the company, but own them and work on them.
“We’re working on every recommendation made to us and we’ll manage that alongside execution of strategy right at the top table.”
Leyland, 43, and her partner, management consultant, Simon Hunter, have two stepchildren and sons Max, 15, Oliver, 13, and daughter Rebecca, 6. As a director of Telecom and a former director of Transpower she described one her strengths as “figuring out what not to do”.
Sitting on those boards had been “hugely beneficial” in seeing how other large companies dealt with similar issues as well not getting stuck in one particular paradigm.
