CAMPAIGNING against restructuring in another arm of government doesn’t really fit the form book for a public sector chief executive, but it’s even more remarkable when the lobbyist goes on to take the job at that very organisation.
AgResearch’s new chief executive Dr Sue Bidrose knocks the stuffing out of bureaucratic stereotypes.
She recently adopted the Twitter handle “Sue B, Chch biker chick,” a nod to her love of motorbikes and a move from her beloved Dunedin to the job based at Lincoln.
“I’ve ridden motorbikes since I was a teenager, mostly Japanese bikes but also a healthy smattering of British Triumphs and Royal Enfields,” she says.
She recently took her Triumph for a weekend cruise to get to know Canterbury better. Little stops her on a bike, except perhaps the frostiest mornings.
“The weather’s nicer (when you’re) riding home but you’ve got to get here, right?’ she says.
Still, she’ll no doubt enjoy opportunities for fresh air as she takes on one of the most complex science management jobs in the country.
Bidrose knows science, having started her working life as a lab technician and more recently fighting for the future of AgResearch’s Invermay research centre while working as chief executive at Dunedin City Council (DCC).
In 2013, Invermay announced its AgResearch’s Future Footprint plan would consolidate staff into major sites at Lincoln and Palmerston North.
By some estimates, Invermay may have lost as many as 85 people and jobs would have also disappeared at Ruakura research centre in Waikato.
Speaking on the first day of week four leading AgResearch, Bidrose was part-way through a tour of the institute’s four sites, which still includes Invermay.
Looking back on her time at DCC, she says she enjoyed fighting for Invermay, alongside farming groups, Otago University and private science organisations.
A petition to AgResearch garnered 12,450 signatures and the organisation dialled back on sweeping changes at the southern centre. It has since been reported that few Invermay scientists have moved north,though 40 have resigned.
After years of uncertainty about its future, AgResearch last year confirmed Invermay would remain a centre for genomics and sheep research.
With Invermay staying pretty much intact, the Future Footprint plan is basically dead.
“That (DCC opposition) was a politically-led campaign. The mayor at the time and the local MPs were very
keen to keep Invermay,” she says.
“The public story was that Invermay might shut down altogether which wasn’t actually what was being planned but regardless of that, keeping Invermay as a thriving hub was pretty important for Dunedin.”
While leading DCC she also fought to save the chair of neurosurgery at Dunedin hospital and to restore the city’s historic courthouse complex.
She says her job description was to make Dunedin thrive “and when you love a place, that’s a pretty good job description to have.”
Born and raised in Hutt Valley, Bidrose left a chief executive role with DCC to run an organisation with 700 staff and four regional campusesincluding Invermay – the one she once lobbied to save from restructuring.
Schooled in Wainuiomata, Bidrose did a psychology degree at Victoria University but finished it with a PhD in the field at Otago where she focused on the impact of trauma on children’s development.
She started her working life in social welfare, in client management at Work and Income New Zealand, then policy for the Ministry of Social Development.
In the past 15 years, she held management roles in local government, mostly at DCC, but also in a seven-year term as chief executive of Waitakere City Council.
She’s also worked in the volunteer/not-for-profit sector, including working as a counsellor for Youthline and workwise.
Other life experience includes social work in London and travelling around Africa.
Now based at Lincoln for science, you could be forgiven for seeing her career as a kind of loop. Bidrose’s first employer was the Ministry of Agriculture, who took her on as a lab technician at
Wallaceville, Upper Hutt. Part of the daily grind was faecal sampling to get a fix on parasite levels.
Next it was those central government roles, then local bodies before coming “all the way around to circle back here.”
She acknowledges AgResearch staff have had a bumpy time lately, Lincoln included.
After years of scoping a plan to build and operate a new, super-sized building in partnership with Lincoln University, AgResearch and Lincoln have opted for separate facilities, albeit just metres apart.
The organisation’s coming to the end of that restructuring, she says.
“It’s good to be the person who comes in when you’re out the other side of something,” she says.”
“The science staff want to get on and do good science – and the backroom staff want to enable that and make the books balance and your partners want you to do good science that’s going to work in that partnership.
“And all of that has meant there’s been a lot of push and pull and change at AgResearch.”
While lobbying for Invermay, she met scientists and heard plenty about AgResearch’s relationships with science and business partners, and a smattering of farmers too.
Now that she’s exploring AgResearch’s nooks and crannies, she’s impressed at the passion of the science team and the breadth of their work, from research into microbiomes in the gut, fungi that symbiotically pair up with ryegrass to help with pest resistance, or genetic breeding to reduce methane emissions.
“There’s a lot going on to make farming more compatible with a clean environment, to improve pastoral farming’s contribution to climate change, gas emissions,” she says.
“It does make you fizz, going around the science parts of the organisation meeting these bouncy scientists who are really fizzing about the work that they do and the potential to make a change.”
Bidrose says she’s naturally inclined to dig deep into the working life of the organisations she leads.
“That’s the best bit of the job. And the challenge is that I don’t get so swamped with budget, HR process and monthly reporting … that I forget the reason that I’m here, which is doing great science so that farmers
can be even-better farmers,” she explains.
Her initial impression is that the “science part” of AgResearch is making progress but she’s wary of hasty conclusions.
“I’m not here to meet my own ends. It would be pretty dumb for me to think that I’ve got a plan for AgResearch mapped out because it is about making sure that scientists can do what they do – and I absolutely need to make sure that I know what that is,” she says.
“If our key stakeholders feel like we’re making a great contribution to them working with farmers, then I’ll
feel like my work here is done.”
She joins a large organisation with “fairly healthy” funding but it still has to make hard financial calls.
“We do have to make sure that our backroom processes support the science, that it’s as efficient as it can possibly be. And we do have to make sure that we balance the books, that the money we bring in from science is enough to pay our costs,” Bidrose says.
By earning more, AgResearch can employ more staff, for example.
The institute also raises revenue for science from its partners, like DairyNZ, from intellectual property and subsidiary businesses.
“All of those sources of income have to not be exceeded by our expenditure, and that’s ongoing work,” she says.
One of her immediate challenges is taking AgResearch through a covid-19 response.
“We’ve got a team with some good science representation meeting to talk about it,” she explains.
“We’re at level 2 for all four of our campuses but we have three people in Auckland and we’ve had some
research that’s been impacted because of the nature of the volunteers who would have had to come in for it.
“It’s tough for the scientists who have had to put a hold on things.”
She’s aware of at least one research project that now needs urgent help because of covid-19 interference and she says the organisational goal will be to “ramp things up again as quickly as possible if that’s what is needed.”
Bidrose replaced Tom Richardson, who led AgResearch for nine years.
In an introductory media statement in July, she said it was a great time to be working back in science.
“The whole country has seen how important good science is for the wellbeing of New Zealanders, and AgResearch is at the forefront of that good science,” she says.
AgResearch Board chair Dr Paul Reynolds said Bidrose had worked “with scale and complexity,” so was ideally placed to lead the organisation because of her “science background, proven operational and strategic experience and strong understanding of local government.”
She also has a proven “success record and is held in high political regard across the Dunedin and the New Zealand local government sector, and by central government agencies,” Reynolds says.
