Can you give us a bit of a rundown on your career since graduating from UC?
My final year at UC was swept up with promoting theatre productions in the Ngaio Marsh Theatre. This led directly to my first career role as marketing manager at Centrepoint Theatre in Palmerston North headed by the incomparable Stuart Devine. Marketing professional theatre six days a week in Palmerston North when your funding had been cut could not have been a more challenging start, but we triumphed. It was dinner theatre and chef Gordon’s extra dose of paprika (Salisbury steak creole he called it) did wonders for the bar takings. This led to the role of marketing director at Downstage Theatre in Wellington under the leadership of visionary artistic director Colin McColl. This was Wellington’s golden 1980s era, an effervescent city at the apex of its cultural, political, and commercial liberation. I stepped out of Downstage after five years into the Development Finance Corporation’s publishing business and then with my new husband Brian Sweeney set up a full-service communications consultancy, hence the name of our company, SweeneyVesty.
The late eighties were a period of transformation for New Zealand with the shift from analogue to digital and the advent of state-owned enterprises. We built a thriving team giving strategic advice on a hundred and one different issues and opportunities, often for clients that had the words “New Zealand” in their name. In the late 1990s we had the opportunity to expand into the United States, and after a period of NZ-US commuting Brian and I and our two daughters made the move to New York and compiled a portfolio of clients in the Fortune 500.
Is there a project, accolade or moment in your career that you are particularly proud of?
To quote Frank Sinatra, “If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere.” New York is a very purposeful city, people aren’t there with ambivalence, you sacrifice a lot to be there in the hope you’ll achieve something meaningful. It’s been 21 years and we’ve met the challenge of establishing a home and business in New York, raising children, working globally, continuing a fully operational business in New Zealand, and managing and mentoring a high-quality team. I am grateful for the terrific people who have worked for SweeneyVesty. Throughout our time in the US, we have worked with New Zealand companies and brands intent on climbing the same ladder as us into the world’s biggest market. People ask me “when did you leave New Zealand?” and my response is “I never have.” I may be physically present in the United States for much of the time, but I know where my heart is.
We noted your involvement and support of the arts – why is this so important to you?
The arts express the human condition in all its permutations. Artists are the least hierarchical, the funniest, warmest, and by far the most liberal, interesting, and passionate people you can know. I’m most drawn to the theatre, dance, and visual arts. Theatre has an ‘in the moment’ immediacy whereas the visual arts are more contemplative. We’ve travelled to many of the great private museums in America – the original Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, the Kimball in Fort Worth, Crystal Bridges in Arkansas – and the experience has been exhilarating. Brian and my first careers were in the performing arts, we were impresarios – a fancy Italian term for people who put on travelling shows – and the entrepreneurial experience of this has served us well in the corporate and institutional arena. We have worked in some of the most intense boardrooms and situation rooms in America, and the ‘can-do’ experience of working in New Zealand theatres has equipped us well for working with high achieving people and complex scenarios.
You’re based between New York and New Zealand – what is your favourite thing about each place?
I’m from the South Island so there is no comparison. My upbringing in Southland, the West Coast, and Canterbury was unsurpassed. Bing Crosby: “Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above, Don't fence me in.” My parents were teachers, my grandparents lived in Greymouth and Timaru, there was huntin’ shootin’ and fishin’ on one coast and manicured gardens on the other. What was there not to love as a child? Over the years I have appreciated that New Zealand is not a remote small country but one of world-changing people who have, to paraphrase Margaret Mead, “gone into the world to make it better.”
In many ways New York is like one giant university – a melting pot full of diverse people who have come together from many parts of the world with energy, hope, and purpose, who have left their home and families and overcome every hardship to be, as Oprah says, the best that one can become. My experiences at the University of Canterbury and in New York have both been vibrant ones.
What memories or experiences stand out when looking back at your time at UC?
The utterly inspirational nature of the teaching. I studied history, politics, sociology, and literature. Keith Ovenden, Keith Jackson, Leonard Wilcox – who introduced me to one of the great loves of my life, American literature, from Walt Whitman to Joan Didion – Peter Simpson, Patrick Evans, Dame Peggy Koopman-Boyden: they were passionate scholars, incredible communicators, enthusiastic to share their knowledge in ways that you could carry into the world. Feminism was emergent and we took on a strong sense of empowerment. It was an era of little internal assessment; I lived in a flat in Dorset St and there was abundant time for social life and friendship. While there is no more beautiful campus in New Zealand than Ilam, Canterbury was a hotbed of political life. I also met my husband of 37 years at Canterbury, Brian was a Waikato graduate and head of the New Zealand Students’ Arts Council. In every sense, the University of Canterbury has been foundational to my life.
