The first New Zealand woman to complete Otago’s trailblazing MBA, Diana Pryde reflects on the challenges of breaking new ground, the changes in business education for women and how the MBA influenced her high-flying career.
Professionalism and learning how to establish relationships in unfamiliar fields remain two of the most important things Diana Pryde learned from her Otago MBA.
Diana was the first New Zealand woman to complete the trailblazing MBA degree – which broke new ground as the first New Zealand MBA off the rank when it was established in 1976, and is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
“Just learning how to be a professional, that would be what really stayed with me. And how to establish relationships in a field where I had never belonged,” says Diana, who graduated in 1980.
“Because my career subsequent to the MBA, pretty much all of it, was in a man's world, with the accounting profession and the banking profession, it was all about men. So, I had to front up all the time to groups of men standing around in their suits.”
Growing up in Invercargill, Diana initially trained as a teacher and taught at Tweedsmuir Intermediate in Southland for three years, then travelled to Canada and took up a management role in a professional accounting organisation in Vancouver, staying for five years.
Back at her parent’s home in Invercargill, and having seen the value of an MBA during her time in Canada, she decided to enrol for a Postgraduate Diploma in Personnel Management at Otago, with the potential of moving across to the MBA programme if she was successful.
“I worked my butt off, so to speak, in that first semester and did really well and moved into the MBA programme.”
But it turned out the hard work was just beginning.
“It was extremely challenging,” says Diana. “Otago was trying to prove itself, obviously, and drove us really, really hard. It was a 24-7 course.”
She says it was a small class of around 11, with one other woman, a Malaysian student who had done her undergraduate degree at Otago.
“There was a lot of collegiality in the group. We got to know each other well, because we were working together in lectures, in evening working groups and weekend study. There was just no let up.
“We had really good quality tuition, the best at Otago, I think, because the university was trying to prove itself, so they applied the best to it.”
Even though Diana had been working in management, she hadn’t done any finance, economics or statistics in her teacher training.
“All of those subjects were like foreign languages to me and required a lot of work to bring me up to speed. There were some subjects like personnel management and marketing that were no problem, and I was able to contribute to and lead a lot more in those.”
A local newspaper clipping celebrates Diana Pryde’s achievement as the first New Zealand woman to graduate with the Otago MBA.
Her master’s thesis – now sitting under the front wheel of her husband Lloyd’s bike because it’s just the right size to keep it level – looked at the structure of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation.
“And the other project that I had to do, was looking – it's unbelievable to think of today – at professional firms, accounting firms and law firms, at promoting, advertising and marketing themselves in a public arena. It had never happened before. It was such a no-no. So I was exploring that and that was kind of fun.”
Head of the programme at the time, Dr David Wright, says in a newspaper article marking Diana’s graduation in 1980, that she was regarded as “one of the most professional people in the class. She has innate diplomacy and can handle men extremely well”.
In the same article, Diana says “an MBA is an open sesame to top jobs. It gives an aura of credibility in a male world”.
While she says the men in her group were very supportive of the women in the class, after graduating, Diana returned to Canada because, unlike all her classmates, she couldn’t get the kind of job she wanted in New Zealand.
“I applied for a number of things because I wanted something senior. I'd had good work experience in Canada without the qualification, I now had the qualification, and people would go ‘oh what's an MBA, what's that going to do for our organisation’.
“The fellows all got jobs but I'm pretty sure they didn't get them because they had an MBA, I think they got them because they were men and they were already working in the commercial or business or corporate world.”
Diana took up a job at Athabasca University, an online, open university based in Alberta, and worked in senior management, “without anyone raising an eyebrow”. She says she learned during her career that “there was no point trying to push the feminist perspective”.
“I lived the feminist perspective, but I didn’t shove it in people’s faces because there was just no point. There are a lot more women now, circulating in very senior roles, with comfort.”
She always felt she had an advantage over some of the men because she was better at relationship building and more observant of behaviour.
She returned to New Zealand for a holiday, and applied for a role at the Bankers’ Institute of New Zealand. They were looking for someone with distance learning experience and they were looking for change. This time she was successful.
The role gave her the chance to follow her passion for education, particularly for women.
“I was able to bring qualifications into the banking world. That was when the National Certificate of Business was being introduced and I managed to work with Rae Weston, the Professor of Banking at Massey University, on a qualification specifically for bankers. I was very proud of that.”
“I like being organised. I love lists and I love ticking things off. The sense of achievement, that's a highlight, the things that I've achieved through my career." - Diana Pryde
Diana says that at each of her workplaces over the years, she would find people, women mainly, who didn't have qualifications and would have liked them.
“I managed to get many of them through a programme to achieve that. Because education to me is fundamental. I was very privileged to have a really good education and I'd like everybody to have one.”
She’s encouraged to see how much things have changed over time, especially with women in business education.
“All the universities, they've got huge numbers of women in law and finance and accounting and economics. They weren't there in my day – you could count on one hand how many women were brave enough to get into a law faculty.”
From the Bankers’ Institute, she worked for 11 years as the Chief Executive of the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants, again making sure New Zealand’s qualification was recognised internationally.
From there, she went to the Crown Law Office, holding the role of Practice Manager for eight years. Then it was time for a break, of sorts – she gained all the credentials and qualifications to be a marriage celebrant.
The day her certification came through, she was asked if she’d fill in at Mary Potter Hospice in an interim role as Director of Support Services, and agreed to take it on short-term.
“It was probably one of the bigger jobs that I did because I was responsible for all of the corporate services. I had HR, finance, maintenance and facilities, retail, because the hospice had retail shops and volunteer services, and we had 700 of those. And I go, what have I let myself in for? Anyway, long story short, the role was advertised, and I was appointed to it.”
Diana was eventually seconded to the position of project manager for the development of a 41-unit apartment building on the hospice grounds, to serve as a revenue stream for the hospice. “Which was pretty exciting. It was quite different from the kind of work that I'd been doing for years. So that was a lot of fun.”
Throughout her career, she says the highlights come back to the people, and a sense of fulfilment at achieving a goal.
“The people and relationships, and the challenges. Facing a problem that didn't seem to have a solution and working my way through those things, generally with really competent help. I was usually able to make a good argument, to whomever needed to have the argument made, to get the resources that I needed to do what I needed.
“I like being organised. I love lists and I love ticking things off. The sense of achievement, that's a highlight, the things that I've achieved through my career.
“Because I actually didn't plan my career. I've just been in the right place at the right time. I didn't know what I was going to do next, always.”
Three years ago, Diana gave up paid work and is currently travelling with Lloyd on a three-month, 12-country trip – perfect for making lists.
-Kōrero by Margie Clark, Communications Adviser Development and Alumni Office
Celebrating 50 years of MBA
Join us in Dunedin to celebrate 50 years of the Otago MBA from 12-14 November. Reconnect with friends and faculty, create new networks and challenge yourself with the latest thinking. Highlights of the weekend include professional development sessions, alumni engagement opportunities and the Anniversary Dinner.
Learn more here