With less than two weeks left until nominations close for the 2013 Dairy Woman of the Year award, last year's winner Barbara Kuriger is urging women to consider entering.
"Just do it" she says, adding that "the process is fantastic. It makes you evaluate yourself and inspires you".
Barbara says that being named Dairy Woman of the Year for 2012 has given her some amazing opportunities and "it is exceeding my expectations".
Barbara, a New Plymouth farmer who attended Opunake primary and secondary schools, says that success is only possible with support, and she recognises that her husband, Louis, as well as her three children, plus the rest of her extended family, have all contributed to what she terms "the team effort" of winning the award. She adds, "I am here, ready and prepared, to now do that for others" and looks forward to helping the next winner maximise their opportunities and learning.
The award comes with the chance to attend the year-long Women in Leadership course run by Global Women, a scholarship which is worth $25,000 and is part of the award sponsored by Fonterra. Barbara says that attending the course was a great opportunity and that they have looked at a huge range of topics; "from governance and finance to strategy and negotiation and persuasive writing skills". The 25 women who attend the course draw from a wide range of career paths, from banking to the energy industry, farming to information technology, and it is this, says Barbara, that makes the course so "interesting as well as so informative, we come from different places but by nature of being female, still have a lot of common ground". She adds that "what was really interesting to me, as a rural person, is that most of them have some form of interaction with our industry already".