Ms Raymond received the honour from Tertiary Education Minister Paul Goldsmith at a special ceremony at the Beehive last night. It came with a $20,000 grant.
Her 24-year-old son, Stacey, flew in from Sydney to see her receive her award.
"As an unskilled school leaver in 1991, I decided to take a night class in accounting principles at Manukau Institute of Technology and it literally changed my life," she said.
Four years later at age 30 Ms Raymond headed to University of Otago and graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in accounting, at end of 1999.
From 2004 she worked as chartered accountant before deciding to become an educator, and accounting tutor at Toi Ohomai, initially part time from 2005 to 2007, then fulltime from 2012.
Three years later Ms Raymond earned her Masters in Management, majoring in accounting from the University of Waikato, with first class honours in 2015.
She attributed some of her achievement to the teaching style her night-class tutor adopted to make her lessons relevant and easier for her understand.
Ms Raymond said she used real-life examples of accounting theory, including using news articles and pop culture to help her students get to grips with accounting literacy.
"Often when I read something on the weekend, I immediately think 'That'll be great to use in class'. It makes things more interesting and far more relevant for my students."
Ms Raymond, who planned to invest her $20,000 prize money into education research, said she felt humbled to be recognised for doing something she loved.
"When I read the bios of some of the other award recipients, who are professors and doctors, I didn't even think of myself as being in the same league.
"I love being an accounting educator and all my students, and I want to thank the people who nominated me for this award and all the fabulous colleagues I work with," she said
Toi Ohomai's chief executive, Dr Leon Fourie, said Ms Raymond's award and that of the past recipients was testament to the quality of tertiary educators in the Bay.
She is the fifth Toi Ohomai tutor to be awarded with an Ako Aotearoa Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award. Previous recipients were Sam Honey (2009), Kelly Pender (2010), James Patterson (2013), and Mike Scott in 2014.
A total of 12 awards for Sustained Excellence in Tertiary Teaching were handed out last night, 10 in the general category, and two in the Kaupapa Maori category.
Dr Te Taka Keegan, a Senior Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at University of Waikato, received the Supreme Award from Prime Minister Bill English
Dr Keegan was also one of the two Kaupapa Maori category winners- the other was Mereana Rapata-Hanning, who is a principal lecturer at Otago Polytechnic.
The other 2017 Ako Aotearoa tertiary excellence award winners :
Professor Ursula Cheer - Dean of Law University of Canterbury
Dr Liz Ditzel, Principal Lecturer, School of Nursing Otago Polytechnic
Dr Ruth Fitzgerald, Anthropology & Archaeology Associate Professor, University of Otago
Gail Harrison, Manager and Lead Educator, The Whanganui Learning Centre
Dr Brad Hurren, teaching fellow, Dept of Anatomy, University of Otago
Associate Professor Ben Kennedy, Dept of Geological Sciences, University of Canterbury
Senior Lecturer James McKinnon, School of English, Film, Theatre & Media Studies,
Victoria University
Associate Professor Jay Marlowe, School of Counselling, Human Services and Social Work,
University of Auckland
Haruko Stuart, Teaching Fellow in Japanese, University of Otago
