Susie simply doesn't have time to be bored

Susie Staley

Dunedin lawyer Susie Staley stuck her hand up 10 years ago to stand for the board of insurer Tower - then a mutualised society.

She was a Tower policyholder.

"Every year you got all the guff in the mail that said, 'Here it is, why don't you stand?"'

She missed out, stood again the following year, and made it.

In a news report of the time, the then 31-year-old said she would bring with her the point of view of many women policyholders and also of her age group.

What an education it turned out to be for the southerner whose board experience was with the Otago Chamber of Commerce and the Otago Childcare Centre.

Staley was on the Tower due diligence committee that signed off on the rights issue for the spin-off of financial planner Bridges and money manager Tower Trust as the soon-to-be-listed Australian Wealth Management.

She survived the board purge of Tower's near-collapse.

She was also a part of what was later revealed to have been a spectacularly dysfunctional relationship between the board - especially chairman Colin Beyer - and Tower's managing director for 12 years, James Boonzaier.

In later accounts, the board was depicted as badly bullied, with Boonzaier as bullier - a portrayal that he today denies.

Boonzaier was forced out in 2002 as the company with the lighthouse symbol looked more like a ship on the rocks.

Her profile-raising entrance to the sometimes bemusing world of Tower was followed by directorships that she retains on an intriguing grab-bag of boards - listed rural services company Pyne Gould Guinness, Dunedin International Airport and the Maritime Safety Authority.

The latter two were Government appointments.

She is the chairwoman of the Maritime Safety Authority, the Crown entity in Wellington that has the task of keeping New Zealand waters safe and free from pollution.

Whispers this week also named her as a likely candidate for a Ngai Tahu board. The willingness to be profiled suggests she is on the lookout for board positions.

The Auckland-born Staley credits a series of family shifts between New Zealand and England in her childhood that threw her into one new situation after another with contributing to her willingness to step up.

"Essentially, you always had to make the first step, if you were trying to make friends, because you were always the outsider.

"Well, I suppose that put some steel in me."

Her father, an Englishman, was a builder.

She describes her mother as a second-generation graduate of Otago University.

(Incidentally, this Staley is no relation to the chief executive of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, Heather Staley.)

After leaving Logan Park High School, Staley worked in Dunedin law offices as a stamping registration clerk and a law clerk.

She made it three generations in a row at Otago University by completing a law degree in 1988, went on to become a partner in the Dunedin firm where she had once been a law clerk, Ross Dowling Marquet Griffin, and then, in 1998, set up her own firm, Staley Cardoza, with lawyer Rachel Cardoza.

It was not just "the guff in the mail" that originally prompted her to stand for the Tower board, Staley said.

Her legal work had given her some experience in advising companies, she had "a small profile" in Dunedin, and there was, she says, a feeling among professional women's groups at the time that "you at least have to be in to win".

Some of the hardest and most painstaking work of her time with Tower has been on due diligence committees - the business of vetting representations to be made to the public.

She chaired the committee that oversaw last year's $200 million capital raising.

A common view is that she is not afraid to speak her mind.

She says: "You can't be a baby on these boards - if you don't like people standing up to you, you shouldn't contemplate it."

A source close to Tower describes her as: "One of the very few who was prepared to stand up to James Boonzaier."

On the other hand, Staley was for years a part of a board allegedly dominated by Boonzaier.

"Why didn't we get on to it earlier?" asks Staley, anticipating the question.

"Well, it's a good question.

"Remember this was my first board. I think it is publicly acknowledged that the board was treated with disrespect.

"I suppose one can say the board shouldn't let it happen.

"But it is difficult to get a groundswell when you're new on the block and the youngest by quite a way and the outsider.

"And you do look to your more experienced board members and chairman.

"But it isn't an easy thing to do - particularly when the company was making profits and had got through a demutualisation.

"And we are bound by employment laws in this country."

At the Maritime Safety Authority, former Seafarers' Union president Dave Morgan is the deputy chairman. He says: "She runs a tight ship."

He also describes her as "pretty direct - you know where she stands" and his opinion of her is "laudatory, complimentary - very much so".

On the topic of corporate governance, Staley is the type to wince at great wodges of worthy disclosure that may not make for a better business. Form over substance and all that.

However she has an easy laugh - and an air of authority.

One to watch.

Susie Staley

* Born: Auckland

* Age: 42

* Education and qualifications: Logan Park High School (Dunedin), Otago University (Bachelor of Laws), fellow of the Institute of Management Career:

* 1985 law clerk
* 1989 barrister and solicitor
* 1993 law firm partner
* 1996 Tower director
* 1998 founds Staley Cardoza law firm
* 2002 chairwoman of Maritime Safety Authority