Award for contribution to business

Mavis Mullins after being named the AUT Business School Aotearoa Maori Business Leaders Awards' inaugural Business Woman of the Year. Photo / Supplied

Dannevirke's Mavis Mullins was named Business Woman of the Year at the University of Auckland Business School Aotearoa New Zealand Maori Business Leaders Awards on Friday.

Mrs Mullins has attained numerous roles and awards in the past two decades, highlighted by an MNZM for services to the wool industry in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 2002.

Growing up in her Paewai family's Southern Hawke's Bay shearing business, her first notable achievements on a national scale were as a woolhandler, a two-times Golden Shears open woolhandling champion, who later managed a New Zealand World Championships shearing and woolhandling team, and became the first female and first non-Wairarapa president of the Golden Shears International Championships Society, receiving two Maori Sports Administrator of the Year awards along the way.

Her advances in the commercial sector were recognised when she was named the Maori Women's Welfare League Businesswoman of the Year in 1995, at which time she was studying for an MBA through Massey University.

Her numerous directorships include Te Huarahi Tika Trust, formed to participate in the Crown auction of third generation spectrum (3G) radio frequencies, and leading to a current role on the 2degrees Mobile board, which represents shareholders Hautaki Ltd, of which she is chairwoman.

She is also chairwoman of major Maori land-owner Atihau Whanganui, Maori business development trust Poutama, and Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre, and is patron of Agri-Women's Development Trust, and a director of the family-based Paewai Mullins shearing and wool industry training offshoot Wool Systems. She has also been a director of Landcorp, a member of the Mid Central and Wairarapa district health boards, and of the Massey University council.

Her latest award comes after last year being made an Honorary Associate of UCOL while, in 2012, she was a member of Government's workplace Health and Safety Review Taskforce.

Mrs Mullins said one of the great things about New Zealand is being able to do what she does from her home town Dannevirke, her longest time away being when she followed the shearing with husband Koro around Australia for 14 months at the end of the 1970s.

They bought "about a hundred acres" on their return, and having run the shearing business for more than 25 years, now farm of about 120ha, with dairy cattle, and which has been farmed by Paewai whanau for five generations.

Asked how this led to the corporate board table, she said: "We were just brought up with it. My parents and grandparents were businesspeople ... It was what you did."

"The landscape has changed with the advent of Maori asset management, we are talking really serious assets," she said. "What comes with that is the opportunity to be awesomely positive, and be a really constructive contributor to the New Zealand GDP."

"This week's quite a nice week," she says, thinking of the diary of events.

"There's been a meeting with Merino NZ, continued launching of Wool Systems' new wool harvesting training app, a meeting with a honey collective "up north," and then a meeting of 2degrees Mobile, its chairman in the US, other members in the UK and Europe, and one in Dannevirke.

"I might just teleconference that one," she said.