A passionate traveller along life's highway

Lorraine Lipman has had a different career for every decade of her working life. Photo / Supplied

In accordance with her principles of always moving forward, Lorraine Lipman has chosen a different career for every decade of her working life. Teaching, recruitment and family law have contributed to an enviable life, rich on every level.

But she brushes off the concept of having finally arrived. "I haven't so much arrived as got closer to something. Life is a constant journey."

Lipman is a member of the Jewish community, a public speaker on anything from career change to teenage alcohol abuse, a trustee of an Otara primary school and a Rotary member.

"I see my life in three concentric circles. One is my work and associations. Another is personal and social. The other is community."

She structures her abundant energies around a typical 12-hour day after a gym workout. Among other undertakings, there are home visits in her role as a Family Court lawyer for the child, client interviews and dictation of court documents. Court requirements vary and occasionally she will record a broadcast for Radio Shalom.

Clearly her 1.42m stature does not hold her back - "My size has never been of detriment to me!" she laughs.

Coming from a northern England Jewish family encouraged a fighting spirit. Her Polish father survived World War II's Siberian work camps then became a paratrooper in the Polish Army.

Despite some disappointments in a then antiquated British education system, she knew even at 11 that she was "destined for better things" and achieved honours in a bachelor of education. She fondly remembers her first job as a teacher.

"Here was this little Jewish woman, imparting the fundamentals of Islam, life skills and sex education to 11- to 18-year-olds. I thought I was broadminded but the 11-year-olds knew a heck of a lot more than I did."

After seven years teaching in her seaside town of Blackpool, a marriage proposal brought her to New Zealand along with the decision not to go back to school.

"When it got to the point that not only the kids were waiting for the bell to ring, I knew it was time to move on."

Instead she worked with the Salvation Army teaching life skills for the government's 1987 pilot access programme for 14-to 19-year-olds from deprived backgrounds. The programme was designed to see them into an apprenticeship or higher study.

"My illusions about the land of milk and honey disappeared; life was anything but for my students. Sadly the scheme was chopped with the sharemarket crash but I felt privileged to know those people. I only hope they learned as much from me as I did from them."

Finding a great deal of satisfaction in work training and placement, Lipman then tried to get into recruitment.

"I had every positive quality necessary except sales experience. So I started selling office furniture and I quickly learned that I'm the worst sales person in the world. I didn't like talking about the money. Eventually I found a job with a small recruitment firm, staying six years until I began my own.

"I developed a niche market in engineering placements at a time when employers could still discriminate on age. Finding it the hardest in the crash were the older guys. They'd arrive at my office with a big chip on their shoulder but on leaving they were far happier. They knew I was batting for them ... It was my crusade for the older man."

Personnel consulting evolved into human resources and office management when she started working for the mainly Auckland-based computer company owned by herself, her then husband and a business partner.

Completing a course in employment relations management led to intensive contract writing and when one employee filed a personal grievance against them, protracted legal proceedings illuminated "one of life's few defining moments".

"I knew then I was going to do law. I was already 40 but by cross-crediting my teaching degree with six arts papers I did it in three years ... I chose family over employment law, mostly because of the sense of contribution I got from it."

At a small firm in Papatoetoe she became a partner after only one year and stayed for six. However a merger with a large company left her craving her former tight-knit team and she left to fulfil her walk-to-work dream.

"It seemed like a big risk going from a steady South Auckland clientele to setting up on my own in Parnell, freshly divorced. But I'm a great believer in one life. I just went for it."

Contribution underpinned her choice of her lawyer for the child work. She explains this concept as giving regardless of financial reward. She warns that those who only go into a profession for the money will miss the experience, as well as the multi-levelled satisfaction she calls success.

"There are times when parents say to me: 'You're the first person who's sat down and explained what's really happening here.' I put it down to teaching. Relating to people sets the benchmark, in my opinion."

Lipman understands the struggle to assess the right career path or study choice.

However, she insists the attachment of strong feeling to a role encourages purposefulness; a blend of what you are actually good at and what you are passionate about.