The Great New Zealand Road Trip - Nine Questions With... Sarah Ramsay

The NZ Herald and editor-at-large Shayne Currie are on a two-week road trip to gauge the mood of the nation and meet everyday and notable Kiwis making a difference in their communities and the wider world. Today he discovers hidden New Zealand cinematic treasure in a South Island storage unit, and we catch up here with one of the South Island’s leading chief executives, United Machinists’ Sarah Ramsay, for Nine Questions. Senior reporter Anna Leask, meanwhile, speaks with a famous West Coaster.

United Machinists chief executive Sarah Ramsay. Photo / ODT

Sarah Ramsay is chief executive and co-owner of United Machinists. The Dunedin-based business precision engineers critical components for many of New Zealand’s prestigious high-tech manufacturers in industries such as aerospace, medical, marine and cinematography.

What’s the one word to sum up your mood right now?

Hopeful.

What do you wish people knew about where you live?

How easy it is to have a full lifestyle here [in Dunedin]. We’ve got a really great music scene, awesome restaurants and cafes, lots of smart events and exhibitions off the back of the uni, 10 mins to the water or the hillsides from pretty much anywhere, and a ‘village’ vibe-friendly community.

What are your passions?

Deep yarns – I’m a bit of a magpie when it comes to meeting and collecting great people in my life. I love learning firsthand through people, whether that’s applied to business, like an exciting new space client, discussing politics or philosophies with friends, or my yoga instructor teaching me some new moves. I was always the kid in class that asked way too many questions, I still am – my team and husband roll their eyes at my ‘but why?’ regularly.

Which New Zealander (alive or dead) do you most admire – and why?

I think Mike King has done a brave and incredible job of removing the taboo from talking about mental health. Kids deal with so much more social pressure and disruption in today’s world, having safe, easy and free access to counselling is a huge support and critical in helping with their resilience. Mike’s connected particularly well with men through Gumboot Friday. One of the local engineering firms here has a gumboot throwing competition each year, we get dozens of tradies and their families together, normalising discussion about mental health. I like to think that because of Gumboot Friday, dads in our engineering community are having healthy conversations with their kids at this time of year about depression and anxiety.

Shayne Currie is travelling the country on the NZ Herald’s Great New Zealand Road Trip. Read the full series here.

The Great NZ Road Trip heads from Greymouth to Nelson on Saturday.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

These questions are hard! I think the ultimate would just be doing what I love, with people I love every day and knowing that we’re having a positive impact on something bigger than just ourselves. So my wee family happy and healthy, lots of family surf and outdoors adventures, no personal or business debt, working with our awesome team using the latest technology to make the technology of the future right here in Dunners, NZ.

What is your greatest fear?

Failure. Being the owner of a manufacturing business over the last three years has been brutal – there were many moments where I thought we might fail, which came with incredible guilt for our team and a huge amount of self-recrimination.

Fear of failure is very correlated with perfectionism, I’m a terrible perfectionist! It has stopped me from trying so many things, as I won’t do stuff if I think I might fail. I can see the same pattern in my 8-year-old, so I’m trying to break the pattern and consciously try things I suck at in front of him while laughing it off!

What is it that you most dislike?

Willful ignorance. So many people are willfully ignorant, I think if everyone tried to understand what’s going on and who is around them more, they’d have to learn to empathise with other perspectives and actually earn the right to have an opinion. People who have prejudiced ignorant ideas and refuse to consider alternative views do my head in.

What is on your bucket list?

I’d love to study literature and philosophy, and hopefully write a book – which will either be a fictionised and quirky life story, or an arse-kicking female protagonist engineer organised crime fighter. I dropped out of school at 15 with no school cert, there is still a tiny bit of a chip left in my shoulder that I don’t have a piece of paper qualifying I’m smart enough to do a degree 😉

What do you hope/think NZ will look like in 10 years?

Leading the world in the happiness index! We’ve got to get our education, healthcare and productivity issues sorted. I think the productivity issue is the key to this – if we can add more value to our products and services here in New Zealand, before exporting, we’ll in turn have higher value job creation and better spread of wealth across New Zealand. Now if we matched our education to what industry needed, we’d have graduates coming out of uni where their skills are valued, rather than the 25 per cent of graduates now that leave NZ – despite a major skills shortage in this country. As for healthcare, surely with a happier, higher-value economy, we would have a better-funded public health system, a system focused on preventative wellness and a healthier society as a result.