Coming home to Rotorua made finding a job difficult for Julia Schuster-Rika, but she still describes it as her best career move to date.
She told The Daily Post she just knew it was time to come home after years working in education, mining and tourism in New Zealand and Australia.
"I
felt a relieved kind of happiness. Perhaps it's how you feel as you get older and think about what you have or haven't achieved - and does it really matter anyway?"
Julia had been working as a health, training and quality systems manager in Huntly for an Australian mining company and applied for about 30 jobs on her return to the Bay of Plenty, often finding her extensive experience was a deterrent to employers.
Then she was approached by the Whakarewarewa Village Charitable Trust and offered the general manager's position at the thermal village.
Working at "Whaka" sees her follow in the footsteps of her grandmother Rangitiaria Dennan - known as Guide Rangi - and she sees many strong Maori women continuing the association with tourism.
"Today I see strong Maori women taking leadership and management roles and being positive role models for young Maori women. You need to be able to hold your head up and be proud of who you are and who you represent."
And Julia has held her head up proudly - often working in sectors dominated by men. But she says this has been an advantage.
"You gain an understanding of how men work, what makes them tick [if anything] and how they prioritise the workplace. This is, I might add, fundamentally quite different to how women might prioritise a workplace."
Her priority is building relationships, which started in her first job as an accounts cadet with the Tourism and Publicity Department in Wellington in the early 1970s.
"What I learned from this was a firm foundation of how to get along with people from all walks of life - young and old and of all nationalities. It was great learning experience, at a very young age, of how you could develop professionally if you were willing to learn and take on all aspects of the role and position. It was about building relationships, even back then."
