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Women in Recreation

Georgie Witehira

Manager, Western region, Manukau Leisure

Georgie has had a 25 year career with Manuaku City Council and more recently with Manukau Leisure Services Limited, the stand-alone company established by Council to manage its recreational facilities.  Following a teaching career and various roles in community recreation, Georgie began her tenure with the Council managing a ‘dry’ recreation facility in Manurewa. By taking every opportunity for advancement, including secondments and extra projects, Georgie has worked her way up through the ranks and now oversees a team of centre managers responsible for six facilities in Mangere, Manurewa and Papatoetoe.

One example of an important additional project that she’s championed this year is the development of a collaborative approach to Green Prescription in Manurewa, a suburb of just under 100,000 people.  This initiative supports Manukau Leisure’s key strategic focus to deliver positive community outcomes.  To that end, access to all swimming pools is free and pricing concessions are made for identified high need groups. Good community outcomes are carefully balanced with the Company’s need for long term financial sustainability. 

Georgie sees building community relationships and partnerships as a vital part of her role. “We are a city of vibrant, youthful communities, and incredible diversity.  To be effective for those communities we need to work closely with other organisations and groups.  To get positive networks thriving you need to give support to them. And I have learnt so much by putting my hand up to help. You need to be open to recognising opportunities – you work harder but you experience all kinds of different things, meet all kinds of people, and those people all teach you something new. You grow with the job.” Georgie says.

Georgie advocates the importance of having an opinion and not hesitating to share your views, “I’m always questioning, seeking more information, and challenging and developing my own views.” Although she doesn’t claim to always have the answers Georgie thinks it’s important to have an opinion about the industry you’re working in, “I don’t always articulate my views as well as possible, and I know that’s an area for personal development. But I do make an effort to look out to the horizon, have ideas, and test them!”

Although it’s acknowledged that it’s sometimes harder for woman to rise to senior positions, Georgie says she hasn’t personally experienced this struggle. However she has struggled with the high expectations she places on herself, “As a Maori person I have struggled with pressure and huge expectation, mostly self-inflicted. But I’ve also learnt to be thankful for the aspects of myself that help me deal with that high expectation. I’ve learnt to take responsibility for hardship and to look for the opportunities that it provides. I’ve also learnt to not stress about it.” says Georgie. Her advice to other ambitious woman: “Don’t be afraid to change.  Have a good look inwards – be self aware about what you’re lacking – and if you have good people around you they’ll challenge as well as support you.”  

Young women coming into the industry, particularly lifeguards who inherently want to be busy doing lots of things, will have to overcome certain challenges says Georgie. “We used to have a culture of multi-skilling in this industry and I think that better enabled women to move across into other roles. We’re more specialised now and that’s sometimes restricting.” She continues, “I try to keep in touch with everyone in our facilities, acknowledge when they’re doing well, and try to provide additional opportunities to meet their interests. It helps that managers are measured on how well their staff are doing (through individual professional development programmes), meaning we can spend more of our time focused on supporting and developing staff.  In addition we’ve made a conscious decision to fill senior roles from within the organisation wherever possible – again that means we need to prepare our people to make that step up.”

Georgie says she has been fortunate to have been employed by Council and Manukau Leisure, “It’s been a huge advantage to have an employer that’s committed to my development and I’m forever grateful for that.”

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