INTHEBLACK December - January 2022 - Magazine - Page 58
INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT
Member profile
STORY BELINDA PARKES
PHOTOGRAPHY AROHA METCALF
58
DEC 2022
JAN 2023
COOL UNDER
PRESSURE
Melanie Gettins ASA thrives in the high-pressure environment of competitive
sport. She applies the lessons learned on the field in the workplace.
As an elite athlete, you are
constantly evaluated and judged.
You face failure, as well as success.
Teamwork and communication
are fundamental to your gameplay
and the decisions you make
under pressure.
These are attributes nationallevel softballer and accountant
Melanie Gettins ASA says have
proven just as valuable to her in the
business world as they have on the
playing field.
Gettins is production planning
coordinator at Tumu Timbers
Limited, a timber processing
company based in Hawke’s
Bay on the east coast of New
Zealand’s North Island. She is
also an important member of New
Zealand’s softball community,
having represented her country at
six world championships, playing
catcher on the White Sox women’s
softball team.
The sport has taken Gettins to
the Netherlands, Czech Republic,
Germany, Italy, Venezuela,
Argentina, Canada, Australia,
Japan and China. It has also earned
her a US college scholarship to
study business administration and
accounting – an opportunity only
offered to a handful of female Kiwi
softballers before her.
“As much as I love softball, I
knew it was never going to provide
a life for me,” says Gettins. “It was
INTHEBLACK CAREER, ELEVATED SPECIAL EDITION
fun, but it created more bills for
me than anything else.”
While she had pondered the
idea of business management,
ultimately Gettins was drawn to
the problem-solving elements
of accounting. She liked that it
offered transferable skills and core
principles that would give her
a solid foundation in whatever
direction she took her career.
Upon finishing her degree,
Gettins returned to New Zealand
and secured her first accounting job
with a public practice firm. Soon,
a chance crossing of paths with
a CPA Australia representative
identified a new career progression
opportunity – a CPA Australia
Maori Scholarship.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
While still self-funding her
international softball tours to the
tune of at least A$10,000 a year,
Gettins says being granted the
CPA Australia Maori Scholarship
took away the last of the barriers
that had been holding her back
from obtaining her CPA
qualification. She accepted the
challenge and took the plunge.
At about the same time, Tumu
Timbers was looking to take on
a management trainee, gaining
experience across different business
departments. “It was a cool
opportunity for a girl who still
wasn’t sure what she wanted to be
when she grew up,” laughs Gettins.
She started in despatch, gaining
an understanding of sales, before
moving into production planning,
then accounting. Taking on the
management accountant role
brought her knowledge of the
business full circle by linking it all
together from a financial perspective.
By then, the business had grown,
and it wasn’t too long before Tumu
Timbers needed to expand its
operations to meet demand. The
company took on more staff to form
a production planning team and
appointed Gettins as supervisor.
Returning to the production side
of the business excited Gettins, who
says that, while the accounting role
had been great for her knowledge
of the company, she had found it
was often about looking back.
She was eager to be more
forward focused, driving better
production systems and efficiencies
for the company.
“In production planning, you are
really in the thick of it, so there is a
whole lot of pressure,” says Gettins.
“Every decision you make can
waste thousands and thousands of
dollars, or it can make us thousands
and thousands of dollars, so you
feel you have a really big impact on
the performance of the company.”
Softball commitments still take
Gettins away from her job for four
