Page 36 - AGM 2021 Booklet_Flipbook

Alison Ferris

Regional Leader Relationship and

Development Director
This is my 7th year with Dairy Women’s
Network in some role and I love being part of
a tribe with these awesome women. I started
with the Network as a member back in the
early days, before becoming a Regional Leader
and then the Hub Leader for Waikato and
Taranaki.

Now I am fortunate to be in my current
role - Regional Leader Relationship and
Development Director. Having been through the Dairy Women’s Network
leadership pathway myself I am passionate about our Regional Leaders and I love
connecting and working with many different people across the Network, so it’s the
perfect job for me.

This past year has been busy organising events for our Regional Leaders. This
included Leadership Forum back in May in Hamilton, and more recently our
Essentials workshops. It has been hard with the lack of face-to-face events but
through connecting regularly through the Regional Leader Facebook page we
have overcome some of those hurdles.

Over the year we have celebrated many of the incredible things our Regional
Leaders have done by recognising one RL each month. These women will then be
celebrated as a group at Leadership Forum 2022.

One of my main pieces of work around building connection was to share more
about our Head Office team, Board of Trustees, Hub Leaders and Business Group
Leaders, so that our Regional Leaders could get to know everyone else in the
organisation. Each person was asked five questions to answer which were then
shared on the Regional Leader Facebook page. It was great to read everyone’s
answers about their heroes, which of our values they most align to, and more
about their role within DWN.

Over the last few weeks we have also been posting a connection activity each
week, from a coffee catch up online to posting photos of our farms. Now that it’s
nearly Christmas we will finish this with a festive event.

My final highlight of the year was becoming the leader of our Hub Leader team.
We have an amazing and talented group of ladies leading our volunteer Regional
Leaders, and I can’t wait to work with them further to make our internal systems
and support even better.

36 Annual General Meeting 2021