New challenge for Chamber president

Gisborne Chamber of Commerce President Tessa Allan. Picture by Paul Rickard

As businesses still look to get back to normal after Cyclone Gabrielle, Andrew Ashton talks to the Gisborne Chamber of Commerce’s newly appointed president Tessa Allan on what role she will play in highlighting issues.

The region’s businesses are in a fragile state but efforts are being made to help highlight solutions post-Cyclone Gabrielle, says the new president of the Gisborne Chamber of Commerce Tessa Allan.

This week the Gisborne Chamber appointed a new board and announced Tessa would take over from Belinda Mackay.

A former Gisborne Girls’ High student, Tessa trained as a registered nurse at Otago Polytechnic, returning to Gisborne for a couple of years working as a new graduate at Hauora Tairāwhiti.

She then went to the UK and then to Perth, where she specialised in community nursing with a focus on wound care.

While living in Fremantle she met her husband Kurt, and they moved back to Gisborne in 2016. Here they set up a traffic management business, ProTraffic. It was during this time that Tessa realised worker health and wellbeing was a really important part of operating a successful business, and it was then that she decided to venture into the occupational health field, founding WorkAble in 2019.

From there, the business grew substantially and WorkAble now delivers a wide range of workplace health services around the region.

It was starting two businesses that led Tessa to join the Chamber of Commerce, before an unexpected offer presented

itself.

“The Chamber has always interested me and since joining I have found it a great

way to network and build relationships,” she said.

“After being approached recently to become a member of the board, I was given a great opportunity when asked to be president, which I couldn’t turn down.

“Being the president is about supporting our local business community, acting as an advocate, communicating, and facilitating events to bring everyone together. After recent events, there seems to be a real need to connect and come together.”

Tessa recognises the need to represent a range of different industries in the Tairāwhiti region.

“One of our key focuses of the new board will be making sure we can advocate for the many different sectors in our community.”

She recognised the region’s landscape was in a fragile state in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle.

“Obviously, we have the hospitality, tourism and forestry industries, to name a few, that have taken a massive hit post-cyclone. This is after coming through a rough few years following the Covid pandemic.

“It takes a lot to recover from these events, which takes its toll not only on a business but the mental health and wellbeing of our community.”

Tessa is optimistic that with a systematic approach, we can improve our infrastructure to better support our region — maintaining connectivity and the roading network to ensure we can continue business operations should weather events impact us in the future.

While an injury last year put an end to her winter netball, she is still active in the outdoors and enjoys fishing with her husband Kurt and children Charlie, 10, Oscar, nine, and Daisy, five.

Her love of keeping active and healthy also comes through in her own business with a focus on workplace wellbeing.

“I think that is one of the most important things at the moment. A lot of people are hurting.

“Our team works together to deliver a service that supports our clients in helping their workers improve not only their health, but their wellbeing also.”