Brent Eastwood sport thought: Sport Northland board interns chosen

Diana Piggott (seen here), along with Michelle Pilkington, were the inaugural interns appointed in July last year and will be stepping aside for the new interns. Photo / Supplied

I've mentioned in this column previously about how Sport Northland is supporting our major sporting codes to improve the quality of governance within their organisations.

Initiatives have included establishing a Northland Sports Governance Forum, holding governance training workshops and establishing a centralised list of potential board members for sporting organisations to draw from.

Separately from this, last year the Sport Northland board also established 'board intern' positions as part of its governance set-up, in the hope it will prepare more Northlanders for our regional sporting boards.

Diana Piggott and Michelle Pilkington were the inaugural interns appointed in July last year and they have now successfully completed their 12-month term. At a recent board meeting, both Diana and Michelle stated what a fantastic learning opportunity it has been and how they are now looking forward to taking what they have learnt and applying it to other community sports organisations.

We wish them all the best in securing board member roles going forward.

Outgoing intern Michelle Pilkington said she was eager to take what she had learned and apply it to other community sports organisations. Photo / Supplied

The 2019/20 recruitment process has now been completed and the Sport Northland board has appointed Kathryn Candy and Erin Fowler as board interns for the next 12 months.

Both are professionals with skills that would benefit any sporting board – Kathryn is the senior legal adviser and council secretary for the Whangārei District Council and volunteers for Manaia Netball and the local gym-sports club at Parua Bay.

Erin is qualified as a dietician/nutritionist and has experience in stakeholder management and co-designing. Kathryn and Erin both have strong backgrounds in a variety of different sports codes.

Both also have very little actual governance experience, which is exactly what the Sport Northland board is looking for in terms of the Intern positions – people who already possess desired board skills but who are needing to learn about good governance (in a real learning situation) to be ready to contribute to a regional sporting board.

The board interns are not constitutionally considered members of the board and as such have no voting rights – instead, their role in board meetings is to observe and to actively participate in discussions.

Sport Northland board strives to follow good practice by being very 'governance' focused; they set the strategic direction for the organisation, develop a governance policy 'umbrella' and then support and monitor me as the Chief Executive to undertake 'how' the organisation will work towards the vision/outcomes they have set. This is critical to being an effective governance group.

They largely spend their valuable meeting time and energy on strategic issues rather than operational issues (which are my domain as chief executive). In other words, they 'plot the direction' much more than 'minding the shop'.

We look forward to Kathryn and Erin learning much through their new positions and to them going on to contribute in a governance sense to the Northland sporting sector.