Event maestro a good sport

Therese Walsh didn't start out with sports on her mind. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Key RWC figure and Kiwi boss for the Cricket World Cup enjoying going into bat for NZ

When Therese Walsh got the call to say she had been selected as a Blake Leader, the New Zealand head of the upcoming Cricket World Cup thought she didn't quite fit the criteria for the award.

"I'm 42. I had to point that out to them because the age range is actually 25-40. But in fact they just have that as a guideline."

Ms Walsh was a key figure in the organisation of the Rugby World Cup 2011, though heading up some of New Zealand's biggest international sporting events was not an intended path.

As an auditor at KPMG, Ms Walsh had ambitions to make partner but that fate took a new turn when she was assigned the New Zealand Rugby Union as a client.

When the NZRU needed a chief financial officer in 2002 Ms Walsh was asked to fill in and "then I just sort of didn't leave". She joined the team at the same time New Zealand lost the co-hosting rights to Australia for the 2003 Rugby World Cup.

She became involved with the bid for the Rugby World Cup, working alongside then chief executive Chris Moller and the late Jock Hobbs.

"Then we won, and a new company was set up and I felt emotionally attached to it once we won, because that was pretty incredible."

Ms Walsh went to Rugby New Zealand 2011 as general manager of corporate services before moving up to chief operating officer.

When that finished, the cup was heralded as the most successful ever with more than 130,000 visitors to New Zealand from 100 countries, a global broadcast audience of one billion and an economic impact for New Zealand of $500 million.

Not surprisingly Ms Walsh was immediately headhunted to join the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 as head of New Zealand, where she is in charge of 60 staff in Wellington and 100 in Melbourne.

It was her determination to get a fair deal for New Zealand that ensured the country was given an even allocation of games with co-host Australia from February 14 next year.

She's had to deal with extra challenges this year including the cricket match-fixing scandal, which she calls a "distraction", but one that hasn't impacted the cup. "How you read public sentiment is in your ticket sales and during that month when this was a hot topic in the media, we actually increased our ticket sales."

A busy mother of two teenagers, Ms Walsh also sits on several boards including TVNZ and NZX. She is also on the Government's major events and investment panel and is involved with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs international aid programme.

Last year's supreme winner of the Woman of Influence award, Ms Walsh said she is humbled by the 2014 Sir Peter Blake Leadership award and feels inspired by it. "If you are being helpful to New Zealand in a little way then I'd like to keep doing that."

Blake leaders
Six talented Kiwis were given Sir Peter Blake Leadership Awards on Friday. The Herald is profiling each winner this week.
Tomorrow: Tim Alpe of the Jucy campervan group