Multimillion-dollar deal another feather in cap

By JULIE MIDDLETON

At 31, pint-sized New Zealander Lovina McMurchy has two degrees and a Harvard MBA, paid for by a $160,000 scholarship, behind her.

It's a long way from the South Auckland suburb of Papatoetoe, Ms McMurchy's childhood home.

Starbucks' United States director of business development is celebrating a five-year, $100 million deal between the Seattle-based company and Houston's Compaq Computers which offers up a yuppie's vision of heaven.

It involves 3000 of Starbucks' North American coffee shops outfitted with the latest in high-speed wireless internet technology and hand-held computers.

You'll sit down with your coffee and enjoy faster internet than you have at home, and probably in your office - but Starbuck's says it's not turning into a cyber-cafe.

Also on board in the deal are Microsoft and US start-up company Mobilestar.

"Pervasive high-speed internet," says Ms McMurchy down the line from her Seattle home.

"There's no need to log on, or plug in a computer.

"It's the first step towards what many technology companies are hankering for."

And towards a totally wired world "where you don't have to be tethered."

Ms McMurchy went to relatively poor schools in South Auckland - Holy Cross Convent and then the 90 per cent Polynesian McAuley High School (where, incidentally, she and businesswoman Annette Presley last year set up a scholarship for career-minded students).

But Ms McMurchy says her South Auckland education set her up for life, despite the lack of role models.

"They were very small, very poor schools, but the teachers took special interest," she says.

"I had a quality education."

A bachelors degree in psychology - "I wanted to be a clinical psychologist until I realised that people talking about their problems probably wasn't action-packed enough for me" - and a masters in statistics followed.

Her first job was as a statistician for Takapuna market research firm Colmar Brunton, but her interest in the "action" - the business side - drew her to the post of pricing manager of BellSouth while the multi-national telco was in building mode in New Zealand.

Harvard came into the picture when Ms McMurchy's then partner, former University of Auckland statistician Dr Robert Gentleman, took a sabbatical at Harvard's school of public health.

At the time, Ms McMurchy felt she had come up against her "knowledge limit, not really understanding business more generally."

Inquiries revealed the $160,000 Frank Knox scholarship. "I would never have gone or been able to go without it."

The scholarship is the largest endowment at Harvard, and available to one New Zealander a year, for any subject - but woefully under-publicised in New Zealand.

Like many foreign students, Ms McMurchy squeezed a full-time, two-year course into 18 months. But it was a tough time.

Many, only half-jokingly, refer to the acronym as Marriage Break-up Association - but it taught "a little bit about everything."

It gave students a CEO's perspective, she says, allowing graduates to "optimise your local environment but see the bigger picture."

Ms McMurchy has been in her Starbucks role for six months, and says although she is regularly mistaken for Australian or English, this country offers budding executives a great advantage.

"We get a better education, and even university doesn't cost you that much," she says. "It's very entrepreneurial, it's small, and you can get into jobs with quite broad responsibility quite early.

"If you look at the things I did by 28 and the levels of responsibility ... in the US you are a tiny cog in the wheel.

"It's impossible for you to stretch your wings.

"We're so much better off than America. If you are bottom decile, you'd have no hope in life.

"People make very strong judgments on what school you went to. We are a very lucky country indeed."

Having come from Harvard, she says, "the world is at my feet. In New Zealand, people are judged on merit."

So when do we see the fruit of Ms McMurchy's work in New Zealand?

By 2002, says Starbucks, customers in nearly three-quarters of the 4150 coffee stores around the world will have web access.

Starbucks' corporate franchisee in New Zealand, Restaurant Brands, cannot yet name dates and places.