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Job title: Executive director, New Zealand Planning Institute.

Julie Inwood

Planning - shaping the future of our environment - is a growing field, but New Zealand is not producing enough planners to meet the demand.

That is one of the issues Julie Inwood will focus on now that she has taken the top job at the Auckland-based New Zealand Planning Institute. It has more than 1400 members who work in private, public and academic fields.

"The field is getting bigger," says Inwood, "but unfortunately the numbers going in are dwindling."

Many people, she says, do not realise that school subjects such as social studies and geography are a platform for a career in planning.

And the four-year degree required to start work as a planner puts some loan-shy students off.

Inwood, formerly a Manukau Institute of Technology business adviser, sees this job as a step to a CEO role.

What appealed to her was its demand for a "multi-tasking, multi-faceted" way of working.

"I felt this was a job that could take those skills a lot further."

The job ad asks for a person to be the "face of the institute". Inwood, 37, has a Bachelor of Business in marketing and advertising from MIT, and spent time in London working in merchant banking IT.

She admits that planning is a new field to her - "it's a big learning curve" - but says her experience in education and business development is complementary.

Inwood will be responsible for members' ongoing professional education, as well as overseeing the institute's quarterly magazine, and will report to a council.