Profile: Linda Sewell
By Sue Peacock | | 26 February
Image: Rodger Cummins
A year ago, Linda Sewell ran a half marathon to get to work. It was only her second day in a new job - as chief executive of forestry group Hancock Victorian Plantations - and followed a similar run home from the city the day before.
It was, she admits, an unconventional way to make a first impression at the office. But it wasn’t due to any unfamiliarity with Melbourne’s trains and trams, rather a case of bad timing, with the New Zealander’s appointment to head the privately-owned timber plantation company coinciding with her preparation for the Boston marathon.
“I did think at the time it was a bit mad and ‘what am I doing?’” she laughs. Sewell later went on to complete the event, notching up her seventh marathon.
Sewell says her career path, like her running, wasn’t planned.
“It is more an intuitive thing, if I see an opportunity I just go for it,” she says.
After completing a science degree, majoring in botany and a commerce degree majoring in accounting and finance, both at Auckland University, Sewell joined Ernst & Young when she worked for six years in various audit, consulting & corporate finance roles.
She moved to New Zealand forestry group Carter Holt Harvey in 1995 and stayed for ten years, working her way up through the company in various finance and corporate development positions.
Aged 34, she discovered running.
“I had never done any exercise whatsoever, I was overweight and I had an unhealthy work ethic and I couldn’t run as far as the first lamp post,” she says. She completed her first half marathon - 21kms, after just 12 weeks.
“When I crossed the line it had such an impact on me. I had undergone a physical transformation and I had done something that mentally I thought was inconceivable so it really stretched my boundaries and changed my outlook on life. I thought imagine if I could do that with the people around me and what that would do for the company.”
She started a program for Carter Holt Harvey employees aimed at helping others to run a half marathon. It ran for five years and led to 1000 Carter Holt Harvey employees, or ten per cent of the company, completing a half marathon in 2003.
'I did everything,” laughs Sewell. “I would send emails on a Friday night to motivate them in their weekend runs and I would go and do talks to encourage people to stay with the training program, all in my spare time.”
Sewell soon took on the bigger challenge of full marathons, triggering a transformation in both her personal and professional life.
“I work less ours than I used to and I am more successful in my career and much more productive. I am also in a completely different career now.”
Sewell was thinking of leaving the company and moving into the life coaching field but was offered the role of founding chief executive of a new laminated lumber veneer business.
“It was suggested I could transform people’s lives in a similar way as a chief executive. Looking back I think ‘wow, that was pretty daunting’ as I had engineers reporting to me who were ten years my senior but at the time I was pretty green and just got on with it.”
Twelve months ago, Sewell was recruited to head up HVP, Australia’s largest private timber plantation company with $800 million in assets. The company manages 245,000 hectares of land in Victoria on behalf of superannuation funds and employs 150 staff across its Flinders Lane head office and six regional sites.
She believes she was hired because she could bring diversity and a big picture, lateral thinking perspective to an organisation poised for change.
Describing herself as a “generalist”, she has a collaborative leadership style, values honesty, is big on feedback, communication and the wellbeing and safety of her employees.
During the summer bushfire season, during which the company lost valuable plantations, she answered phones at the company’s Myrtleford office, leaving workers who mistook her for the receptionist mortified.
“I just think if you are open and approachable and you don’t try and put yourself apart from everybody else you get a different response from individuals. They see you as more genuine,” she says.
As for making bad decisions, she sees them as mistakes which can be corrected.
“There is virtually nothing which happens which you can’t fix if you approach it from the right direction and there is always something to learn.”
Best decision: running marathons. “I work less ours than I used to and I am more successful in my career and much more productive. I am also in a completely different career now.”
Hardest decision: sacking a senior manager.
Career highlights
1989 Various audit, consulting and corporate finance assignments at Ernst & Young
1995 CEO at Futurebuild
2006 CEO Hancock Victorian Plantations
