Jez Tavita - Ria McBride Award winner 2018 transcript

(upbeat music)

Text appears: Introducing Jez Tavita Ria McBride Award winner 2018

Text appears at bottom left of screen: Jez Tavita, Coordinator, Office of the Chief Economic Adviser, The Treasury

While Tavita is talking in the top right of the screen text: New Horizons for Women Hine Kahukuru and in the top right there is the State Services Commission logo. 

Tavita: At the moment, I am a coordinator in the Office of the Chief Economic Advisor at The Treasury. We're currently working on the living standards framework and much of my role is to provide policy analysis on the frameworks that we are looking at.

Black screen with text appears: What did winning the award mean to you?

Tavita: Personally it was quite emotional actually. I haven't won many things I would say and the actual Ria McBride award itself, being a scholarship for, like a second chance scholarship really showed me or proved to me that I could do something more rather than just
working my way up a ladder I could actually go back and get the accreditation that I probably really wanted when I was younger, just didn't
have the support or the support network to push through and achieve when I was but now I know what I want and that's
helped me to get there.

Black screen with text appears: What will you use the award for?

Tavita: I am doing a master in public policy. Hopefully I'm going to use that as a means to become an effective and really respectful leader. I think people need respectful leaders. I don't want to be pushed myself into a certain area. I want to see that and grow that sort of seed and I want to be able to understand how people work and help them to grow in a way that they want to grow rather than me telling them how they want to grow.

Black screen with text appears: What motivates you to do the work you do?

Tavita: For me personally, when I was growing up I really didn't have role models that kind of looked like me or were me unless they, you know played sport and I want to give other kids who are like me, a little bit of bookworm you know that sort of, that sort of student I guess another role model to aspire to be and that we don't just have to be netball or rugby players, that we can actually be academic and we can actually make changes to our society and the way that we live and our families and you know just increase the
well-being of, of everyone!

Black screen with text appears: What advice can you give to people starting out in their career?
I would say set your intentions to yourself and then make your intentions known to your managers. You don't have to be pushy about it but letting them know where you want to go is probably the first step and they can support you to get there or help to support to get you
there and then just believing that it'll happen.

I think people too often set an intention and it doesn't happen in the next six months and they don't realise that they actually have to put that work in as well, it shouldn't be left to somebody else and if you've got that ambition and that drive and you know that you are, you are capable and your managers and the people around you will see that and they will push you further and they will encourage you so it's a bit of a two-way street. Set your intentions, set your intentions to the right people and then help each other to grow.