Sharma McIntyre

Variety is the spice of life for Sharma McIntyre, who is now a strategy manager at Callaghan Innovation in Auckland.

Her responsibilities include managing major projects and liaising with senior stakeholders across different parts of the organisation to tackle large-scale problems.

“I regularly liaise with the executive team when they have any questions on strategy or direction. It’s my responsibility to keep them informed, and we’re always scanning the market to see what our competitors are doing," says Sharma.

“There's a lot of variety in my job, which I love, and most of the projects involve problem solving, so I really enjoy working through that process."

Originally from Te Aroha, Sharma says her Bachelor of Management Studies with Honours degree taught her how to think strategically and write reports well; two skills that are now essential to her role at Spark.

“The BMS(Hons) is a really good degree to go for, because it gives you a broad range of learning across all the key areas of business and management.” She chose to major in both Strategic Management and Finance.

A highlight of her degree was being involved with the Waikato Management School Case Competition in third year.

“It was quite intense. Each team is given the challenge of creating a business strategy to increase a company’s revenue and profits in a really short amount of time. It was an opportunity for us to act as consultants and apply all the business theories we had learnt during our degree to a real New Zealand company. Looking back now, building a strategy under time pressure is certainly how the real world works.”

Sharma also had the opportunity to do a three-month internship working at the New Zealand Treasury in Wellington as part of her degree.