Marion Rosner

Marion Rosner

I am an expat Brit who has lived and worked in four countries, on three continents, and who now calls New Zealand home. After my Honours degree in Business Administration, I went straight to work in the steel industry as a Business Systems Analyst, then a Senior Market Analyst. Then it was time for my first international move.

In my early to mid-twenties, I moved to France to work at what is now called Disneyland Paris. As I write this, the resort is one day away from celebrating its 25th anniversary, which is on 12th April 2017. Unfortunately redundancies loomed and, not yet ready to depart this beautiful country, I moved to the south-west of France, where I found work with, ironically, an English language newspaper targeted at other expat Brits.

After a couple of years in that lovely part of the country, I moved to Chicago and began contracting at IBM. Eighteen months later this turned in to a permanent position and I became fully "blue". I was in the Year 2000 group so in early 1999 my Manager suggested I use some of the training budget, to get whatever training I wanted, for the area I wanted to move into. What a fantastic manager, so supportive! So I made my way into code development and programming, in LotusScript.

I became a Lotus Notes Developer and, over the next fifteen years, expanded my experience and skillset. I also moved country again after more redundancies loomed and I left IBM. This time I moved to New Zealand - Aotearoa! I absolutely love it here and am set for the rest of my life now. I worked in a banking environment, again in software development, and then moved to government. I've only worked with a Business Analyst once, so have also been my own BA, plus my own UI Designer, with full responsibility of delivery.

While in government, in April 2013, I was offered the chance to train as a Scrum Master, which I did, and gained my CSM certification in the same month. After a couple of very short in-house Scrum projects, I was asked if I would like to join the Govt.nz team as their Scrum Master. Naturally I leapt at the idea. This was in August 2013.

In 2014 I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stop work for a year and do whatever I wanted, so I went to Victoria University of Wellington, and gained a Graduate Diploma in Science, in the area of Environmental Studies, which has always interested me. I honed several skills here, including how to work in very diverse groups, and presenting to small and large groups. I also hosted a presentation session with other speakers.

Since graduating, I have been the Agile Scrum Master for a small New Zealand-owned company which designs and manufactures fire detection systems. The company has 50% of the New Zealand market and regularly trains Fire Service personnel across the country. In May 2017 I left this small company to go contracting in government. This was supposed to last until Christmas, but was cut short just 3 1/2 months in to it. It took me a little while to get work, but am now at an IT company which develops bespoke financial planning software for the farming community. I'm half Scrum Master and half Business Analyst. The company is split between its Masterton HQ and its devs in Wellington as it couldn't get everyone to move to Masterton.