We’re excited to welcome Rochelle Dalziel as she takes up this new full-time role at Dragonfly.
“The more we’ve grown, the more obvious it’s become that we need someone with expertise in management to help us run all our projects,” says Finlay Thompson.
“As in many small businesses, people have to wear lots of different hats to cover off everything that needs to be done. Lots of us do various amounts of administration here, but we saw a need to standardise our systems and free people up to prioritise the science and technical aspects of their jobs.”
Creating the office manager role was precipitated by Elis Hickson Rowden choosing to resign and take up further study.
“I’m hugely thankful to Elis – in his kind, understated way, he’s been very diligently doing our finance and administration work for more than 8 years. He’s been instrumental in getting us to where we are today.”
Finlay says the recruitment was “fantastically run” by Stacey Aubry from Kin. “We’re used to recruiting scientists because we know what we’re looking for – but this role was a bit different. The process proved to be very smooth because Kin’s values are very compatible with ours.”
Rochelle was previously the office manager at Squiz, a similar-sized Wellington-based digital services agency. Finlay says Dragonfly was struck by Rochelle’s gentle manner, attention to detail and determination for getting things done.
“Because the office manager has to work closely with the whole team, we felt it was really important that the person we chose had a really good fit with our culture.”
While starting a new job in the middle of a COVID-19 lockdown was not ideal, Rochelle says she is looking forward to adding value to Dragonfly’s work. “I love what Dragonfly does and I’m excited by the prospect of learning about the nuances within a research environment. I pride myself on a job well done, and I look forward to us achieving great things together.”