International Women’s Day: Katja Rosenvold - Technical Projects Manager #ChoosetoChallenge
To celebrate International Women’s Day 2021 we spoke to three women working in different areas of the supply chain – a farmer, butcher, and project manager. Challenging assumptions, championing the industry, and driving success are all in a days work for these women. This interview features Katja Rosenvold - Technical Projects Manager at Silver Fern Farms.
What does your job entail?
At Silver Fern Farms I am Technical Projects Manager which is a varied role and the best way explaining it is to provide a couple of examples of projects I have been involved in. The first is looking at improving the shelf life of chilled lamb. This involves assessing the whole process, from slaughter to the meat being in a box and identifying where there might be opportunities to improving the shelf life. That could be anything from the hygienic process during slaughter and boning, refrigeration and several other factors.
The second is a project upgrading existing x-ray technology into a number of our plants that provides, firstly, a way of grading product based on fat content but also in detection of foreign objects in cartons of meat to ensure our food safety standards are met.
What attracted you to the role?
My job takes me into a number of areas in the business, it’s a diverse role both in terms of the people that I work with at all levels of the business as well as the technical aspects.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
For me, it is the analytical part of the role. Troubleshooting, looking at why something is working, or not working. How does this affect an issue? How can it be improved? The outcome of this work could be a recommendation for improvements or a confirmation that things are working well.
What have been some of the challenges you’ve faced and overcome in your career?
For me personally, I don’t believe the challenges that I have faced in my career have been because of my gender.
If you could give some advice to a young woman considering the meat industry as a career option what would it be?
The key piece of advice is to dig a little deeper into the different roles available in the industry. There are many roles outside the roles that are often filled by women such as marketing or HR. The sector employs 92,000 New Zealanders and the variety of those jobs is massive. So, do your research and ensure you consider every option available to you.
I think the industry has a big role in demonstrating what those alternative roles are, what the opportunities are, and what the potential career paths there are. As an industry, if we can get that right we will benefit by attracting a deeper pool of talent into the sector and by doing so diversifying the workforce.