Jenny Maxwell - Welcome NZWiR to RCS - Meet New Zealand Women in Roofing - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Heidi J. Ellsworth from RoofersCoffeeShop and Jenny Maxwell from New Zealand Women in Roofing. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro/Outro: Welcome to Roofing Road Trips with Heidi. Explore the roofing industry through the eyes of a long-term professional within the trade. Listen for insights, interviews, and exciting news in the roofing industry today.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to Roofing Road Trips from Roofers Coffee Shop. This is Heidi Ellsworth and I am road-tripping today, let me tell you, clear across the globe. I am so lucky today to have Jenny Maxwell, who is the President of the Roofing Association of New Zealand, and who is the Chairperson of New Zealand Women in Roofing, on this Roofing Road Trip.

Jenny, welcome.

Jenny Maxwell: Hi, how are you?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I am good. I am so excited. You and I have known each other for many years now because you came to National Women in Roofing in the US and then went and started New Zealand National Women in Roofing, but you and I really kind of connected again this year and I'm just so excited about that.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, it was awesome to make that reconnection. The friendships that you make around the world within the roofing industry are amazing, and they're important to have as well.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: They are. And you've been helping me get out there and you and I were just talking, we're talking to some folks in the UK now, and Argentina, and it's pretty exciting.

But today, I want to talk about New Zealand, and so let's start with, if you wouldn't mind, introduce yourself and tell us about your roofing company.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah. I'm Jenny Maxwell and I live in a small village just outside of Christchurch, which is in the Central South Island of New Zealand. And my husband and I have got a roofing company that we started up in 2009, best time of the world to actually be starting a business in the middle of the GFC, so that was a rude awakening for us right at the beginning.

And so yes, we live here in Canterbury and we've got our own roofing company, and we do predominantly commercial work, but we are also in the high-end architectural space for residential roofing as well. We've got a nice mix there. We've got, at the moment, about 35 staff on, which is keeping us super busy and we've got some really exciting projects ahead of us.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow, yeah. And it was interesting when we were visiting Jenny, about this, but a good share of the roofing product that you install is metal, right?

Jenny Maxwell: Yes, yeah. New Zealand is 80% metal, so very few tiles, hardly any asphalt. There is a bit of membrane roofing, but generally just in that commercial space. So it's quite a different dynamic to the US and we've found that when we have gone to the International Roofing Expo, we've been there three times, and while there are similarities, there's also quite a great big void between what we do in New Zealand and what happens in America and I think that comes down, particularly to climate.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, and you and I were just talking about that, the differences in climate and what we're dealing with.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, just a different dynamic really in what we need to keep our houses safe and waterproof.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, wow. Well, okay. I mean, this is just so cool, but you are Chairperson, or President, I'm not sure what the title is, but of the Roofing Association of New Zealand. So similar to our National Roofing Contractors Association, you're the chair and in charge of the New Zealand RCA. Tell us about the association and tell us about your role.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah. I've been the President of the Roofing Association since 2020. I was introduced to the Roofing Association when I first started. So getting back to my career, I'm actually not a roofer by trade or career. I actually started in banking and spent the first 25 years of my life being a banker. But when we started up the business, things got really busy and my husband, Nathan, said to me, he said, "Oh, can you come on board and help me because I know you've got a skillset that's good for a business?" So that was great. Started doing that.

And every year, he encouraged me to go along to the Roofing Association Conference, and just getting to network and connect with those people and starting to realize that I actually did have a skillset that I could actually use to put back to the Roofing Association and to roofing in general in New Zealand. So I was approached to put my hand up and looked to actually go on to the executive, which I did in 2016. So here I am, all those years later, and just about to go into another two-year term as President, so I'm here until 2025.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, so that-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, congratulations.

Jenny Maxwell: Thank you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: They're lucky to have you.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, so the things that we are there to do is just to support. So we are a member organization, very much like the NRCA, and also we have associate members as well too, so all the suppliers to the industry. So we're there to just help make sure that the regulations are there, make sure that we are there supporting training for staff, opportunities, all of those sorts of things that actually help the business because the business owners are too busy to having to do that sort of stuff. And it's nice for us to step in and to be able to be an advocate for them in the industry.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, that's excellent. Wow. And I mean, we are just getting, just this year, Lisa Sprick, who you may have met at National Women in Roofing, but anyway, she is the Chairperson of NRCA and only the second woman ever to be chair of the National Roofing Contract Association. So having you in New Zealand just shows how progressive you all are. That's great.

Jenny Maxwell: Exactly, yeah. I'm the second president as well, and when the Association was started 29 years ago, the first president was actually a woman, a woman by the name of Sue Harkin.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Awesome!

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, and that's really cool. And we've also got her daughter who is very seriously thinking about coming onto the board and she'd like to follow in her mother's footsteps in the time to come. So that's really, really exciting.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, that's cool. Wow. I love it. Okay, so along with that, I think it was in 2019, '18? I can't even remember.

Jenny Maxwell: '18.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: When you came to your first National Women in Roofing, '18? Okay. And we met and you were like, "I want to take this back and I want to start this in New Zealand." So tell us a little bit about coming to National Women in Roofing and really your inspiration for starting National Women in Roofing in New Zealand.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah. Well, it was a bit of a funny story really because when I was looking at the registration, we decided that we were going to go to the conference in New Orleans it was, and didn't really know too much about the area or what to expect or anything else. So I was having a look-in, saw something that said that it was a Women in Roofing Day, and I thought, "Oh, that sounds quite interesting." And Nathan decided that he'd go fishing for the day so he booked himself a fishing tour, and I went off, which is somewhat a little bit daunting when you go somewhere by yourself in a country you don't know, in an area and what have you.

But honestly, it was the most amazing day, a real turning point for me and my thoughts about how the industry in New Zealand can actually grow and succeed. And yeah, I went along there, connected with you, connected with the likes of Jennifer Stone and Renae-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Stone? Yeah.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, and it was amazing. And the women that I met were just so friendly and welcoming and I could see that there was something very special in the essence of what Women in Roofing was. And it really made me passionate, I guess. It really stirred something in me.

So I came back to New Zealand and I annoyed an awful lot of people. I would talk to anybody who would actually listen because all I wanted to do was actually get people excited about what this could actually do and what it could look like and how we could achieve some stuff to actually help support women within in roofing in New Zealand. And New Zealand's not a big place, and it goes to stand for the fact that because we are small, we all become a little bit isolated. We've got people all over the country in small towns that don't necessarily know a lot of people. And I could actually see that Women in Roofing was something that would actually bring people together.

Often, they're in small companies where it might only be a couple of guys and the lady at the front desk who's doing the wages and the administration and what have you, and she might find herself in a position where she's the only one in the office and the phone's ringing and people are asking about, say, different profiles of metal or some technical stuff, and she might not know the answer. And I could actually see that having those connections meant that if Sally got rung up and she didn't know the answer, she could pick up the phone, talk to Mary because the guys were out of the office, and actually say, "Hey, I've got a question and I don't know how to answer it. Can you help me?" And it means everybody's taking their hats off at the door, they're forgetting about the fact that they may be competing for jobs against each other, but in actual effect, they can bring the industry together and actually help form that support.

And that's the sort of thing that is going on, and I'm really proud of the way that the women in New Zealand have actually got behind it. But more importantly, the way that the men have actually supported it. I think because I'd annoyed so many of them, they decided to say, "Okay, let's have a go." And at the time, the President of the Roofing Association, Mark Bishop, he was totally behind me and gave full support and here we are and with a pretty strong presence.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, I love that. I love that story and I love that when you said you first went back and annoyed a few people, I can relate to that. I think I did the same thing. But now to hear where you're at and how far you've come, tell us a little bit about what is happening in National Women in Roofing in New Zealand? Tell us just like what are some of the initiatives? What are some of the events? What are you doing?

Jenny Maxwell: Really exciting. So a week from today, we're all gathering in a small place called Nelson, which is a lovely little seaside resort for the Roofing Association's Conference. And we've actually signed a contract with the Roofing Association that forms our partnership in-kind and how we will support them and how they will support us, so it means that we always have a presence at the conference. We always have a booth there. And very kindly, we're there in that partnership in kind without actually having to have a whole lot of money behind us to be able to do that, which is really lovely.

With that, when we first started in 2019, we decided that because the conference is that one national thing where everybody connects, that we wanted to make sure that we could actually connect our women with the conference as well, and a lot of them don't get the opportunity to go to conference. So we actually started a scholarship, and every year, we pay for two women to come along to conference.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, I love that.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, yeah. So they have to be first-timers, it has to be that they've never been, but they actually do want to come along and have the opportunity to see what the industry's like as a whole when you come together. And it's been great because there have been some employers put their staff forward who would never normally actually be able to afford to take their staff to conferences. So it's been amazing.

So we've got two awesome conference winners coming along with us next week. One girl works for a membrane company in Auckland, and another one is actually an owner of her own roofing business, so she's on the tools, so nice to have a spread with two completely different women in their jobs, but both are very, very important to the industry. So it'll be good. It'll be nice to have them there.

And while we're at conference, we're actually going to be launching our next scholarship that we've got coming up in November, and that's for a scholarship to an organization called Outward Bound. And it's a little bit like it's an adventure, but it's a leadership course as well. So there's a little bit of sailing, there's a little bit of rock climbing, a little bit of tramping, a bit of running, all those sorts of things in there. And it's a five-day course that we're actually providing fully funded. So one lucky girl or woman will actually get to go along and really deep dive into leadership and hopefully come back with some amazing stuff that they can actually do for not only their employer but for the industry as well

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. What a great idea. That is excellent. And we do scholarships too, the IRE, the International Roofing Expo too. And we've seen, Jenny, that the scholarship winners come back and they are on committees, they're active in their local council, they're getting involved. It's such a great way to uplift the industry by getting people who normally couldn't go to be able to attend. I love it.

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, it's definitely an initiative that we'd actually, a little bit, beg, borrowed and stolen from Woman in Roofing. But no, it does create that sense of belonging and it's like the girls actually start to really own Women in Roofing, and as you say, they do start to want to actually get involved on a deeper level, like committees and what have you. So you're definitely right. There's a payback for everybody on it, and that's important.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I think National Women in Roofing US should steal your idea about Outward Bound scholarship because I love that idea. That's what's so nice is we can collaborate back and forth and share ideas.

Jenny Maxwell: Yes, you're more than welcome to grab that and run with it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay, perfect. I'm going to tell them.

Now, on National Women in Roofing in the US, we have our four pillars of recruiting, mentoring, education and networking. I'm curious, do you have those same pillars in New Zealand or did you change them up a little bit?

Jenny Maxwell: No, we didn't. We did stick to that formula. It seems to just fit really well with the narrative of what it is that we're actually trying to do. So no, we've stuck very closely to that.

Of course, because we're pretty new and kicking off in 2019, dare I say, I don't like to talk too much about it, but 2020 hit and we'd only been going for six months as a national organization. And so we were stifled quite a lot for about 18 months to two years. So, it slowed us down a lot.

I would say definitely in the education space, we're doing really well. We've got podcasts happening every month on a technical level, and so we've got our sponsors who actually come on board and do that for us. And in terms of networking, that was stifled as well, obviously not being able to do face-to-face and what have you, but that's definitely back up and running, and going in that networking space is going really, really well.

Recruitment, we're struggling a little bit with that one I guess. It's hard to actually find that right forum in New Zealand to actually connect employers with women within the industry. But we are actually working with other trade organizations, Women in Trades and National Women in Construction, and we're starting to get some traction on that as well too.

And in the mentoring space, we're really just sort of moving along on that quite quickly. At the moment, I'm actually stepping back a little bit, so I'll still be attached to the committee, but I'll actually be holding an advisory role to the committee rather than actually being on the committee. And Jade Thomas, who is the chair at the moment, she's also stepping back and we've got an amazing woman, Debbie Witcliff, who's going to step up and become our chair. And Jade and I are just going to sit in the background. We've actually got five new women coming onto the committee this year.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Awesome!

Jenny Maxwell: Yeah, it's really cool. And we've thought, well, there's no point in the old girls sitting there, better that we actually let these girls get in and get themselves some experience, but what we can do is actually sit there in the back and actually mentor them. And all of those are governance-type things because it's quite new for a lot of them to actually know and understand what it is to be in their governance role. So, it's exciting.

So I think for me, stepping into that mentoring role is actually a nice new experience to actually have created, and I think Jade and I can actually put an awful lot back in, probably actually put more back in by doing the mentoring and actually sitting there doing the work ourselves.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yep, I feel the exact same way. That's exactly my role with National Women in Roofing now. I go to the board meetings whenever they need me, whenever they need help, whenever they need that person, I'm there. But it is so great to have all these new women taking over and it makes the organization sustainable because it can't just be around one or two people. It has to be a lot of people.

Jenny Maxwell: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, an organization is not one or two people. It has to be bigger than the sum of all of the people. It's a good space to be in.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know, I know! That's the thing. And to have... I mean, when you think of all the members and everybody and how much it's empowered them when I talk to people, it's just amazing.

So I'm curious, are you going to be at the IRE Show in 2024 in Las Vegas?

Jenny Maxwell: I would love to, but unfortunately, no.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, bummer!

Jenny Maxwell: I know. So over the last few years, we've sort of come every second year along to it, so maybe 2025, wherever it might be in 2025. But we've got a trip coming up this year where we're going to Italy and France doing a sporting tour, so unfortunately, you can't do everything, can you?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: No, you can't.

Jenny Maxwell: So hopefully 2025 and I'll be looking to see if I can actually bring somebody else or maybe a couple of women along with me.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Awesome. Yeah, that would be great. Well, in the meantime, we are so honored that we have RANZ, Roofing Association of New Zealand and National Women in Roofing, or NZWIR, New Zealand Women in Roofing, on Roofers Coffee Shop. We have full directories and we have been working with you so that people can find out more information. And Jenny, I'm so excited to have you on Roofers Coffee Shop and some international flavor.

Jenny Maxwell: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's just so inspiring to actually have those connections and to think that we've taken it further than it ever was. And if I hadn't have gone to America and met you and the other ladies, I think, where would we be? We'd still be sitting treading water and not being out there getting stuff done. So it's my privilege to have actually met you and to have been inspired by you to get on and get this stuff done.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You are amazing. I have to tell you, I'm inspired by you. And so we got to just keep it up. We're just going to keep pushing the buttons, right, Jenny?

Jenny Maxwell: Oh, absolutely. And I think the experiences that we share, but also the experiences that we will gain by working together, we'll come up with some really great ideas together.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, definitely. Well, thank you so much for being on this podcast. What a special podcast. I can't wait to share this with all the National Women in Roofing here in the States, and Jenny Stone and Renae, and all of your friends, they're going to love this.

Jenny Maxwell: Oh, thank you so much, Heidi. It's been a real pleasure.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So good. So thank you, Jenny, and thank you all for listening. This is pretty exciting stuff when we start going around, road-tripping around the globe, and meeting people who are so inspiring, who also are passionate and love roofing across the globe. And we're going to keep doing this. And I'm just so happy to have Jenny as such a great friend.

So Jenny, one last time, thank you, and we're going to see you again back on the podcast.

Jenny Maxwell: Will do. Thank you so much.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you. And thank you all for listening. Please check out all of our podcasts under the Read, Listen, Watch under podcasts for Roofing Road Trips. Of course, check out the New Zealand Directories too, one for National Women in Roofing and one for the RCA. Check those both out. Lots of great information. And be sure to subscribe and set your notifications on your favorite podcast channel so you don't miss a single episode.
We'll be seeing you next time on Roofing Road Trips.

Intro/Outro: Make sure to subscribe to our channel and leave a review. Thanks for listening. This has been Roofing Road Trips with Heidi from RoofersCoffeeShop.com.