Remarkable people

DAV welcomes two new members to its highly experienced team programme managers.

Born in New Zealand, Mary-Lou Hoskins had always wanted to work in the UK but in the past she had never really found the right occasion to 'up sticks' and take up residence on British soil. On finding the role at DAV, Mary-Lou knew immediately that the right chance had come her way. She states that during her interview the professionalism and quality of the people impressed her enormously and she felt an instant bond and kindred spirit, knowing she would be working alongside like-minded individuals.

Mary-Lou admits herself that her style is very down to earth, with loads of common sense (something not so 'common'!) and pragmatism. She loves to draw the best from her teams to identify and address the issues and successfully deliver client assignments. Her practical approach means that Mary-Lou will go into a challenging programme and ask what may appear to be the obvious questions. In her experience, she has found that asking the obvious often uncovers misunderstandings or unrecognised issues and you get to the nub of what needs to be fixed much faster. This approach has worked extremely well for Mary-Lou who has delivered successful programmes for a multitude of industries and organisations including: New Zealand's Ministry of Economic Development, Yellow Pages, the Department of Internal Affairs, the New Zealand Health Information Service and many more.

Mary-Lou is now fully engaged with her first client assignment, getting her sleeves rolled up and immersing herself in a complex and very challenging business change programme. Culturally she recognises that the UK may not be as quick to adopt change as her homeland and appears more risk adverse. However, she is keen to tackle this and demonstrate to clients how invigorating and energising business change can be.

It is not often that you meet a programme manager who started their career as an aeronautical engineer. But Natalie Bull has always enjoyed the 'high life'. Natalie herself confesses that she loves 'everything to do with the air' and when she is not engrossed in the challenge of delivering programmes in complex cross-industry environments, Natalie is either ballooning, gliding or piloting prop planes and microlights.

During her career, Natalie has worked in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and a host of other countries and brings strong international experience to DAV, working across cultures and industries for a number of large blue chip organisations. When asked why she switched from engineering to programme management, Natalie confesses that she enjoys a challenge and that programme management provides her with the opportunity to find creative ways to tackle new problems and to think outside-the-box.

Natalie joined DAV towards the end of 2009 as a programme manager and is looking forward to her first assignment. When asked 'Why DAV?' Natalie admitted that as a pro-active, results driven individual she was looking for a fresh challenge where she could pool all her experience gained from working across diverse industry sectors from the motor industry to airlines to travel to charities. Natalie felt that DAV presented her with the perfect opportunity to take ownership of complex programmes and deliver real value back to the client organisation.

To read more about DAV's people and our unique approach, The DAV Way, please click on Related links.