Career culminated in RBA role

Kathryn Fagg is a member of an exclusive club, having sat on the Reserve Bank board.

Kathryn Fagg in her Melbourne office. Picture: David Geraghty.

Kathryn Fagg is a member of an exclusive club in corporate Australia.

Only a handful of business people over the decades have been selected to join the Reserve Bank board.

Fagg served for five years as an RBA director and chair of the board’s audit committee, her term ending in May last year.

“There is no doubt I was acutely aware of the responsibility of being on the RBA board. You are aware of the criticality of the decisions it makes,’’ she says after being honoured as an office in the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to the central banking, business and finance, logistics and manufacturing sectors, and to women.

Australia’s central bank is unusual on the global stage in that it is one of the few that allows external business people to have a say in monetary policy.

“Glenn once told me that the thing he valued about the business people on the board was that they were willing to make a decision without perfect information,’’ Fagg says of former RBA governor Glenn Stevens.

“Not only are they comfortable doing that, but they are willing to live with the consequences of making those decisions. In business you have to make important decisions all the time without perfect information.”

Fagg was chosen by then treasurer Wayne Swan to join the RBA board after blazing a trail in the corporate world as a rare female senior executive in the oil and gas, financial services, manufacturing and logistics industries.

Of the 200 students in her year that studied engineering at the University of Queensland, only six were female.

On the first day of work at the age of 21 with Esso Australia at Sale in country Victoria, one of her male peers turned to her and said: “What is it like to get a job just because of your gender?’’

She went on to take executive roles at Esso, McKinsey & Co, ANZ, BlueScope Steel and the Fox family’s Linfox logistics company. She is now chairman of Boral.

“What I really wanted to do was run a business, to take on a big P&L line role,’’ she says.

“I encourage people, especially women, to take on line management roles. I also encourage women to think about how they pursue their executive career for as long as they can before taking non-executive board roles. You have far more influence in executive roles.”

Fagg says she succeeded in her executive career because she was willing to take risks and seek out mentors, sponsors or champions who were willing to provide her with opportunities.

“Often you have to take a risk if you really want to push your career along. There is always work for good people and there will be other opportunities if things don’t work out,’’ she says.

She nominates Ian Glasson at Esso, Rob McLean at McKinsey, Don Mercer at ANZ, Kirby Adams and Graham Kraehe at BlueScope and Brian Clarke at Boral as her most important mentors.

Queen’s Birthday honours

VIEW GALLERY