Who's Your Boss: Paula Tesoriero

This interview first appeared in The Post external URL and the Waikato Times external URL on 10 May 2025 (paywalled). This is a transcript of the full interview. The interview starts with Anna and Paula sitting across from each other in a meeting room.

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Anna Whyte uses New Zealand Sign Language to begin the interview signing: Happy New Zealand Sign Language Week. My name is Anna, my sign name is reporter.

Paula Tesoriero signs back: Hi, my name is Paula (sign for cycling). Happy Sign Language week, yay!

Anna: Thank you so much for having me today. It's nice to talk to you. We're talking today about your background and where you come from and what you see as a leader. So can tell us a little bit about you?

Paula: Well, thank you for doing this. So, a little bit about me I grew up on the Kapiti Coast, which is about an hour north of Wellington. I’ve got an older brother and a younger sister. I grew up in a family where disability was something that my family celebrated. I sort of got amongst things that my brother and sister did, so, I had a really sort of positive affirming, way of disability being part of my upbringing. And I went to law school here at Victoria (University) after thinking that I wanted to create change in the world through doing law and for a period, alongside that, I started participating in cycling.

Anna: Oh wow, so you only started that at Uni?

Paula: I always rode a bike. Ever since I was a kid, I rode a bike, because for me riding a bike was about giving me independence and freedom that I didn't have walking. I can't run and don't walk particularly fast. So cycling was a way that I could do things that other kids were doing, and it gave me a real sense of freedom and independence. So, I rode a bike forever, but it was really when I was at university that I started to enter fun races. Then people started to encourage me to look at competing at the Paralympic Games and that just seemed like a dream, you know, really far off. But then actually, as I started to cycle and compete, and got under the wing of a coach, and my cycling career really took off. When I retired from cycling, I started a family and started to give back really and my way of doing that was through roles on boards of sport and disability organisations while I was working. I just haven't looked back since then really in terms of my focus on disability.

Anna: I'm interested in how you got to the position you are in today. When did you go from thinking about being a professional athlete to a public service boss? I know there's the boards, but when was the time that you were like, oh yeah, this is this is what I want to do.

Paula: Well I've always had such a deep connection to disability, you know, growing up as a young disabled person in New Zealand I was acutely aware that I was different from most people around me. I think that sense of exclusion growing up really made me want to do something to change that. And I had an opportunity through Paralympic Sport to do a lot of work to advocate for our athletes to have access to the same prosthetic limbs and other technology, for example. And so, I developed that love of advocacy and could see the results that we had through doing that. When I came back from the games and started to contribute to other organisations that were involved in disability and sport, I was then given this wonderful opportunity through being appointed the Disability Rights Commissioner for five years. That was all about advocacy and promoting the rights of disabled people to just have an opportunity to thrive. Then towards the back end of my time as Commissioner, Whaikaha - Ministry of Disabled People, was being set up. People started talking to me about the role and I saw it as a really wonderful opportunity to step back into the public service, because I had spent over a decade in the public service, to really focus on what could we do across government, business and employers, local government, and community to really improve outcomes for disabled people.

Anna: Are you doing this because this is your issue? Do you do this because disability rights is the driver? What is the reason?

Paula: I think ultimately serving my community is something that I feel proud to do. It's a real privilege. I think one of the things that I always encourage people to do is take up opportunities that expose you to things like the private sector, the public sector, local government, NGOs. I think when you can get a range of experiences it helps you do whatever it is you're doing and so for me having opportunities across a range of those different sectors has helped me. So, to answer your question, everything I do is centred around disability and always will be. So that's where my focus and interests lie and I am able to do that through being a public servant and serving my community.

Anna: What do you like as a leader? What do you think are the most important attributes a leader should have?

Paula: Gosh, I think for me is if you really key things. One is really being authentic. And to me that means doing what you say, you will do, having empathy and listening to people. I think that, you know, communicating well with your team and giving them a vision that people feel really compelled to drive for. So, you know, our vision here is disabled people thriving in New Zealand and doing everything we can to keep people focused on that. So having a clear strategy, bringing people along is important.

One of the things that I often talk about is thinking the highest thought of people that we work with, because most people come to work to do a good job. Our community are doing what they do because they want to do a good job. And so just thinking the highest thought of people, and everything we do, rather than thinking there's another agenda, I think has certainly helped me focus people on what's important.

Anna: Do you see a link between your time as a professional athlete and your leadership role?

Paula: Yeah, sport really shaped who I am today. So, if I think about some of the attributes of being a sportsperson, you know, you absolutely need to have a fierce commitment to what it is you're doing. And as a leader, I'm absolutely committed to disabled people thriving in New Zealand.

I think the other thing is, as an athlete and the same is true of a leader, you are only as good as the team around you and so you need to support your team, you need to have the right people and foster good collaboration across teams and make sure that everyone's working to the same goal. And so for me that was true in sport and certainly true in other aspects of leadership. I think all those good leadership traits around good communication. I learnt as an athlete, I needed that from the team that was working with me and I took a lot of it from my coach in terms of good communication and talking about why we were doing things. So, I try and make sure I do that with the team.

I think other things around resilience was also important. As a sports person, often a race wouldn’t go well, or something wouldn't go as well as we had hoped, and that's true in other leadership roles. So, being able to literally get yourself back on the bike, but also helping the team get over hurdles and build resilience to push through things in times of adversity is something that has stood me in good stead as a leader, as it did as a sportsperson.

Anna: What’s a piece of advice you were given that you hold with you today?

Paula: One of the important pieces of advice given to me was to focus on my own game and I was given that as an athlete because you're always driven by times other people are doing or what technology they've got. I learned that by focusing on my own game, I went faster on the bike. And it's proven to be something that in a wider leadership context has been important. So, it is easy to focus on what others are doing and or what others are saying. What I try and do in my leadership is to have the team really focused on our game. What it is that we are trying to do, which is to drive real and meaningful change for disabled people in New Zealand. So really focusing on what it is that we do, because it's really easy to get distracted by other things. For me that's been an important part of leadership.

Anna: Is there any advice you give to the young public servants about how to thrive in the public service?

Paula: The advice I give is to try different things in your career and there's so many wonderful things about being a public servant and having the opportunity to serve your community, work with ministers, see how everything works in terms of how the country is run.

I encourage people to have lots of experiences from, you know, different sectors and different things. I really encourage people to take the most of every opportunity thrown their way while they're in the public service. So whether it's a secondment to another agency, opportunity to work on a big project, like take those opportunities because they really help, you know, add to your tool kit.

The other thing I really try and encourage people to do is to be a good ally of disabled people. So often when it's non-disabled people, I'm talking to, it's about how to be an ally of disabled people. For young disabled leaders, I just encourage them to give it a go, you know. I think New Zealand will keep doing better and better for disabled people when disabled people occupy all spaces and places. So, we need disabled people in the public service, and local government and central government, in the private sector and being proud to identify as being disabled and role modelling really good disability leadership. And so, I just encourage young disabled people to get out there and give different things to go.

Anna: That would have been a nice place to leave, but I still must ask you about your coping mechanisms when it comes to stress. What do you do? Like how do you do and was it something that you developed early on or later in your leadership roles?

Paula: Yeah, it's no doubt these jobs are hard and they really test you. And for me, there's a few things I do to sort of manage that pressure. I've got a really great supportive husband and three kids. They keep me really grounded and have lots of fun and are really supportive.

The second thing is I still ride a bike so you'll see me on a bike around Wellington and just getting out there in the mountain bike parks and things is a way for me to reduce stress.

I spent most of my childhood in hospitals and so when I think about my childhood, it's not so much about the family home or family, it's about hospitals. Growing up I made this promise to myself, that is as true today as it was as kid, that actually all the people that I saw in hospital, and the experiences I had, and the desire to really improve things for disabled people, keeps me focused. When I am stressed, when I feel the pressure, when I'm really tested. In this job there have been moments that have tested my resilience. I just come back to that focus, which is to really break down barriers for disabled people in New Zealand, so that our community thrives.

Anna: Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time today.