BLVNZ CEO leading with kindness and curiosity

January 6, 2025 Susanne Bradley

Having settled into her new role, Blind Low Vision NZ (BLVNZ) chief executive Andrea Midgen sat down with Susanne Bradley to talk not-for-profits, eye health in Aotearoa and her vision for BLVNZ’s future

 

About a decade ago, why did you make the leap from commercial to not-for-profit organisations? 

 

I wanted to make a difference. I know it's a very common thing to say, but it's something that makes my heart sing. I've got to be connected to what I'm doing. I'm a bit of a workaholic and I put in a lot of time and effort into what I do. I also care a lot about people, and I believe that if you don't care you shouldn’t lead. When I looked at all those things, I asked myself what could I do next, how do I tick all those boxes? Then the SPCA role came up and I just thought ‘that's my role’. Now, nearly eight years later, here I am at BLVNZ.

 

What other qualities do you value in this role? 

 

For me, good leadership is about being curious, because if you're curious, you're not judging, you're inquiring and you're learning. There are always different perspectives on things and you need to understand all of them to be able to make good decisions. I have been challenged over the years when I say these things, because people associate ‘kind’ with ‘soft’ – but it's not like I’m not expecting delivery. You operate in a kind way because most people are trying to do their best; they are committed and wanting to make a difference. Everybody's got stuff going on, right? And until you can walk in another person's shoes, you just don't know.

 

What were your first impressions joining the New Zealand eye health community?

 

Everybody knows everybody! Also, here at BLVNZ, there's all these different cohorts of vision loss: people who have been blind since birth, people who have become blind and people who have low vision. They have quite different needs, they intermingle or they don't. It's been interesting.

 

Then there are the other organisations offering services, support or advocacy to the blind low vision sector, so I've been focusing on building relationships with these organisations. Being new to this sector, I think it’s really important we all collaborate to make sure we don't have gaps or overlaps that are impacting our clients or causing confusion.

 

Do you think there's a need for several organisations to operate in this space in New Zealand?

 

Why do we have over 27,000 charities in a country the size of New Zealand? I think there could be some rationalisation. When I started at SPCA, I was the CEO of Auckland. It was not a national organisation and it didn’t have national delivery at that point, but it had 42 individual incorporated societies that were built up over 150 years. As soon as I saw it, I realised we were losing value in terms of having economies of scale – one fundraising department, one finance team and all the rest of it. In that case it was also the service delivery; it was very different across the country, with some places struggling to keep their lights on, let alone provide a service. So, if I take that kind of learning and I look at this sector, what concerns me is the potential wastage. It will take time, but I think we're having some of those conversations, discussing gaps and overlaps and how we can do better.

 

What’s your vision for BLVNZ?

 

What I can see is that we're going to have this growing need because we have an ageing population and a higher incidence of vision issues from diabetes, stroke and other diseases. So, for me, it's about how we create infrastructure and a service support vehicle to deliver that in a sustainable way. When you look at the numbers, they're pretty scary, so how do we grow our funding to sustain those numbers? As you can imagine, the current fundraising landscape is very challenging and we’re going to need to do more in the future. So that's a key focus for me, plus sustainability and service delivery.

 

Former BLVNZ CEO John Mulka engaged BLVNZ in more preventive work, for example by joining Eye Health Aotearoa. What’s your view of BLVNZ’s role in this space?

 

I think BLVNZ has a role to play in this space and some of it is around advocacy and awareness. Coming from the SPCA, when I first got here, I was a little bit surprised that there wasn't a big focus on prevention. But in a recent strategy meeting with the board, the conversations were very much in the prevention space. I don't have a really good answer for you right now, but it's definitely part of what we are going to be doing in the future.

 

BLVNZ has had issues including low output, service delays plus a high staff turnover and poor workplace culture. Where is it at with these now? 

 

Our service delivery is improving and I'm really pleased to report that things like wait time for the first interaction have improved*. We've got KPIs across all of this now and we're tracking really well.

 

The most promising statistic is that our total referrals from health professionals, mainly eye specialists, have increased steadily year-on-year from 857 in 2019 to 1,487 in 2024 – a 74% increase. Our ‘voice of the customer’ score, which is our client survey, was 9.1 out of 10 in the last quarter, which, although there's always room for improvement, I think is pretty fantastic.

 

One area that is potentially untapped is the pool of people that don't know about the services or don't know how to access them, so that's going to be our next focus, in terms of staff engagement.

 

In the culture space, it's not bad, but it's not at the levels that I've experienced. We completed a self-engagement survey to tackle this and have come up with a 12 to 18-month action plan focusing on four key areas to help improve culture: leadership, communication, professional development and training.

 

One of the things I'm just starting to have conversations about is what I'm calling connection to the cause – people feeling connected to what they do and what impact it has on our customers. Our client-facing people obviously have this experience every day, but there's other parts of the organisation – like the finance department or fundraising – that don't necessarily get that. So, from this year, everybody will shadow a client-facing person one day per year. With that experience, they will understand what's actually happening out there. For me, going out on client visits with our customer-facing people fills my heart. Sometimes it breaks my heart, too. It also gives me a really good understanding of what our people are dealing with day in, day out and what our clients’ issues and needs are. 

 

What do you enjoy doing when you’re not working?

 

I’m an absolute dog lover and enjoy walking my dog (a rescue dog that is part collie, part kelpie and part Labrador) in the evenings and weekends. I also do a bit of yoga and during Covid I became this crazy jigsaw person. I only do it maybe once a month or so now, but I find it is a really good way to switch off. I also love spending time with my family and friends.

 

*BLVNZ internal reporting shows it consistently registers people within one week and most people within two to three days of initial contact.