WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Tara Sutherland
Digital Capability Consultant, Spark
Class of 2022
naMBA alumni Tara Sutherland is still drawing on Not An MBA four years after graduating. Here’s how her life and work has changed.
For six years, including her time on Not An MBA, Tara was embedded with a single client. She was telling different people in the same organisation the same things, and nothing changed. After Tara finished Not An MBA, and a new manager arrived, Tara bit the bullet and applied what she’d learned about boundaries and agency.
"I just said to her, hey, look - I want some more opportunities. I think I have more to offer and I'm not really being used. And she was like, okay, sweet. What do you want to do?
Four years after Not An MBA, Tara Sutherland is in her element - working across different clients and sectors, and bringing her design skills to innovative projects - including digital hospitals! When she looks back at what made the difference with Not An MBA, it wasn't just the frameworks - it was the principles.
"I've over-applied everything that I wanted to do. But taking it right back to basics - I just stood up for myself."
This shift has shown up in how Tara approaches her work. She now questions the problem before she accepts it, and spends her energy helping others find clarity, rather than carrying every problem herself.
"Earlier in my career, I would have focused on solving the problem in front of me. Today I spend more time questioning whether we've identified the right problem in the first place.
Recently, a client request that started as AI training turned into a conversation about information architecture, governance, data readiness and organisational capability.
The lesson I got from naMBA was about asking better questions.”
Tara’s solving problems differently, too, thanks to the systems-thinking skills she learned on naMBA.
“Systems thinking was a big chapter in our course, and I've become less interested in fixing symptoms and more interested in understanding interactions. It's moved me from 'I'll figure this out' to 'let's make sure the right people are making the right decisions.’"
Tara's 2022 Leadership Manifesto was about supporting her team. Today she builds capability rather than dependency. That includes AI leadership programmes, executive workshops - and leading New Zealand's chapter of a global professional body.
"Supporting people isn't always the same thing as helping them develop capability. Increasingly, my success isn't measured by whether I solved the problem. It's measured by whether others can solve similar problems without me. This makes my brain happy and less burned out.
If I had to summarise the biggest change since writing my manifesto, it's that leadership is about creating the space for better answers to emerge."
Tara is quick to credit the manager who backed her, as someone who gives people room to step into things before they're fully ready. Getting there was still her own work.
"I realise how much I have fought for this."
Four years after naMBA, the thinking is still in circulation around her.
"My book usually sits on my desk at work. More often than not, it's not on my desk, because someone's taken it to read it.”
Tara has taken charge of her work and shaped a career she genuinely loves - and the change is obvious to everyone around her.
“Someone said to me the other day, I can actually see how much you love your job.
And I do… Now."