International Women’s Day 2025
Celebrating Armourguard’s Women on International Women’s Day 2025
We’ve got a great team of women working on our frontline and behind the scenes and are delighted to be celebrating them on International Women’s Day 2025. Meet four of our many stars.
Lorraine – Rotorua / Hamilton Operations Manager
A set of coincidences saw Lorraine recently shift from being Northland Operations Manager, to now looking after our Rotorua and Hamilton branches.
Rotorua born and bred Lorraine had lived away from her home-town for 40 years and, for the past six, had worked at our Whangarei branch.
While she loved working in Northland and had a great team, Lorraine and her husband decided to move back to Rotorua so Lorraine could be closer to her many whānau living there.
Reluctantly, she told her Regional Manager she was going to resign only to be told the Rotorua / Hamilton Operations Manager was about to leave and she could transfer to that role.
Lorraine loves being back in Rotorua, particularly given she lived nearly an hours’ drive from work in Whangarei and now only has a four-minute commute to the Rotorua office.
“It’s fantastic being close to my family again and living near town and getting to enjoy Rotorua’s cafes and golf courses – not to mention the fast commute.
Lorraine’s new role involves managing client relationships, managing security patrols and ensuring timely, high quality service delivery.
She describes herself as a “a fair and approachable” manager and says being a woman helps her approach her role in a calm, fair and logical way.
“Men make great managers too, but women tend be more empathetic and understanding. These are good relationship building skills.”
Sangita – Cash Reporting Administrator, Auckland
Sangita joined Armourguard’s National Cash Reporting Team in 2002. Her highly-specialised job involves reconciling cash held for Armourguard’s bank customers and forecasting their product needs.
“Our team looks at the trends and predicts how much product the banks will need on hand. We need to take account of variables such as public holiday and festive seasons like Christmas and Easter.”
The job requires laser-focused attention to detail and no room for mistakes.
However, correctly forecasting cash trends can be tricky at times, such as during the Covid pandemic. Sangita says nobody knew for sure what would happen so the Cash Reporting team drew upon its extensive experience to help the banks and securely look after their products.
She has seen a lot of changes since joining Armourguard 23 years ago.
“Bank reconciliation was manually done when I started but nowadays many processes are automated and most of the information is digital. Digitisation has really moved forward since Covid and hard copy paperwork is now a thing of the past.
“But change doesn’t worry me because I adapt easily to it by always looking at what the business needs from us and working closely with managers and team to make it happen.
“I think being a woman helps because our strong attention to detail can be a valuable asset for work relationships with internal or external customers.”
Tess – Operations Controller, Hawkes Bay
The security industry is in Tess’s blood. As a child she accompanied her stepfather on his Armourguard patrol run in Dannevirke, and members of her wider family owned a security business in the region.
Tess started with Armourguard Hawkes Bay in 2018 a part-time administration assistant but when Cyclone Gabrielle hit in early 2023 she was heavily involved in helping manage the situation and getting the branch’s power restored.
It became clear to those around her that she had strong operations management skills and a year later she was formally made the branch’s Operations Controller.
It’s a busy job involving everything from managing the animal control team, through to administration, client liaison, and rostering and logistics for the guards, patrols and cash-in-transit teams.
Tess also inducts and trains new employees in the region and is NZQA accredited to sign them off to levels 2 and 3 standards.
But it hasn’t all been plain sailing and in late 2023 Tess was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a bilateral mastectomy a month later. Fortunately she didn’t need radiation or chemotherapy so only three weeks after surgery she returned to work.
“Returning to work so soon after major surgery was harder than I thought it would be, but I stuck with it because I wanted to show I was the boss, not the cancer.”
Lona – Security Guard, Manukau Bus Station
Nine years of being a security guard at the Manukau bus and train stations have seen Lona deal with everything from people’s general inquiries through to preventing anti-social behaviour and diffusing potentially violent situations.
She does such a great job that she has been given many excellence awards over the years, and Armourguard regularly receives praise-filled messages about her. Here’s one recent example:
“Lona does an amazing job as the security guard at the Manukau Bus Station. She is always so reassuring… and goes over-and-above the role of being a security guard. She is helpful …professional, always well-presented and is very attentive to the needs of customers.
“I feel grateful knowing that Lona is there and doing a job that makes me feel safe and cared for while at the bus station. “
Lona says she draws upon her experience as a mother when working and does everything with love no matter how challenging the situation is.
“I don’t dwell on things and for me every day is a new day and what happened yesterday is in the past. I love all of the people I deal with and treat everyone the same no matter who they are.”
Lona wishes all of Armourguard’s women a ‘Happy Women’s Day’, saying they do such a great job – “Bless all of them!”
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