SHIFT Profile – Lisa Noonan

SHIFT Consultant Profile: Lisa Noonan

One of our amazing SHIFT consultants Lisa Noonan, was kind enough to let us into a few of her insights.

Who are you currently working with?

I am currently working as Corporate Counsel in the legal team for major insurance firm. Despite not having worked in the financial services or insurance industries at all,  I hit the ground running and have fast become an Insurance Law Guru!!!  The workload is actually incredibly varied – each day is different – a mix of contract review and negotiation, reviewing marketing and product collateral, claims and policy advice and procurement advice mostly.

What do you love about the role?

The variety, flexibility and the people!  There are so many genuinely nice and friendly people in the insurance sector – I’ve never met so many in one office!

What made working with SHIFT unique?

I have been contracting/consulting for a long time and have worked with a variety of agencies/consultancies over the years, but never have I come across such a special team as SHIFT!  The speed and ease of being placed in assignments is exceptional, and Prue really “gets” me and has an intuitive understanding of which work environments I will thrive in.  Prue really goes out of her way to ensure that I am happy, with regular follow ups, and nothing is ever too much trouble.  I actually feel like I am working with friends who genuinely care about my wellbeing.  SHIFT has a real sense of community too – the in-person events are great opportunities to network and get to know each other better, and the food and wine is always amazing!  The SHIFT operating model is quite unique, and I feel really valued as a consultant, and that my experience and services are highly regarded.

Best book/podcast/show you indulged in over summer?

Given Auckland’s diabolical “summer” weather after the New Year, I found myself indoors more than I expected to be, so indulged in some serious Netflix viewing!!! 😊  The highlight was series 3 of Emily in Paris – I love this series!  As a passionate Francophile – I have been learning French for many years and prior to Covid made regular immersive trips to France to brush up on my language skills – I really enjoy seeing Paris again and reliving some of my own faux pas via Emily’s interactions with the locals!

Most interesting place that you have travelled to and where you would like to go next? 

I am an inveterate traveller and have visited many countries for varying lengths of time, but the highlight and most memorable experience would have to be my Trans-Siberian Railway trip in 1994, where I travelled by train throughout Russia, Mongolia and China.  I was living in London at the time on my OE, and started the experience in St Petersburg, then on to Moscow where my friend and I boarded the train, and spent four days journeying to Siberia, where we stayed with a local family for a couple of days, then on to Mongolia, where we spent a few days in the desert with the nomads, sleeping in their gurt, then back on the train and finished up in Beijing.  The whole experience took about three weeks, and enabled considerable interaction with the locals by virtue of the home stays – and was actually quite intrepid in those days!!! After leaving the train in Beijing, we then spent six weeks backpacking around China – again a very intrepid experience, as very few tourists were travelling there in 1994 and no one spoke English, so all communication was via a phrase book, and hence was ripe for misinterpretation and some very comedic encounters (in hindsight)!

As for where to next, I am relocating to Zurich, Switzerland, for four years to do my PhD in animal welfare law at the University of Zurich.  I received a great scholarship offer, so it was too good an opportunity to pass up!  I am very passionate about making the world a better place for our animal friends and am keen to use my skills to positively advance animal law and policy.

I really enjoy academia and, prior to accepting the Zurich opportunity,  I received a scholarship to do my LLM at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, so was off-shore from September 2021 to June 2022 – the photo is taken at my graduation ceremony, where I was also presented with an award for academic excellence, as I managed to top the class with the highest GPA – not bad going for the matriarch of the programme!  It certainly has been a full on 18 months and plenty more excitement and intellectual stimulation is on the horizon in Europe!