Retirement marks a new beginning in the career journey for CEO Norah Barlow

As the aged care sector bids farewell to one of its most experienced executives, Norah Barlow, Hello Leaders caught up with her to reflect on the past and take a look at the future.

Norah’s career has spanned industries and continents. Born and raised in Liverpool, she and her mother and father travelled to New Zealand to pursue a better life for themselves and their children.

Norah married young and had two children by her early 20s. By 32, she had returned to university and was a qualified accountant. This set the stage for her to pursue a lifelong career, although it would not be in accounting for long.

Norah was involved in establishing New Zealand retirement living provider, Summerset, alongside founders John and Rose O’Sullivan and Paul Morris. Starting as the group accountant, Norah was appointed chief executive officer in 2001. She remained in that role for over a decade before deciding to step down. 

“I retired but to be perfectly frank I was even busier than before. But it wasn’t as rewarding, I still loved management,” she said.

With an ongoing relationship with Australia’s Estia Health as a board member, Norah was lured to Sydney as their new CEO in 2016. 

“I loved every minute of it. One of the best management teams and it continues to be great. Through that team we went from being a market pariah to a bit of a market darling,” Norah added. 

While Sydney was a much-loved home away from home, Norah desired a return to New Zealand to be closer to her children and grandchildren. This saw her time with Estia as CEO end, although she stayed on their board and remains Chair of the Approved Provider Board at Estia.

Luckily, at this time Heritage Lifecare, an emerging new company in aged care, was hunting for a new CEO based in Wellington to take them to the next level. It was a match made in heaven.

A new era meets the pandemic era

Heritage Lifecare is New Zealand’s second-largest aged care provider with 42 residential care homes and 20 retirement villages. This scale allowed it to overcome some of the greatest challenges aged care has ever faced, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

New Zealand avoided many of the lows Australia did, however, the nation was arguably more isolated and under-resourced in the clinical workforce.

Heritage Lifecare had just acquired seven homes in Christchurch when COVID-19 hit, with other strategic projects in the pipeline. The uncertainty of what would happen next forced them to slow down with their growth plans.

“We didn’t know at that stage whether many of our residents could die tragically because of the pandemic as we were hearing horror stories from aged care homes overseas. Although we were experienced at caring for people, we just didn’t know what was ahead of us and what it would mean for our company’s viability,” Norah explained.

“We pulled back on all unnecessary (mainly capital) expenditure because we couldn’t afford to risk spending any money on anything other than necessities to ensure our residents were well cared for over this time until we knew where the pandemic was going.”

Heritage Lifecare made it through without any deaths during COVID-19. Life seemed to be returning to normal as well. 

Unfortunately, the lack of immigration in New Zealand led to significant staff shortages, and the pressures the whole sector was put under at that time were immense. When New Zealand reopened its borders it restricted incoming migration. At the same time, it was losing people who desperately needed to see or return to family overseas. 

Norah said the post-pandemic year of 2022 was just as tough as the height of the pandemic. At one point they had 130 nurse vacancies in a 300-strong nurse roster. Scale proved to be a saving grace. 

“We were able to cross-pollinate with our workforce. We called on workers in homes less impacted by COVID-19 and invited them to help homes that needed staff. It was their choice and they’ll always be our Heritage Heroes,” Norah said. 

“But what’s sad now is that so many workers from across the industry were so burned out by what happened during the pandemic. The whole sector lost some good people over that time. It’s recovering but it’s such a shame. It’s a hard cross to bear.”

Taking on the future

Heritage Lifecare has cemented itself in a strong position following the pandemic with Norah herself saying ‘If we have five nurse vacancies we’re upset’. 

Norah played a large part in that success despite facing her own personal battles. Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023, retirement provides an invaluable opportunity for self-care after years dedicated to helping others.  

“I am looking forward to being able to concentrate on that part of my life that I need to get better at and allow more time for. Work dominates 24/7 and everyone who knows me knows I can’t be any different,” Norah shared.

Aged care is undeniably better off because of that commitment to her work. 

Norah will not be leaving the sector entirely, though. She will continue to chair Estia Health’s board and do the same for Heritage Lifecare in 2025. Both roles serve as a reminder of just how important female leadership is in aged care. 

At one stage during her Summerset CEO tenure, Norah was the only female CEO on New Zealand’s NZX 50 stock market index. A similar example occurred during her time with Estia Health while it was on the ASX 200 and Norah was the only woman who presented at a major conference. 

“I’ve actively tried to pull forward women into leadership and I’ve been very fortunate to have some good women come through. In our regional management structure, all but one are women,” she said.

Norah knows more work is required, though. She acknowledged that diversity decreases higher up the ladder with Heritage Lifecare having roughly 50/50 male-female representation at the rung above regional management. “It’s not just gender we need to think about, it’s also ethnicity,” she added. 

However, Norah does point out that there is a very important issue underlying choices in senior management, and she recognises the ability to do the job well has to be the first requirement. In that, she is thankful to be leaving Heritage with such a great team at the helm. 

Even in retirement, Norah hopes to influence government decisions by taking a wider view of aged care. It doesn’t matter if that’s in Australia or New Zealand. However, she feels New Zealand is still a few steps behind Australia in recognising how best to fund aged care and that may well be where her advocacy is needed the most. 

“The New Zealand government needs to listen to the sector a bit more and not treat the sector as an enemy but treat it as part of the solution,” she said. 

“I would love to assist the government, whatever government that may be, from a non-biased perspective. I wouldn’t mind working through the ideas that could be helpful to the next generation who now needs care so we can provide better solutions.”