Tessa Chartres

Thinking beyond the next role: How the Zanda McDonald Award broadened Tessa’s view of leadership

When Tessa Chartres applied for the Zanda McDonald Award, she was at a formative point in her career.

As General Manager Business Development at Murray Irrigation, Australia’s largest private irrigation company, she had deliberately moved beyond her finance and accounting background into a much broader leadership role spanning strategy, major projects, water policy, stakeholder engagement and business development.

At the same time, she was becoming more involved in her family’s mixed farming business and thinking seriously about how the skills she was developing professionally might one day be applied at the farm gate.

“I knew I wanted to stay in agriculture and regional Australia, but I was still working out what leadership in that space might look like for me.”

Rather than chasing a particular job title, Tessa was beginning to ask a different question: where could she have the greatest impact?

“The Award came at exactly the right time to help me explore that question.”

Expanding what was possible

For Tessa, the impact of the Award wasn’t defined by one visit, conversation or mentor. It was the cumulative effect of being given genuine access to people who had built extraordinary agricultural businesses – and hearing them speak openly about how they had done it.

That included the mistakes, difficult decisions and periods of uncertainty along the way.

“You can read about successful people from the outside and assume their careers followed a logical path. Sitting around a kitchen table or driving around a farm with someone and hearing the real story is very different.”

Those conversations made success feel more accessible and challenged Tessa’s thinking about what a career in agriculture could look like.

Before the Award, she tended to view her career through the lens of the next role: what was she qualified to do, what was the logical progression and what opportunities were available?

The people she met through Zanda approached their careers differently. They were building businesses, investing, advocating, mentoring and creating opportunities rather than simply waiting for the next position to appear.

“I realised I didn’t need to have the whole career mapped out. I needed to build capability, relationships and 

the confidence to step towards opportunities when they appeared.”

That shift has fundamentally changed the way Tessa approaches her career.

Bringing expertise to the farm gate

One of the most practical lessons Tessa took from the Award was the value of deliberately seeking perspectives outside your own organisation or area of expertise.

She saw successful agricultural leaders surround themselves with people who knew things they didn’t – drawing on advisers, peers and mentors to challenge their thinking and make better decisions.

It’s an approach she now applies both professionally and within the family farming business.

“When we are considering a significant decision now, I am much more likely to ask: Who knows more about this than we do? Who should we speak to? What are we not seeing?”

For Tessa, it reinforced that asking for expertise is not a sign of lacking capability. Quite the opposite.

“There can sometimes be a temptation in agriculture to solve everything internally. Zanda reinforced for me that bringing expertise to the farm gate can dramatically accelerate learning and improve decision-making.”

The confidence to invest in herself

That willingness to seek advice also influenced one of the most significant investments Tessa has made in her own development.

Through the Award she had the opportunity to speak with Anna Speer about undertaking an MBA and hear first-hand about the value of the experience. The Award subsequently supported Tessa through the first two subjects of her study, completing a Professional Certificate in Business Administration before continuing with the full MBA through Melbourne Business School.

She is now close to completing it.

“I would not have had the confidence in investing my time and money in it had I not had the opportunity to speak to Anna about its impact.”

The MBA has strengthened Tessa’s capability across strategy, leadership, finance, governance and organisational change, while allowing her to test her own experience against broader business thinking and learn alongside people from many different industries.

Importantly, Zanda helped her decide whether it was the right next step before she made that commitment.

A network that opens doors

The relationships created through the Award have also had a lasting impact.

Tessa has met agricultural leaders, business owners, advisers and senior decision-makers across Australia and New Zealand whom she says she almost certainly would not otherwise have encountered. Speaking opportunities, introductions and professional conversations have followed.

But one of the less visible outcomes has been just as important: the confidence to put her hand up.

“There are opportunities I have pursued since winning that I might previously have looked at and thought, ‘I’m not quite ready for that yet.’”

Winning the Award has also brought credibility.

Tessa says being introduced as a Zanda McDonald Award winner immediately creates recognition among senior people across agriculture and often becomes the starting point for a conversation.

“The Award often signals that other respected people in agriculture have invested in your development.”

That has opened doors to conversations and networks that may otherwise have taken years to build.

For Tessa, though, that recognition carries responsibility. The value is not simply in having won an Award, but in being part of a programme and network whose members are expected to continue contributing to agriculture.

Leadership without having every answer

Perhaps one of the most important changes has been in Tessa’s own understanding of leadership.

Earlier in her career, particularly as she moved from finance into broader business leadership, she sometimes felt she needed deep technical expertise in everything before she had the right to contribute.

The leaders she met through Zanda showed her something different.

They were comfortable saying they didn’t know – and then finding the person who did.

Today, whether she is sitting with executives, government representatives, technical specialists or landholders, Tessa is more confident contributing her perspective without feeling she needs to be the expert on every element of the issue.

“I’ve learnt that leadership is often less about having every answer and more about asking the right questions, bringing the right people together and making good decisions.”

Creating opportunities for others

The generosity of the people Tessa met through the Award has also shaped the kind of leader she wants to become.

Many were highly accomplished, but what stayed with her was how freely they gave their time, knowledge and networks.

“They didn’t guard what they knew, and that is something I would like to replicate.”

She wants to remain grounded in the realities of agriculture and regional communities while building the ability to move between different parts of the industry.

“Agriculture needs people who can move comfortably between the farm gate, the boardroom and government and translate between those worlds.”

For Tessa, the Zanda McDonald Award has helped turn the breadth of her experience into a strength. 

Rather than needing a perfectly linear career path, she is increasingly comfortable operating at the intersection of commercial decision-making, agriculture, policy and regional communities.

And perhaps that is the most enduring impact of the Award: not telling her where her career should go next, but giving her the people, perspective and confidence to think much bigger about where she can make a difference.