25 years of Prime Minister’s Scholarships – Alison Shanks setting up for life after sport
And then, through a Gold PM’s Scholarship at the end of her high performance sports career, to gain valuable knowledge to support her growing career in sports governance.
Alison was in the first wave of Dunedin athletes to receive a PM’s Scholarship, which she says was a huge advantage, giving her not only the opportunity to come out of university with no student loan but also to enable her to move into cycling and stay in her home environment.
A born and bred Dunedinite, Alison completed her two degrees – a B.Com (Hons) in Marketing and B.Sc in Human Nutrition – at Otago University while playing netball for the Otago Rebels.
After completing her studies, Alison weighed up the options of moving to Auckland for a job or taking what was a leap into the unknown and giving high performance cycling a go.
“Without the weight of a student loan I was able to go all out in cycling and by staying in Dunedin, to benefit from the continuity of my performance support team that I’d had through netball – my physio, S&C and nutritionist and, equally importantly, to have the support of my family.
“Because I had a degree I had something to fall back on if cycling didn’t work out.”
Work out it did, and Alison’s successful high performance cycling career needs no introduction.
On her retirement from cycling, Alison was able to move into a career in sports governance and, thanks to a PM’s Gold Scholarship, reserved for the most successful high performance athletes on retirement, to undertake study on governance through the Institute of Directors.
“I was asked to join the board of Cycling NZ; however, I knew I had limited knowledge about governance. The courses I studied allowed me to bring together theory with my lived experience as an athlete,” says Alison.
Subsequently she took on more governance roles, joining the board of HPSNZ, became the Oceania athletes’ representative on the Commonwealth Games Federation and continues to sit on the boards of Cricket NZ and NZ eSport.
In recent years Alison has maintained her relationship with HPSNZ as a Performance Pathways Strategic Consultant although she is about to head in a new career direction working in the agricultural technology sector.
Alison says it is really amazing to see the evolution of the PM’s Scholarship programme with the introduction of the internship initiative and gives a big shout out to HPSNZ internship programme lead, Hannah McLean.
“The internships set athletes up for their transition into the working world and I would certainly have benefited from that level of work experience in my time.”