From leaving school in the sixth form (now year 12), to later returning to study, completing a university degree and furthering her career, she has grasped those opportunities as they arose.
Growing up on a dairy farm in the Waikato, Ms Rickman had a huge interest in farming but her father had "quite clear views on what sons did and what daughters did".
Keen to leave school, she was the only one among her siblings who did not stay for her seventh-form year (year 13).
She thought it would be easy to get a job "and it wasn't" but that never worried her, because she knew she could be quite useful on the farm.
By chance, she went with her mother to a polo game in Morrinsville and there they met the secretary for the New Zealand Polo Association who was looking for a computer operator.
The next thing she knew her mother had her kitted out for a job interview and she was "a bit stunned" when she got the job.
She did that for three years, setting herself the challenge to get through her work as fast as she could with as few mistakes as possible.
She also "emptied rubbish bins, made cups of tea and "generally did what every good wee office junior does".
But then, Ms Rickman started to get a bit bored. She landed a job at a law firm in Auckland, a place she had always wanted to visit.
Her colleagues kept suggesting she should study to become an accountant and eventually she decided to pre-enrol for a bachelor of management studies at the University of Waikato. She managed to juggle some work with her studies.
She then joined the audit division of Arthur Young (now Ernst and Young) which provided her with "lots of opportunities to do things a bit different", including a secondment to Silicone Valley in the United States.
While at Arthur Young, one of her key clients was McDonald's and she later joined the company as its first franchisee accountant for New Zealand.
She described it as the "most awesome job". She helped with all aspects of the franchisee relationship.
Ms Rickman later moved back to the Waikato and commuted to Auckland while working for McDonald's, before joining Beattie Rickman in Hamilton, which later merged into PricewaterhouseCoopers.
When it came time to "do something a bit different", she felt drawn to the South and moved to Dunedin earlier this year.
Both her grandmothers were born in the South Island, with one coming from Otago.
"This was kind of like the only place that felt like home," she said.
She had no regrets about the move, saying it had been a really good experience.
In Hamilton, she was on the advisory board of a University of Waikato associated organisation called AIESEC, and is now working with its University of Otago counterpart.
