It came through prominent Otago businessman the late Howard Paterson and one of the companies he founded, Tasman Agriculture, which grew to become the world's largest owner of pastoral dairy farms.
''Often in life it's not about your expertise or skills . . . it's more about your opportunities and taking those'', said Mr Parker, a chartered accountant and now a rural corporate manager with ASB.
Born in Roxburgh, where his family was farming, he went to boarding school in Gore and then completed a commerce degree at the University of Otago.
After a brief stint in Invercargill, he joined Ernst and Young in Dunedin and his break came when he started working on Paterson projects.
He worked on Tasman Agriculture from its inception through the accounting firm and found Mr Paterson to be ''pretty inspirational''.
The company was formed in 1988, Brierley Investments bought a 50% share in 1990 and decided to list the company in 1992.
Mr Parker joined Tasman Agriculture as chief executive in 1991 ''at the ripe old age of 26''.
What was initially a handful of farms grew very quickly to 96 - 73 in the South Island and 23 in Tasmania.
It was a great environment to work in and he was ''exceptionally lucky'' to have that initial break, he said.
In 2000-01, Brierley Investments looked to refocus and decided to liquidate some assets. The farms were effectively sold down and a big chunk of them became what is now known as Dairy Holdings Ltd.
Mr Parker then had a 12-month stint at Fonterra when it first formed, commuting from Dunedin to Auckland and running the dairy co-operative's shareholder services division.
With some co-investors, he decided to try investing in businesses, looking around for similar companies which could be combined to get economies of scale.
The principal business they bought into was Anathoth, which produces jams and pickles, which subsequently merged with Barkers of Geraldine and transferred its manufacturing operation from Tapawera (near Nelson) to Geraldine.
That gave ''quite a good fit'', as Anathoth was very strong in New Zealand retail and Barkers had quite a big food service and industry business in New Zealand and Australia.
The Barker family retained the controlling shareholding and that had gone ''really well'', he said.
Mr Parker was still involved with a food business across the Tasmania and he and his wife, along with several others, invested in some dairy farms on the Taieri plain.
He had also been contracted to various agribusiness firms to provide input in finance and strategy. Agriculture and finance were his ''two passionate capabilities''.
Mr Parker then decided that if he wanted to make a difference in agriculture over the next few years, he needed to be with a larger organisation that had a brand presence and depth in agriculture and finance.
He looked at the way the banks behaved, relative to the agriculture sector. Financial institutions that served the sector had a ''critical role'' to play.
He had watched ASB grow from an institution with a ''zero'' rural ''book'' to one that was operated nationwide with a $7 billion rural book.
It probably ''punched above its weight'' in terms of market share relative to where it came from, but there was still room for growth.
''For me, life is growth and growth is life,'' he said.
In 2008, ASB established a rural corporate division to look after the needs of both large scale and complex farming and agri-business customers.
For Mr Parker, who joined the bank at Easter this year, it was about creating the time to be able to deal with his clients' businesses in a lot more detail.
He looked after irrigation schemes and mostly large dairy farm operations. It was not so much about how much grass a farmer had but what the strategy was, where the business was going to be in five to 10 years' time and what the governance structure was - ''big picture'' stuff.
There was an opportunity to add value for the client, he said.
There was also an opportunity within that to talk about the ''big issues'' facing the sector as well: where was capital going to come from in the next 20 years, what were the ''big picture'' environmental issues, where would the skill shortages be?
Mr Parker said the rural corporate space was ''really quite meaningful'' and provided valuable engagement for both the bank and client.
''We can actually feed off clients and their views and come back in-house and work at a level . . . what should the industry be doing about those issues?''
Mr Parker's client base includes North Otago, Central Otago and South Canterbury.