When it comes to getting to and from work, Julie Curphey is not missing a two-hour commute.
Ms Curphey (43) recently joined ADInstruments as chief marketing officer, shifting from London to Dunedin - and a six-minute trip to the office.
It has been more than 20 years since the former University of Otago student has lived in the city, but she is loving being back.
One similarity that she did find with London was that Dunedin was a city where you could do your own thing.
''You can wander around and no-one looks you up and down ... people just get on with themselves and they're happy just for people to be. It's very much like that in London,'' she said.
Originally from Napier, Ms Curphey came to Dunedin in 1989 to study consumer and applied science.
After graduating, her first job was with HortResearch in Auckland, working as a sensory researcher.
She recruited people to join a formal tasting panel, training them to use their senses to be expert testers of the products.
At that time, the organisation was doing work concerning kiwifruit breeding, including gold kiwifruit.
Work was also being done on developing, particularly, squash for the Japanese market.
When Japanese tourists arrived in Auckland, they would be tested with varieties of squash and pumpkin, to see which worked for their palate, and those that found favour would be prioritised for development for export.
After more than a year, Ms Curphey moved to the New Zealand Dairy Board, where she worked with cheese.
The job was two-fold: recruiting and training people to be able to taste cheese and, particularly, pick up faults, and also working at the NZDB's factories throughout New Zealand, teaching cheese-makers to explain and describe the different flavours in the cheese they were making.
The work with cheese-makers was especially fascinating, she said.
After two and a-half years, Ms Curphey was approached by market research company Colmar Brunton to join its Melbourne office, working in fast-moving consumer goods.
The company was very strong in commercial sensory testing and she worked among a diverse range of products - from meat pies and laundry detergent to aftershave, alcohol and cigarettes.
Following her marriage to Chris Brickell, she shifted to Perth and continued to work for Colmar Brunton, helping set up a Western Australian office.
At the same time, she decided she would also ''go back to school'' and she completed her MBA.
That was followed by a shift to Sydney, where she worked for another research agency, Research International, before she was approached and asked if she would join Pfizer.
While she had never been involved in pharmaceuticals, the company wanted someone to run its market research and business intelligence group.
After nearly four years, she transferred to London in 2007 to join the company's UK operation.
A variety of roles ensued, including business intelligence team leader, head of customer intelligence and insight for Europe, European brand team leader for Viagra, and director of business operations.
Ms Curphey loved her job, saying it was high pressure but with ''tonnes of variety''.
It involved problem solving all the time, but she started getting ''a little bit worn out'' with all the restructuring within the company.
What she also realised she was missing was a creative element to the job.
She and her husband were home for Christmas last year when she saw the job at ADInstruments advertised and thought it looked interesting.
ADInstruments produces data acquisition and analysis systems for the life science industry.
Its products are used by more than 10,000 organisations world-wide, including such heavyweights as Toyota, Shiseido, Pfizer, Oxford University and Harvard University.
It has an international team of more than 200 staff located in 13 offices throughout North America, South America, Asia, Australia, the UK, Europe and New Zealand.
New Zealand had been good for a break after an intense year and when she returned to the UK, she thought she might apply for the job.
Saying she was ''probably driven by a challenge'', Ms Curphey said there was a great challenge at ADInstruments.
There was also a lot of potential in what the company was doing and the new products it was developing.
She spoke initially to Michael and Kelly Macknight via Skype, and then came down in April for three days for a face-to-face interview, to start work in June.
She was recently joined in the city by her husband.
Ms Curphey described her latest move as ''incredibly exciting'', saying she was enjoying her job, based in the spectacularly renovated former Donald Reid warehouse, between Vogel and Cumberland Sts. Dunedin was a ''great city to live in'', she said.
Not one for five-year plans and the like, Ms Curphey said the shift to Dunedin was ''right for right now'' and she did not feel she had had to take a compromise in her career growth.
She had been ''incredibly lucky'' to have some great opportunities and she always made the best of the place she was in, she said.
