Gretchen Kivell

Ruth Gretchen Kivell (; born 1948) is a New Zealand chemical engineer and tertiary educator, and worked in the United Kingdom and in New Zealand. She was the first woman president of Engineering New Zealand, and was elected a Distinguished Fellow in 2005.

Early life and education Kivell was born and grew up in Dunedin. She attended Arthur Street School, Bayfield High School and Queen's High School, before spending a year studying at the University of Otago. She went to study chemical engineering at the University of Canterbury, graduating in 1971 with a Bachelor of Engineering degree. Kivell was one of six women in a class of 600 students, and later described her experiences as "very difficult....almost brutalising" due to overt and unconscious discrimination.

Career

Kivell worked as an engineer at Fletcher Timber, and then in the chemical engineering division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. She then moved to the UK with her husband, and worked as a product engineer. Kivell returned to New Zealand in 1980, where she worked for KRTA. She completed an MBA in 1989, and worked in tertiary education at Unitech Institute of Technology and the University of Otago. She was also chair of the IPENZ Foundation in 2010.