Meet Maggie de Beer
You can hear Maggie tell her story at the Women in Trades Taranaki event 22 May 2025!
Maggie began her career as a temporary employee during school holidays at a local engineering firm in her hometown in South Africa. At 18, she was offered a receptionist role with the company. Over the years, she held various positions, with her last title being Junior Financial/Executive Assistant, supporting the Senior Leadership teams.
In April 2019, Maggie and her husband moved to New Zealand. She was fortunate to join another engineering firm the same year, starting as the Port Equipment & Production Administrator. In 2021, she was promoted to Assistant Project Manager, and in 2022, she advanced to the role of Port Product Project Manager. In 2024, she embarked on her current journey as the National Equipment Manager for Qube Ports NZ.
What's your trade and how long you have been working in the industry?
Maggie is the National Equipment Manager for Qube Ports NZ. She has worked in Mechanical Engineering industries for over 19 years.
Maggie started her career working admin jobs at a local engineering firm during school holidays. She was offered a receptionist role — but to be honest, she had no idea what she wanted to do. She studied part-time, first in business management, then specialising in finance — because, back then, admin and finance were the paths women ‘were good at,’ right?
But working closely with companies like Komatsu, Liebherr, and Caterpillar across Africa, she realised if she wanted to grow, she needed to understand the technical side. She made it her mission to learn as much as she could about manufacturing and engineering, and was lucky to have some managers who were willing to teach her along the way.
After moving to New Zealand, she joined a port equipment engineering firm — again starting in admin, but quickly stepping into more technical work. Luckily this time she had an amazing manager — over the 4 years that she worked for him, he was willing to see past the male "mold" and see her technical skills and offered her every opportunity to learn everything about port products, drawings, manufacturing, job management, project management, costing and general engineering.
It was then she realised — she should have done a mechanical engineering trade! Even without it, she fought hard to prove herself, build her technical skills, and find her place in an industry she loves — as she was often the only female in meetings, design reviews, workshops, and offices.
This is her reason for wanting to participate — because she believes her journey and roles could inspire women to enter industries they may not know they belong in, just like she felt when she started her career. Having worked with many people in trades, but only five female Mechanical Engineering Apprentices in over 19 years.
How did you get your job/apprenticeship
When Maggie arrived in New Zealand, the Port Equipment Administrator role had just become vacant. She applied, got the job — and that’s where her official journey in New Zealand’s engineering industry began.
Where did you complete your apprenticeship/training with?
Maggie studied through the University of South Africa while working full-time, and completed her final Honours paper in 2020 at the University of Auckland.
How have you progressed in your career?
Maggie started in an administration/reception role at age 18, working and studying part-time. She managed to move into leadership in engineering-heavy industries, breaking barriers as the first female project manager for a major engineering firm, managing million-dollar engineering projects nominated for safety awards in NZ that have changed the NZ Stevedoring waterfront to what we know it to be.
Today, she’s proud to be the first female National Equipment Manager for Qube Ports NZ’s mechanical engineering division.
What do you do everyday at work?
Every day is different. Some days Maggie is out on-site at ports, inspecting equipment, meeting with operations teams, and ensuring maintenance programs are running properly. Other days she’s managing budgets, working on major equipment projects, or liaising with contractors and suppliers.
She also manages a national, all-male team — which comes with its own unique leadership challenges and rewards. The balance between technical problem-solving and strategic planning keeps her engaged and always learning.
Who inspired you to choose this career?
It wasn’t one person — it was the industry itself. Finding new ways to improve how they operated, making the work safer for their people, and adding real value to the business got Maggie into engineering. It made her passionate about changing the way things are done today so that tomorrow’s operations are smarter, safer, and more efficient.
Being able to drive that kind of positive change across their ports and logistics network is incredibly rewarding, and it’s what keeps her excited about coming to work every day.
Some good examples are:
A Telematic system — being able to see a solution that their technical team had not even thought of at the time, Maggie was able to develop, test and install these units into their Port Product Range. This was a first for the business and allowed her to roll out and commission 32 machines nationally and growing.
A simple cradle design that allows them to move their gear to and from the berth safely.
What challenges did you have to overcome to get to where you are?
One of the biggest challenges Maggie faced was backing herself when stepping into industries or roles where she didn’t ‘fit the mold’ on paper. She started as a receptionist at 18, studied financial management, and worked her way into admin, assistant project manager to project management and then equipment management — stepping into technical and leadership roles without a traditional trade qualification, and in industries dominated by men.
Looking back, she can honestly say she wouldn’t be where she is today without a few good mentors who believed in her – especially at times when she struggled to believe in herself. Early in her career, she had managers who didn’t just see the admin title on her business card – they saw her potential to understand technical work, to lead projects, and to step beyond what she thought she was capable of. Their support helped her build not just technical skills, but confidence and trust in her own leadership style.
Maggie is sure there will always be moments of self-doubt, and times where she will need to prove her capability. But this journey taught her that career paths don’t have to be linear to be powerful. It’s a big part of why she’s passionate about encouraging more women into industries like theirs – because sometimes, all it takes is one person seeing what you can’t yet see in yourself.
What do you love most about your trade?
What Maggie loves most about her role is the variety and the impact. As National Equipment Manager, no two days are the same — she’s working across ports, supporting operations, solving problems, and making sure their equipment strategies actually make a difference on the ground.
Being part of innovation, she loves that she gets to blend technical understanding, leadership, and business skills to help teams work safer and more efficiently.