Cathy began her career in quality improvement and auditing in the United Kingdom at the end of the 1980's. At that time, Cathy was working as a Registered Nurse in the Princess Grace Hospital - a world-renowned private surgical hospital in London. The Princess Grace Hospital had a quality management system that was comprehensive and, in fact, won a national award. This was Cathy's introduction to quality improvement.

On her return to New Zealand in 1991, Cathy worked as a Registered Nurse in Wellington Hospital while completing a postgraduate business qualification and starting her own business (QA Health) as a quality trainer and quality consultant, together with her partner, David Waters. The business thrived and David left in 1998 to project manage the development of the New Zealand Health and Disability Sector Standards, working for Standards NZ.

Cathy has been auditing since 1995 - mainly conducting contractual audits on behalf of the Central Regional Health Authority and then its successor, the Health Funding Authority and more recently, the Ministry of Health. These audits have mainly been conducted in the disability support sector. However, Cathy's extensive surgical and medical nursing career makes her fully able to audit other services.

In addition to the auditing work, Cathy continued to offer consultancy services and was employed by a medical and surgical hospital in Wellington to develop and implement a quality management system. In 1996, the Hospital successfully gained accreditation from the New Zealand Council on Healthcare Standards. In addition to this, QA Health successfully assisted many other organisations to achieve other forms of certification such as ISO 9002.

Cathy was integrally involved in the development of the Health and Disability Sector Standards, this included drafting and testing the standards in a range of facilities. As a result of this, Cathy is very familiar with the content and the intent of these standards.
Cathy's expertise in the areas of quality improvement and audit methodologies has enabled her to provide expert assistance in a range of sectors other than health. These include the Department of Corrections and the pharmaceutical industry.